[PEN-L:1914] Re: A history of PC

[Dan Epstein <de@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These are some comments from Noam Chomsky on PC (from _Year 501_,
South End Press, 1993).

The [extent of the ] hysteria about "political correctness" ... is
truly something to behold, including a stream of best-sellers with
anecdotes, many concocted, about alleged horrors in the universities,
angry speeches, and a flood of articles from the news columns to the
sports pages and journals of opinion that gushed forth suddenly, as if
on command; a study of one six-month period found over a mention per
day in the Los Angeles Times.  The outrage has a basis in reality.
There really are a great many people who oppose racist and sexist
oppression, have respect for other cultures, and do not look kindly
upon atrocities in a "good cause," and the abuses that so horrify the
faithful are not entirely fanciful; even the clumsiest propaganda
usually takes off from something real.  But as in the case of official
enemies abroad, the real abuses, whatever they may be, have little
relation to the drama constructed around them.

     The phenomenon did not emerge from nowhere.  One crucial component
of the post-affluence class war has been a far-reaching
takeover of the ideological system by the right, with a proliferation
of right-wing think tanks, a campaign to extend conservative control
still further over ideologically significant sectors of the colleges
and universities, now replete with professorships of free enterprise,
lavishly funded far-rights student journals, and so on; and an array
of other devices to restrict the framework of discussion and thought,
as much as possible, to the reactionary end of the already narrow
spectrum.  Things actually reached such a point that a respected
liberal foreign policy analyst could describe the statist-conservative
New York Times, without irony, as the "establishment left" (Charles
Maynes).  In the political system, "liberal" joined "socialist" as a
scare word; by 1992, the Democratic Party scarcely needed to make a
gesture to popular constituencies it had once professed to represent.
Gore Vidal hardly exaggerates when he describes US politics as a
one-party system with two right wings.  One aspect of the ideological
triumph has been the deeper implantation of Orwellian rhetoric and
standards of Political Correctness to which one must adhere to join
respectable discussion, a number of examples already illustrated.
Departure from these conventions of belief and rhetoric is virtually
unthinkable, in the mainstream. 32

    The next chapter comes as no surprise to students of culture
management.  After a period of intense and one-sided ideological
struggle, in which business interests and the right-wing have won a
remarkable victory in the doctrinal and political institutions, what
could be more natural than a propaganda campaign claiming that it is
left-fascists who have taken the commanding heights and control the
entire culture, imposing their harsh standards everywhere?  The
situation is even more dire than 25 years ago, when calls for
destroying the university "rang across every campus in the United
States, and libraries were burned, and universities wrecked" and "it
was impossible to imagine anything more slimy, sickly and stifling
than the moral climate" in universities where black students were "a
curse" until at last "the pus" was "squeezed out of the university,"
to quote some of the imagery that entrances the British right.33 We
hear heartfelt pleas for succor for the fading remnants who still
resist the relentless left-wing onslaught, courageously upholding the
banner of historical truth and Western culture in some embattled
newspaper or isolated state college in central Idaho.  What could be
better designed to suppress the serious questions about doctrinal
control, or a look at the hand that firmly holds the rod?

    The complaints of those who continue to maintain their iron control
with little challenge are not without their comic aspects.  For every
100 articles berating the left-fascists who control everything, there
might be one responding weakly that the takeover is not so complete as
claimed, and none telling the truth--which is obvious enough, if only
from the distribution of views allowed to surface.  But restricting
thought is a serious manner, and respected figures do not crack a
smile as they march in the parade, bewailing the fact that they may
have lost some comparative literature department (perhaps to a
right-wing "deconstructionist" or liberal "relativist" denounced as
left-fascists).

    To the totalitarian mentality, even the slightest deviation is an
awesome tragedy, and evokes the most impressive frenzy.  And the
spectacle makes a useful contribution to entrenching further the
ideological controls that prevent the rascal multitude from attending
to what is happening around them.