The Origins Of Political Correctness

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. ( Doe's this sound like freedom to you ?)

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.

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