In December last year, I started a petition calling for Donald Trump to be banned from the UK, which gathered 585,000 signatures. So I was interested to read this week that JK Rowling has argued against a travel ban for the presidential candidate. Speaking to the PEN America literary gala in New York, the author said that while she personally finds Trump offensive and bigoted, “if you seek the removal of freedoms from an opponent simply on the grounds that they have offended you, you have crossed a line to stand alongside tyrants who imprison, torture and kill on exactly the same justifications”. As much as I adore her work, I think she’s wrong. Rowling’s books tell us to challenge the powerful when they are wrong.
The sad truth is that irresponsible verbal attacks can lead to physical ones. This is why the UK has banned over 80 hate preachers. The problem is not simply that I, and others who signed my petition, find Trump’s hateful rhetoric offensive; I do not count myself among the perpetually offended who seek to censor anything they don’t like. The problem is the physical violence that has come as a result of Trump’s words.
Trump has said that terrorists’ relatives should be “taken out”. He has said that he would ban Muslims from entering the US. Protesters are not free to gather near or at his rallies without the threat of violence – and he said at one point that he was considering paying legal fees for a supporter who lashed out. The film You’ve Been Trumped catalogues Trump’s bullying ways in Scotland. The former councillor Debra Storr opposed Trump, and later claimed to have been assaulted by a Trump supporter.
Does JK Rowling know about the Hispanic man allegedly beaten with metal bars by Trump supporters in Boston? “Trump is right; we have too many immigrants,” they reportedly told police. Another Trump fan, William Celli, has been charged with possessing an explosive device, apparently to target Muslims.
The artist Illma Gore, whose nude painting of Trump was widely circulated on the internet, was anonymously threatened with legal action, and was punched by a man shouting “Trump in ’16”. I’ve had threatening emails, too. I hope Rowling is as interested in Gore’s and my right to free expression as she is concerned with Trump’s.
