"Though 'obscurantism' may be a word that is, well, obscure, to Americans, [Macron] is right. The line between the fight for freedom..."

"... and the surrender to hatred is absolute. The assault on Rushdie only clarifies its contours."

Writes Adam Gopnik, reacting to what Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, said on Friday evening:

“For 33 years, Salman Rushdie has embodied freedom and the fight against obscurantism. He has just been the victim of a cowardly attack by the forces of hatred and barbarism. His fight is our fight; it is universal.”

That comes at the end of "Salman Rushdie and the Power of Words/Efforts are bound to be made to somehow equalize or level the acts of Rushdie and his tormentors and would-be executioners. This is a despicable viewpoint" (in The New Yorker).

"Efforts are bound to be made" is an effortfully passive construction. Who is making these efforts? Who is putting "the acts of Rushdie" on the same level as the acts of "his tormenters and would-be executioners? Gopnik is talking about "the idea... that words are equal to actions," and he's seeing this idea among American progressives. Yes, Gopnik grouped American anti-free-speech progressives with murderous Iranian theocrats. Are you seeing American progressives equating Rushdie with those who've been trying to kill him?

Now, let's look at Macron's word, "obscurantism." Gopnik notes that it's obscure and moves on, but I want to stop on it. I've blogged about it before, back in October 2020, when Macron said, "Obscurantism and the violence that goes with it will not win," after a teacher was decapitated, apparently for showing students a caricature from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo as he taught about freedom of speech.

I quoted Wikipedia:

Obscurantism and Obscurationism describe the practice of deliberately presenting information in an imprecise, abstruse manner designed to limit further inquiry and understanding. There are two historical and intellectual denotations of Obscurantism: (1) the deliberate restriction of knowledge—opposition to disseminating knowledge; and (2) deliberate obscurity—a recondite literary or artistic style, characterized by deliberate vagueness.....

In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers applied the term obscurantist to any enemy of intellectual enlightenment and the liberal diffusion of knowledge. In the 19th century, in distinguishing the varieties of obscurantism found in metaphysics and theology from the "more subtle" obscurantism of the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and of modern philosophical skepticism, Friedrich Nietzsche said: "The essential element in the black art of obscurantism is not that it wants to darken individual understanding, but that it wants to blacken our picture of the world, and darken our idea of existence."

The OED defines the word simply and unobscurely: "Opposition to inquiry, enlightenment, or reform." 

Perhaps the word in French feels more conversational. I suspect that it has been chosen in order to make it possible to discuss the problem without speaking of religion. You secularize the idea, so that the set of things you're referring to includes some nonreligious things — like superstition and hostility to science and free inquiry — and excludes some religion that is rational enough to accept scientific inquiry and peaceful coexistence.

***

And here's a new report from the London Times, quoting Rushdie's son Zafar: 

"Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.... Though his life changing injuries are severe, his usual feisty and defiant sense of humour remains intact. We are so grateful to all the audience members who bravely leapt to his defence and administered first aid along with the police and doctors who have cared for him and for the outpouring of love and support from around the world."