From: lord-ex@chop.com   
      
   The Origins of Political Correctness   
      
   An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind   
      
      Where does all this stuff that you've heard about this morning - the   
   victim feminism, the gay rights movement, the invented statistics, the   
   rewritten history, the lies, the demands, all the rest of it - where   
   does it come from? For the first time in our history, Americans have to   
   be fearful of what they say, of what they write, and of what they think.   
   They have to be afraid of using the wrong word, a word denounced as   
   offensive or insensitive, or racist, sexist, or homophobic.   
      
      We have seen other countries, particularly in this century, where   
   this has been the case. And we have always regarded them with a mixture   
   of pity, and to be truthful, some amusement, because it has struck us as   
   so strange that people would allow a situation to develop where they   
   would be afraid of what words they used. But we now have this situation   
   in this country. We have it primarily on college campuses, but it is   
   spreading throughout the whole society. Were does it come from? What is it?   
      
      We call it "Political Correctness." The name originated as something   
   of a joke, literally in a comic strip, and we tend still to think of it   
   as only half-serious. In fact, it's deadly serious. 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.   
      
      If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we   
   quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural   
   Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It   
   is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the   
   peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets   
   of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very   
   obvious.   
      
      First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian   
   nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on   
   college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered   
   North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any   
   of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights   
   activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other   
   sainted "victims" groups that PC revolves around, quickly find   
   themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the   
   college, they face formal charges - some star-chamber proceeding - and   
   punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political   
   Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.   
      
      Indeed, all ideologies are totalitarian because the essence of an   
   ideology (I would note that conservatism correctly understood is not an   
   ideology) is to take some philosophy and say on the basis of this   
   philosophy certain things must be true - such as the whole of the   
   history of our culture is the history of the oppression of women. Since   
   reality contradicts that, reality must be forbidden. It must become   
   forbidden to acknowledge the reality of our history. People must be   
   forced to live a lie, and since people are naturally reluctant to live a   
   lie, they naturally use their ears and eyes to look out and say, "Wait a   
   minute. This isn't true. I can see it isn't true," the power of the   
   state must be put behind the demand to live a lie. That is why ideology   
   invariably creates a totalitarian state.   
      
      Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic   
   Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism   
   says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of   
   production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all   
   history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of   
   race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else   
   matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past   
   is about that one thing.   
      
      Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e.   
   workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the   
   bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of   
   Political Correctness certain groups are good - feminist women, (only   
   feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks,   
   Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be "victims," and   
   therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do.   
   Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby   
   becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.   
      
      Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation.   
   When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like   
   Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their   
   property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university   
   campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When   
   a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a   
   college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn't as well qualified, the   
   white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our   
   whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies   
   don't get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company   
   owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool   
   for both forms of Marxism.   
      
      And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives   
   the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it's Marxist   
   economics. For the cultural Marxist, it's deconstruction. Deconstruction   
   essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts   
   any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is   
   about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and   
   gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which   
   proves that "all history is about which groups have power over which   
   other groups." So the parallels are very evident between the classical   
   Marxism that we're familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the   
   cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.   
      
      But the parallels are not accidents. The parallels did not come from   
   nothing. The fact of the matter is that Political Correctness has a   
   history, a history that is much longer than many people are aware of   
   outside a small group of academics who have studied this. And the   
   history goes back, as I said, to World War I, as do so many of the   
   pathologies that are today bringing our society, and indeed our culture,   
   down.   
      
      Marxist theory said that when the general European war came (as it   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)