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Quote of the Day: Political Correctness
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” — Theodore Dalrymple
More commentary on this quote from Granite Grok: “Its purpose is to shut you up by the Orwellian tool of either removing words from our common language or, far worse, redefine words to be completely at odds with historical definitions. Take ‘access’ for example – when the Left means ‘access to contraceptives,’ they do not mean that you can go to the store and purchase it yourself. Instead, they mean to ENFORCE that unless YOU are buying such medications for SOMEONE else, that person has been denied access to it.”
With President Reagan winning a second term in 1984, we hoped that many aspects of Orwell’s classic would fall by the wayside. By 1987 traditional Leninism was finished, and even Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History in 1989. But Political Correctness started in the 1970s, with roots back into the 1940s, and continues with the nonsense we see today.
Published in Politics
@she is not able to post today, so here is a substitute post.
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The first sentence of the linked Wikipedia article on Political Correctness is politically correct.
Excellent observation. Thanks.
Can we really maintain that political correctness, in all its noxious manifestations as opposed to the present distempers, is leftwing?
Seems like there was some powerful political correctness which maintained slave owning Jeffersonianism in the South and border states (and much of the Midwest) for fifty years.
Isn’t the problem really the stranglehold the left has had on pop, mid and high culture for 100 years?
I don’t mean to imply that present day conservatives in small l liberal societies, having suffered under this cultural regime, would be as bad, especially owing to our lively libertarian ethic. Yet, archconservative social, religious and martial societies in the past have enforced a pretty regimented worldview.
I suppose that one could consider the denunciation of heretics or the concept of blasphemy (in some instances) to be forms of political correctness. And you seem to suggest that opposition to slaves as free men is yet another type of PC. Something, however, is different in our age where PC, as it did in the USSR, is very pervasive (almost inescapable) in service of ideology. Today’s means to deliver PC “culture” (i.e., mass media, social networks, twitter, etc.) are far more efficient than in the past, and overwhelmingly from the left.
George Orwell described this well in “1984,” no doubt informed by his years at BBC. Winston Smith was his example.
While I’ll grant that everyone tries to fit into their society, and they try not to be rude or confrontational, Political Correctness has been the segue from the failure of Marxist thought. Jordan Peterson explains it better in the first minute of this video:
As Instapundit would say, listen to the whole thing.
FWIW, I first encountered the concept that a particular “line” was or was not “politically correct” when studying communist China as a grad student in the 70s. IIRC, the concept grows from the Leninist organizational principle of “democratic centralism,” whereby the powerful political leaders (central committee, politburo, etc) would secretly debate and decide on a particular party policy — the “line” — and once decided, all verbal departure from that line was politically incorrect, and subjected the speaker to sanctions.
In that sense, the concept of political correctness has its roots deep in communism. Other eras may have had euphemisms to cover up or gloss over their unpleasant realities, but they were linguistic tricks, not political in the same sense.
Thanks for this.
Orwell noticed also that imperialism had that same effect: the ruled got in the habit of being servile and even petty after so much ill treatment. Demoralization as a policy.
Thanks for that link. He is amazingly clear.
Thanks for taking over today. I owe you one. @vectorman
I was trying, not very cogently perhaps, to point out the striking inconsistency between the declarations of liberty (still stirring today) which were voiced in the United States while a crushing uniformity of opinion about slavery and black inferiority was enforced. Yes there was some debate towards the end of 18th century and the very beginning of the 19th in the South.
But between 1820 and 1860? Almost none. Opinion was enforced by local governments, churches, employers, schools, universities and local post offices.
Could you produce an abolitionist paper in the South in 1830 without being tarred and feathered?
That’s a pretty effective regime of political correctness on a central defining issue that operated at every level of civic and social authority to shape allowable thought.
In the current glossary of Orwellian-speak, the phrase “have a conversation” means “shut up and agree with me.”
I think you’re right, QV. Controlling speech and language are hallmarks of “totalizing” regimes. Slavery evolved into a race-based institution that even non-slave holders were both seduced and forced into supporting—seduced, that is, by the dubious benefit of “at least I’m not black” and forced by laws against abolitionist speech and action. As in other totalitarian systems, the profits accrued to a few and the burdens (eventually calamitous) were borne by everyone.
One can imagine a totalitarian Christian state (Margaret Atwood did) but Christians will point out that you would have to distort Christianity in order to realize it. And the FFs had to distort their splendid vision in order to realize the hemi-totalitarianism of a slave-owning society. They had to be hypocritical freedom-lovers…but thank God they were still freedom-lovers.
Any ideology could in theory undergird a totalitarian state, I suppose, because human beings are what we are. The question to be asked of the ideologue is whether his vision can be realized in anything but a totalitarian state?
Antonio Gramsci explained it years ago.
Orthodox Marxism had predicted that socialist revolution was inevitable in capitalist societies. By the early 20th century, no such revolution had occurred in the most advanced nations. Capitalism, it seemed, was more entrenched than ever. Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the “common sense“ values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
To counter the notion that bourgeois values represented “natural” or “normal” values for society, the working class needed to develop a culture of its own. Lenin held that culture was “ancillary” to political objectives, but for Gramsci it was fundamental to the attainment of power that cultural hegemony be achieved first.
Political Correctness is the left’s greatest invention. Having no logical limits, it’s a bottomless well from which outrage can be endlessly drawn. There is virtually no action or comment for which an imaginative individual can’t find a plausible excuse for righteous indignation. Even comments that were politically correct yesterday can elicit feigned outrage today as leftists jockey for position and one up each other into increasingly radical and unworkable policies.
How does “wokeness” fit into this? I’m just learning about it, but it seems to be a demand, not just for proper words here and there, but for Asserive, Activist signaling. Or else. It reminds me of PC because of course the politics must be only one kind and if not enough, then artistic irrelevance or perhaps even boycotting results. In careers where pop approval is greatly coveted, being branded insensitive can have an impact, which Justin Timberlake now may be about to experience. And what signal does that give to impressionable fans? That they haved to squelch any dissident thoughts in order to fit in to their peer group? Further details (if you can stand the convoluted musing) appear below. You may want to scross down to the part under the picture with Britney Spears:
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42959415