Political Correctness: According to the conspiracist

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In my last post, I promised a kind of part II on my little exploration of the concept of political correctness. According to what I found out in part I, PC seems like a relatively harmless thing. Do not offend people. Avoid calling people names. Do to others as you would have them do to you. And so on. Little did I know about the turn the whole thing would take when I decided to google “history of political correctness.” Apparently, political correctness can be something pretty close to the reincarnation of all evil that has ever existed on earth. Yep, you heard me. Evil. Consider this:

Political correctness (PC) is the third great evil arising from Western civilization in the last century. PC and fascism are both derivatives of Marxism and both have their roots in the 1920s. However, unlike fascism and Marxism, PC is not restricted to a small number of countries, it pervades every country in the developed world right down to the level of the family. In this sense, the spread and acceptance of PC fascism (PC is a form of fascism) means that we are currently experiencing the darkest days of fascism so far experienced in the world. There has never been anything more anti-scientific or unjust in the history of Western culture. (http://pc.martinsewell.com)

Apparently, for some people the whole issue of political correctness goes deeper than mere speech or behaviour. It is no longer a matter of how you formulate your arguments, but rather about politics. Fascism. Marxism. The root of a great evil, set to destruct Western civilization through the spreading of communism and suppression of the individual. And as for the anti-scientific character of PC, I’ll get back to that in a part III when I’m ready for it. Bill Lind gives us some more insight in a highly enlightening article from the year 2000, where he can confirm that political correctness

[...] is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious. (http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/)

What? What does he mean, “disease of ideology?” The west has no ideology? Does this mean that by my utterance about the black midget is actually a positive thing? Or is political correctness something else all together, and what I was fumbling around with earlier is more a matter of “appropriateness”? I am confused. Apparently, there is more to this than what I thought. I mean, according to the lexical definitions of political correctness, a sentence like “I saw a black midget in Ethiopia. It was funny!” is almost as incorrect as you can get.  I thought that, if anything, looking into the whole political correctness things, I would feel even worse for saying stuff like that. Now I am supposed to feel good about it? Huh? Where does all this come from?!

Political correctness grew, according to Lind, out of Germany in the 1920′s, when a rich man turned-marxist needed to waste the money he had inherited from his rich trading father, and invited Georg Lukacs and several other German thinkers in establishing the think-tank that eventually became known as the Institute for Social Research (later the Frankfurt School). ISR was dedicated to, among other things, investigate why communism had stopped spreading. An important reason for this was said to be the strong position of the individual in the west and his rights to voice his opinions. The West was in the way. How could they deal with this situation? Simple!

Change their speech and thought patterns by spreading the idea that vocalising your beliefs is disrespectful to others and must be avoided to make up for past inequities and injustices. Then use this to stifle any discussion which might show up the lack of common sense in their ideology. And call it something that sounds positive: “Political Correctness.” (http://www.politicallyincorrect.me.uk/history.htm)

Okay, so at this point my initial confusion seem to have started to fade. It’s not necessarily about the phrasing, but political correctness is about keeping shut about things that is not established as a truth. According to the Party, that is. You are not supposed to challenge the line of thought set by the ruling elite. So, according to Lind and all the others, the thinkers at the Institute for Social Research worked intensively on translating Marxism from economic into cultural terms, and *snap* political correctness as a political tool for the leftists was created.

… hold on a second. Let me get this straight.

So, let’s try to take this seriously and say that PC is an ideology – an ideology where the Party somehow manipulate people into thinking and acting as if the party line is the only line. Because this is what it is about, is it not? It is just pure coincidence that the party line this time should revolve around egality, communism and equality? Whatever behaviour the Party encourages is the only behavior that should be allowed. This brings at least one question worth asking (I’m not a historian, but I’m fairly confident about the answer to this question):

This kind of “brainwashing” or “censorship” is not something that was invented in the 1920′s, is it? Surely, the desire of controlling people’s thoughts and behavior must be older than that? The Norwegian author Mette Newth can tell us the following in the introduction to an interesting piece on the history of censorship:

Censorship has followed the free expressions of men and women like a shadow throughout history. In ancient societies, for example China, censorship was considered a legitimate instrument for regulating the moral and political life of the population. The origin of the term censor can be traced to the office of censor established in Rome i 443 BC. In Rome, as in the ancient Greek communities, the ideal of good governance included shaping the character of the people. Hence censorship was regarded as an honourable task. In China, the first censorship law was introduced in 300 AD. (http://www.beaconforfreedom.org/liste.html?tid=415&art_id=475).

Apparently, one of the earliest cases of censorship was when Socrates was sentenced to drink poison for corrupting the minds of the youth. That was in 399 B.C. Which is definitely before the 1920′s. What about the the catholic church’s decree from 1543 that said that any book that was to be published needed their permission? The point is that the idea of the individuals right to “free speech” has always been a concern for the ruling elite. Even in the “West” back in the 20′s.

I can’t get away from the paranoia that surrounds these ideas of what political correctness is supposed to be, but at the same time… there is something to it, isn’t it? No? Why, then, would the not-so-simple wikipedia say the following about political correctness:

In current usage, the term is primarily pejorative,[1][2] while the term politically incorrect has been used as an implicitly positive self-description.

If we move away from the idea that PC is something that was developed in the 1920′s, but rather that it is a concept that – regardless of where you are – is based on an idea that a person with a lack of will, knowledge or experience of how to think “outside the box” – could we claim that the reason that political correctness is pejorative has something to do with the increasing focus on and importance of individualism in the West? The critical mind. The knowledgable individual. If you are too afraid of standing up for your own opinions, or too afraid of the consequences of arguing against a set of standards, you are seen as weak? I have absolutely no idea, but there might be something to it. If this line of thought carry with it even a grain of truth, we could end up with a pretty interesting argument:

Political correctness, as the evil ideology presented above, was invented by the “West” in order to create an enemy against which they could mobilize. 

This could possibly be at least a part of the explanation for why most of the results in my google search sent me to these conspiratory paranoid websites, referring to PC as a great evil.

Wouldn’t this also, by the way, make the marxists the ones who’s politically incorrect?

I like where this ended up. Oh yeah, and as for my comment about the midget, I guess that would be better of in the category “rascist” or “inappropriate.” Or just “funny,” depending on who you’re talking to. It still makes me laugh.

Political Correctness: According to the dictionaries

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Alright. It took me about a gazillion months to follow up on my initial post here. Why? It doesn’t matter. I haven’t had the time, and I believe that I even specified that I had no idea how often this thing would be updated. However, lately I’ve been forced to do a bit more writing than in a long time, and I notice that my writing-skills have deteriorated severly over the last few years. Things take a lot more time than it used to do. I have trouble finding the words. I simply haven’t kept my fingers moving as much as I used to. I haven’t kept my brain as busy as much as I should have. I haven’t forced myself to express my thoughts in other ways than random shouting. I have simply been too lazy, and this frustrating sensation of degeneration brought me to the following conclusion: I need to start blogging again. I need to update that bastard domain that I keep paying for. I need to keep my fingers busy. So here we go.

Lately, I’ve been engaged in several conversations about being inappropriate or politically incorrect, normally ending up with acknowledging that I am more often than not held back by a subconscious need to adapt to whatever behaviour is considered appropriate. I regret it every single time. I keep thinking about these situations that had so much potential, but instead of taking it further I end up backing down. For example, I recently found myself in a situation where I was supposed to give a presentation that I originally wanted to call “The big black golden shower” – how often can you use that title, and it would actually make sense? I should have gone with it, if only just for kicks. To soften up an otherwise stiff setting. To see people’s reactions. But I ended up renaming it into something less offensive. Typical. … Well, I guess it could have stirred up some reactions and taken some of the focus away from the content of the presentation, though. When I think of, I am glad I didn’t go with it. But I still regret it. It would have been funny.

However, this thing with political correctness has always fascinated me, and I thought that this could be a chance for me to look a bit into what this thing really is about. I’ve always been referring to stuff as “politically correct” or “politically incorrect,” but never really done any kind of structured “research” on what this term actually means. Was there anything like politically incorrectness back in the medieval ages? What about the 1700′s? Is there any anthropological work out there focusing on “being inappropriate” or “politically incorrect?” What does it imply, being “politically incorrect?” I must admit that I was not really sure where this would lead me, but I had never expected to end up where I actually did. Let me take you to the world of confusion that I ended up in (because of the size of this world, I’m forced to divide it into several continents).

Part 1

According to Wikipedia, political correctness

… means using words or behavior which will not offend any group of people. Most people think it is important for everyone to be treated equally, fairly and with dignity. Some words have been used for a long time that are unkind to some people. Sometimes these words have now been replaced by other words that are not offensive. Such words are described as politically correct. The term is often used in a mocking sense when attempts at avoiding offense are seen to go too far.

A simple definition that makes sense. Note that this is taken from simple.wikipedia.org, and not the not-so-simple one; I have learned that you need the basics before you go further. I will return to the not-so-simple one later. I assume then that political incorrectness would imply to use words or behaviour which is considered as asocial and offensive for some groups of people. So far so good. Let’s take a step further and have a look at what Fowler’s Modern English Usage has to say about political correctness:

[...] in language it is concerned with avoiding or replacing words and uses that cause offence or are seen as discriminating against certain sections of society, e.g. by being racist or sexist or in other ways, and extends to the avoidance of terms that may be regarded even coincidentally as offensive, such as black in black economy and blind (to) meaning ‘unwilling to recognize (a fact)’, and to other words that offend various groups, e.g. deaf people, homosexuals, racial groups, women, and old people. The political correctness movement is also devoted to promoting an alternative terminology that seeks to assert a more positive aspect to negative or undesirable qualities, such as deficiency achievement for failure, differently abled for disabled, non-waged for unemployed, and many compounds formed with -challenged (intellectually challenged, vertically challenged, etc.: see challenged). Although the basic intentions of political correctness have attracted widespread sympathy, its more extreme forms have been met with scorn or even hostility.

Alright, with a few more examples and details, Fowler’s Modern English Usage does not really differ much from Wikipedia. It still seem to be connected to how we express ourselves and behave, not as much with the content of our arguments (to the extent that there is a division between thetwo, that is). However, notice the last sentence; apparently, you can actually be too concerned with not offending people. There is, in other words, a limit to how sensitive we should be in our language and behaviour. Seemingly, this whole political correctness issue is more a matter of how you say something and not what you say.

In one way, I am glad. Being as politically correct as possible at all times is flat out boring and, personally, I need some incorrectness in my life to spice it up a bit. Does the fact that I once told a friend of mine ”I saw a black midget in Ethiopia. It was funny!” imply that I am a racist? Can I claim to be a supporter of political correctness, but still be horrendously inappropriate at times? I believe I can, and if being politically incorrect is about how you formulate yourself, then, sure, I can say outragous things without necessarily being a racist. I think we could say that people who come across as “way to PC,” in this understanding of the term, simply lack a good sense of humour. It’s not coincidence that one of the most popular definition of “Political correctness” in the Urban Dictionary is “death of comedy.”

Am I onto something here, or is this just some silly excuse for living out the secret racist in me?

In the next part (I believe) I will move away from the lexical definition PC and have a closer look at (one) theory of the development of the concept PC. Sounds boring? Well, I’ll tell you what. It’s juicier than you’d think. How can my black midget comment be positive and constructive? Why does the definition of PC as “an institutional brainwashing technique” have almost as many votes as “death of comedy?” I’ll try to make that clearer in the next post on the topic. Still not convinced? Here’s a teaser:

 It is the great disease of our century, the disease that has left tens of millions of people dead in Europe, in Russia, in China, indeed around the world. It is the disease of ideology. PC is not funny. PC is deadly serious.

Can’t get juicier than that, can it?

A new era.

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I have done this so many times, it’s starting to get ridiculous. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve opened, closed, re-opened, re-closed my blog about 11 times since it saw daylight first time back in 2002. Every time with a new idea, every time with a new motivation. I have even jumped between three different languages.

However, despite their differences, each of these lifetimes have two thing in common: They’ve began their venture towards certain death with an elaborate post about their former lives, and how “this time it will be different.” Yes, I can. Engagement, enthusiasm, enjoyment. This post has normally been followed by a number of other post, more or less relevant to the specific focus of that certain era. After a few months (or even weeks), things have gradually become more and more unfocused, misleading and uninteresting. The life force of the blog have gradually faded, and ended in a painfully awkward closure. Sometimes by taking it down all together (like last time), or by leaving its digital corpse open for public viewing. No matter how I have ended up taking its life: It never gets any easier.

It’s no different this time either, in the sense that if will definitely be different. That’s not to say “this time it will not be different” (considering that it has been said to be different earlier, get it?) — this time is for real. I seriously believe it will be different.

So, what’s this all about this time, then? We’ll see. I’m still working on it. I just know that I will need a place to do some public thinking in the future. Keywords: Ghana, oil, anthropology, dancing, fishing, economy, andallthatotherstuff.

Eirik