“...The Tyranny of Silence is not an apology; it is one man’s narrative among many. “In the open society,” Rose writes, “history moves forward through the exchange of new narratives.” He explains that during a conversation with Salman Rushdie in 2009 he came to understand that “what differentiates open and closed societies is the right to tell and retell our own and other people’s stories.” Any attempt to prevent those stories from being told is not simply a restriction on free speech; it is an assault on human nature. “When we spoke,” Rose recalls, “Rushdie observed that from childhood, we use storytelling as a way of defining and understanding ourselves. It is a phenomenon that derives from a language instinct that is universal and innate in human nature.”
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Tags: Flemming Rose, free speech, The Tyranny of Silence, The Economist