I don't get what's so admirable about antagonizing a bunch of people? Obviously he should be allowed to say whatever he wants, but celebrating people who do that always struck me as silly.
To each his own, but I wouldn't be celebrating someone writing books intended to piss off black people or the LGBT community either.
I don't think he intended to antagonise anybody when writing that book. The fact that he accidentally did so is because some people are very oversensitive -- and those people deserve to get offended, frankly.
I guess nobody's getting death threats for still saying "blacklist" or "quantum supremacy", but people who are oversensitive enough to care deserve to get offended.
That said, I don't think we should encourage causing people offense. It's worth being aware that a person may get offended by harmless things because of mental illnesses like psychosis, so it's worth being sensitive to that.
The thing is, if you criticize X (for any value of X) then you're always going to antagonize some people. It's exceedingly hard to avoid doing that, no matter how careful you are. Especially if people are looking to be insulted for their own political gain (always good to have a "bad guy" to be antagonizing about, whether that's a single person, group, or vague concept such as "The West").
That's not my point; my point is that any argument which criticizes anything is likely to antagonize people. It's also not my impression that Rushdie "likes offending people"; he wrote a fictional novel and some people took issue with what seem fairly minor points to me and had a massive hissy fit over that (partly motivated for political reasons), but I don't know the man.
> I just take issue with deifying and amplifying people who like offending people.
But "like offending people" is not objective. The burden has to lie with offendee as well. Flat earthers might be offended by someone saying Earth is round, but that doesn't mean that person saying that likes offending flat earthers.
You can get banned from HN for mentioning far more obvious facts relevant to many peoples lives, ex. race and crime rates. Arguably more well supported than round earth.
So it's just pure hypocrisy and pretending otherwise is silly.
> I just take issue with deifying and amplifying people who like offending people...admiring people because of their intent to offend large groups of people is just weird.
This is a false framing. The person who wrote the post you originally replied to does not appear to be doing that; the comment praises Rushdie for saying uncomfortable things and challenging entrenched views, not for insulting people.
It may be (as as been suggested in these comments) that Rushdie was indeed trying to offend people, but even if that were the case, it does not mean that his supporters are celebrating him for that.
In fact, I feel it is fairly safe to say that, for most of his supporters in this matter, he is something of a MacGuffin: they support the position you concur with in your second paragraph, and he just happens to present a case where it is under significant threat. Opposition to terrorism (state-sponsored terrorism, no less) does not necessarily imply or depend on supporting the victim's position or all of their actions, any more than opposition of the death penalty is an endorsement of murder and its perpetrators.
Even people who have reservations about your second paragraph can see that Rushdie was not threatening anyone, directly or indirectly.
It cuts both ways. Do we celebrate (or even tolerate) people who declare a death sentence on others who violate their extreme rules? Should they be a protected class? Doesn't that elevate them to some kind of privileged people?
The book is fiction and magic-realism at that. The intention of the book was most certainly not meant to antagonize. It is also most certainly not why he's celebrated.
The intention of the book was most certainly not meant to antagonize
I kinda disagree with this. There are certain parts of the book that I don't think could be interpreted any way other than antagonization.
Reading the book, I felt like he even went out of his way to antagonize muslims. There were parts when I had to ask myself, "Is xyz really essential to the plot?"
I'm not muslim, fwiw. And this goes without saying, but no one should be persecuted for what they write.
To each his own, but I wouldn't be celebrating someone writing books intended to piss off black people or the LGBT community either.