Yes but what did she SAY?

Another clash – another book “canceled” – another taboo violated – another uproar roaring.

The Guardian reports, with startlingly squeamish ineptitude:

The journalist Julie Burchill has had a book contract cancelled after her publisher said she “crossed a line” with her Islamophobic comments on Twitter.

Notice the lack of quotation marks on “Islamophobic,” and notice also the use of the word “Islamophobic,” which is a notoriously and obviously ambiguous and trouble-making and slyly theocratic word. What is the Guardian saying? Did Burchill’s tweets express hatred of Islam? Or was it hatred of Muslims? The Guardian of course never says.

Burchill’s publisher, the Hachette imprint Little, Brown, said it had decided not to publish Welcome to the Woke Trials because she had used indefensible language when communicating with the journalist Ash Sarkar.

What was the indefensible language?

Sarkar said Burchill “quite openly subjected [her] to Islamophobia”.

Yes but what does “Islamophobia” mean? And what was the language?

Believe it or not, the Guardian never does say. It writes a whole story on this but never tells us what Burchill said – so we are left to imagine an ugly racist outburst.

Little, Brown said Burchill’s comments on Islam were “not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint” and they “crossed a line with regard to race and religion”. It added that her book had become “inextricably linked with those views”.

Ok but what were these comments? If you’re going to heap all this ordure on Burchill you could at least give us the relevant information.

“We will no longer be publishing Julie Burchill’s book,” the statement said. “This is not a decision we have taken lightly. We believe passionately in freedom of speech at Little, Brown and we have always published authors with controversial or challenging perspectives – and we will continue to do so.”

Except when we don’t.

The book had been billed as being “part-memoir and part-indictment” of what happened to Burchill after she wrote an article for the Observer in 2013, which was removed after criticism that it contained transphobic language. At the time, the paper apologised for the offence caused in what it described as a “highly charged debate”.

We’re not told what that language was, either.

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