THAT BOOK : DAVE ARMSTRONG HAS HIS SAY

Umbrage over a book is great in this hi-tech age

DAVE ARMSTRONG, Dominion Post, 04/07/2011

OPINION: To stock or not to stock? People power or Facebook fascism? Online hearts were a-twitter last week with the publication of Ian Wishart's latest book, Breaking Silence, which tells Macsyna King's side of the tragic story. Apparently, after reading the book, "you'll be able to judge for yourself who killed the Kahui twins".

A lot of us already reckon we know, or could paint a fairly good identikit. Like many, I was outraged that Macsyna King might financially profit from her book. However, Wishart repeatedly stated she won't receive a cent, in which case King should probably get herself a decent literary agent.
Forget protest marches, the online community did what they do best and reached for the "like" button. By Friday, more than 45,000 people were calling for bookshops not to sell Wishart's book.
Wishart is a conspiracy theorist, a Christian, and the scourge of secular humanists like me. His first book, The Paradise Conspiracy, was an interesting read, though hardly a high point in New Zealand journalism.
But lately he has produced paranoid diatribes against Helen Clark, climate change experts, and anything else vaguely secular and progressive. I was surprised he didn't name Helen Clark and the entire Labour women's caucus as suspects in the Kahui case.

So having supported boycott campaigns against South African goods during the apartheid 80s and against non-biodegradable detergents in the 90s, I was ready to exercise my right, and my index finger, and join the Facebook campaign. Then a nagging voice inside my head asked what right I had to stop a book being sold?
New Zealand has a proud tradition of boycotting and banning books. In December 1940, my Left-wing uncle hid all his illegal "subversive' books (think Das Kapital) inside my grandmother's home-made dressmaking mannequin because he knew the Dannevirke police would never think to look there. The books fell out one Christmas morning, and my uncle and grandmother fell out soon after. Apparently it made for a very tense Christmas dinner.

Seventy years later, we no longer ban such books. In our free society, Wishart has every right to publish his book and profit from it. And Facebook users have every right to organise a boycott (though I think the boycott's effect will be to increase sales).
Wishart claims the boycott infringes his rights. Wrong - citizens are simply exercising their democratic right to urge others not to buy something.
But what worries me is that book boycotts are usually organised by enemies of free speech. The religious Right in America have kept excellent books, such as To Kill A Mockingbird, off school library bookshelves.

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