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I recently caught the December 3, 2012 rerun of the popular syndicated TV quiz show Jeopardy! hosted by Canadian-born half-Ukrainian/half-French Alex Trebek. In the Final Jeopardy round the question (technically, the answer) in the category “Phrase Origins” was: “This 2-word adjective for ‘going against accepted speech or conduct’ first appeared in a 1933 translation from Izvestia.” Of course, it helped to know that Izvestia was the official newspaper of the Soviet government during Communism’s heyday.
Nevertheless, I was astonished that none of the three contestants knew, or guessed, the correct response. I assumed that all three intelligent contestants would get the answer easily. Instead, one wrote down “counterculture,” another “going against the grain,” and the winner wrote down nothing.
Although I didn’t know the answer in the sense of having heard it or read it, I instantly had it: “Politically Incorrect.”
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (2000, 2009) defines “politically correct” as follows: “Of, relating to, or supporting broad social, political, and educational change, especially to redress historical injustices in matters such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.”
Note the overwhelming ideological tilt and assumptions built into the Dictionary’s definition—which indeed is inevitable in an intellectually rigid, politically correct regime. Other definitions include adhering to “progressive ideals” (Left-wing ideology) and being “ideologically sound.”
In current parlance, “politically correct” encompasses “good” thoughts, and “politically incorrect” “evil” or “unacceptable” thoughts. As a TV network honcho employed by Jewish-owned media behemoth NBCUniversal said when conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan was fired for having written a book (what did that have to do with his on-air job?), Suicide of a Superpower (2011), containing chapters titled “The End of White America” and “The Death of Christian America”: such ideas shouldn’t be “part of the national dialogue, much less part of the dialogue on MSNBC.” That is political correctness in a nutshell. It is an instrument of the ruling class.
The translation referred to on Jeopardy! appeared in the following passage in the Christian Science Monitor on November 28, 1933: “The results of a recent investigation of the knowledge of 65,000 Soviet pupils are candidly summed up in the official newspaper, Izvestia, in the following terms: ‘Bad grammar, abundance of mistakes in spelling . . . superficial and often politically incorrect information in civics and social sciences.’”
The term was prevalent among Chinese Communists from the early 1930s on as well. Later, in the 1970s, the popularity of Maoism among socially influential and, very soon, Establishment New Left adherents in the United States caused them to appropriate the phrase.
Because formulations like “politically correct” and “politically incorrect” lay proponents open to appearing to be what they are—narrow-minded, intolerant bigots who arrogate to themselves the right to dictate the parameters of public and private thought—many Leftists became uncomfortable with the designations. They did not reject the essence and practice of political correctness, of course, which is essential to Leftism and a psychological trait of fanatics, but simply wanted to cast aside the label.
They even went so far as to claim that conservatives invented the terms, which is a lie. This widespread falsehood characterizes Wikipedia’s entry on “Political Correctness,” which, like most of its articles on sensitive topics, is rigidly doctrinaire, the furthest thing from an objective account one could imagine. As is widely-known, Wikipedia is heavily ideologically policed.
Conservative Jewish commentator Paul Gottfried noted that Frankfurt School radicals
explicitly eschewed debate in favor of reviling and if possible repressing their opponents. (This is fundamental to the Marxist method: although it claims to be “scientific,” it is in fact an a priori value system that rejects debate and its concomitant, “bourgeois science.” Hence “political correctness”—the most prominent product of “cultural Marxism”.) (“Yes Virginia [Dare], There Is A ‘Cultural Marxism,’” Vdare.com, October 14, 2011)
He added: “An observation made by [Helmut] Schelsky [the leading post-WWII German sociologist] decades ago still holds: once the Left becomes sovereign over meaning (Deutungshoheit) [alternative translations include “prerogative of interpretation,” “interpretive authority,” and “sovereignty of interpretation”], then all discussion must take place on its turf. This, of course, is why the Left [now] hates the fact that the term Political Correctness has entered the language.”
Incidentally, Gottfried’s article is an interesting specimen of Talmudic-style, quietly subversive reasoning and argumentation. He subtly takes issue with several standard right-wing interpretations of the Jewish/totalitarian Frankfurt School—so subtly that I expect most Gentile readers miss the fact completely, at least with their conscious minds.
The whole idea of minutely dictating people’s thoughts in such a manner, whether it is given a label or not, is integral to Leftism and an obvious variation of the Communist concept of the “Party Line.” It represents the exact opposite of traditional Western concepts of freedom of speech and thought. Fundamentally it is anti-human as well as un-Western.
Theodore Dalrymple (the pseudonym of conservative English-born Jewish writer Anthony Daniels, a retired prison doctor and psychiatrist), says that
Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. . . . [T]he 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.
This is a decent statement of the case, though I differ with Dalrymple on two points.
First, political correctness is not communist propaganda writ small. Given the triumph of communism in its Orwellian incarnation (as opposed to state ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange), it is Communism. Therefore, it is no surprise that an iron curtain of political correctness has descended over the intellectual, political, cultural, and social life of the West.
There is nothing “small” about the crimes committed by the state and Left-wing domestic terrorists against the Institute for Historical Review, revisionists Ernst Zündel and Robert Faurisson, historian David Irving, attorney Edgar Steele, Matt Hale, and many, many others. Like the millions of victims of Communism who preceded them, the true fates of most victims of political correctness are invisible to the world at large.
Nor is there anything “small” about the purposeful biological and cultural annihilation of the white race occurring right now—a literal crime against humanity according to the rulers’ own laws. The perpetration of the crime requires political correctness for its fulfillment.
Secondly, to assent to obvious lies of this type, on this scale, is not in “some small way” to become evil oneself, it is to become evil in a big way. The more significant one’s role in perpetrating the crimes, the greater the sin shouldered by the assenter.
I have always known—I refuse to say “believed”—this. It is by no means a minor point.
Further Reading
Geoffrey Hughes, Political Correctness: A History of Semantics and Culture (Maldon, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 336 pages
12 comments
Excellent article. We live under a strange hybrid of buccaneer capitalism and leftism, but under the surface it becomes more and more apparent that it is really communism. They are beginning to take the velvet gloves off, and the rigid enforcement of this “political correctness” becomes ever more shrill and hysterical. In a multiracial society that more and more resembles a powder keg, they must keep a tight lid on anything that smacks of White ethnic assertion.
Dalyrmple’s quote is perfect as an introduction – it’s very hesitancy and minimalism show the Jewish mastery of human psychology. But you are right. As Shakespeare said, “Seems Madam? Nay it is. I know not seems.” Hope I got that right.
What are his politics? Neo Conservative I suppose? If so, too bad. I’ve read a bit of him and he is a fine writer and social commentator.
I don’t buy the Dalrymple quote. I think it is an example of cheap comic-book demonization.
“Gosh, Batman, what makes the Riddler tick?”
“Evil, Robin. Pure, concentrated evil.”
The claims of Communism are no more absurd than the dogmas of Christianity, Buddhism, or Hinduism. Are we then to conclude that these religions were created simply to humiliate and laugh at the people who parroted them? I think not.
Sure there are sincere Communists. “The useful idiots” Lenin called them. Whatever its idealism, in practice it turned out to be a monstrosity. But despite its intellectual failings, by way of compensation Communists have the Devil’s own cunning when it comes to agitation and propaganda. As Ishmael says in Moby Dick, all my means are sane, only my ends are mad.
Dalyrmple’s quote points out two things: that Political Correctness IS in fact Communism and that it the same old vicious Communism that slaughters its opponents and criminalizes dissent – the only difference being that it is repackaged as our own home grown Communism without the name. The quote is a superb warning to stop them while we still can if we still can.
@Jaego: Lenin didn’t call sincere communists “useful idiots”, since he considered himself one of them. The “useful idiots” were Western non-communist leftist intellectuals who nevertheless were apologetic towards communism, defending it and making Western public opinion more sympathetic to it. His term implied that if communism had taken over in the West, they would quickly be dispatched to a concentration camp, or at least marginalized, in other words, these useful idiots helped communism and thereby their own political death. That’s why they were both useful (to communists) and idiots (in that they didn’t see that they were working against their self-interests as well as against the interests of their own ideology, which was moderate leftism).
Theodore Dalrymple (the pseudonym of conservative English-born Jewish writer Anthony Daniels, a retired prison doctor and psychiatrist), says that [the link in “says that” doesn’t work, but the quote that follows appears in an interview with Dalrymple at:
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7445
Thanks.
Today I was leafing through The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi (Oxford University Press, 2010), written by Canadian history professor Gary Bruce. (The Stasi was Communist East Germany’s secret police organization.) He writes on p. 140, “At its heart, the Stasi was an organization that monitored society for those who, in [Jewish Communist] Rosa Luxembourg’s phrase, ‘thought differently.’”
Interestingly, in the final pages Bruce points out the parallels between the Stasi and events today, including ubiquitous surveillance cameras and the totalitarian USA Patriot Act.
One has to be blissfully ignorant of Communism, and of the Western liberal tradition, to be unaware of what is going on now.
re: the Dalrymple quote, and Greg Johnson’s remark, I would remind readers of the difference between intention and effect. Most Communists, along with most of our contemporary “progressives”, probably don’t intend “evil”….on the contrary, they burn with righteousness and conviction…they “know” their views on race, wealth, gender, and a host of issues is “right”…if they bulldoze us in the process of reaching societal consensus, it will be “for (our) own good”.
The effect of the re-education and socialization experiments they employ can, however, be reasonably judged as “evil” if we find it is cutting us off from well-springs of health and meaning. So the recipient of progressive vigilance against “counter-revolutionary thought crimes” may be healthiest when he does conclude that their meddling amounts to an evil commited on his identity, or that of his family, tribe, or race.
Of course they don’t intend evil – consciously. They don’t even believe in it. Anything that help the Revolution is good an anything that hinders it is bad. But do the burn with love for humanity or is hatred for those who oppose them dominant? Obviously the latter in Communists great and small. They are against far more than they are for. Thus being a good Communist is not good since that means being a demon like Lenin. It’s just not valid existentially no matter how sincere since the thing itself is flawed. In other words, it’s unlike being a Hindu, Buddhist, or a Citizen f some country. Their hatred is real and very precise. Their ideals are very fuzzy and merely economic – as if everything reduces to that. Thus their classless society where the State withers away is a chimaera. Men like Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin never relinquish power – which is their real ideal even if they don’t realize it or can’t admit it even to themselves.
Beautiful.
Now if Mr. Hamilton could do an expose on Critical Theory – the other bugaboo of the Cultural Marxists that even the most convinced New Rightist seldom recognizes or exorcises from himself.
When Theodore Dalrymple characterized political correctness as “communist propaganda writ small,” he may have been using “small” to refer to the minute detail in which political correctness is defined, inculcated, and enforced. It leaves its mark on everything and everyone. Alexis de Tocqueville’s description of “democratic despotism” is quite relevant in this context:
“It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
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