From: mars1933@hotmail.com   
      
   The Origins of Political Correctness   
   An Accuracy in Academia Address by Bill Lind   
      
   Variations of this speech have been delivered to various AIA   
   conferences including the 2000 Consevative University at American   
   University   
      
   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....   
      
   In 1923 in Germany, a think-tank is established that takes on the role   
   of translating Marxism from economic into cultural terms, that creates   
   Political Correctness as we know it today, and essentially it has   
   created the basis for it by the end of the 1930s. This comes about   
   because the very wealthy young son of a millionaire German trader by   
   the name of Felix Weil has become a Marxist and has lots of money to   
   spend. He is disturbed by the divisions among the Marxists, so he   
   sponsors something called the First Marxist Work Week, where he brings   
   Lukacs and many of the key German thinkers together for a week,   
   working on the differences of Marxism.   
      
   And he says, "What we need is a think-tank." Washington is full of   
   think tanks and we think of them as very modern. In fact they go back   
   quite a ways. He endows an institute, associated with Frankfurt   
   University, established in 1923, that was originally supposed to be   
   known as the Institute for Marxism. But the people behind it decided   
   at the beginning that it was not to their advantage to be openly   
   identified as Marxist. The last thing Political Correctness wants is   
   for people to figure out it's a form of Marxism. So instead they   
   decide to name it the Institute for Social Research.   
      
   Weil is very clear about his goals. In 1971, he wrote to Martin Jay   
   the author of a principle book on the Frankfurt School, as the   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)