The term ‘political correctness’ originated as ironic self-mockery amongst the old Left in the 1970s during its post-Stalinist evolution away from its deference to neo-Stalinist Moscow, the geographical and ideological centre for the dissemination of a ’politically correct’ line as dictated by top Russian party authorities. This mocking of ‘political correctness’ was democratic and liberating for the de-Stalinising Left.
With an identitarian Left in contemporary ascendancy, however, ‘political correctness’ now refers to what can and can not be said in relation to identity issues, and which thoughts must be policed by the guardians of multicultural proprieties, including the suppression of freedom of speech and the right to political assembly. Politically correctness is fundamentally anti-democratic and illiberal.
Political Correctness is a minority liberal obsession. According to Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarised Landscape, 80% of Americans agree with the statement ‘political correctness is a problem in our country’. This is true not just for white Americans (79% of whom agree that political correctness is a problem) but is true for Black Americans (75%), Asians (82%), Hispanics (87%) and Native Americans (88%) – even the supposed beneficiaries of political correctness, those fragile personages averse to discussion think it has gone too far. The young (74% of those aged 24-29, and 79% of those under age 24), too, have grown weary of political correctness despite being the age cohort considered to be most zealous in enforcing political correctness. [In Australia, 77% of people think that political correctness is a problem].
Only the noisily vocal ‘progressive activists’ (around just 8% of the total population, according to Hidden Tribes) do not have a problem with political correctness, with 70% of this activist group enthusiastically backing it. They like to display their ‘wokeness’ i.e. their heightened sensitivity to linguistic racial and gender offense and, by so doing, displaying their moral and political superiority to the non-PC.
Free speech is on the defensive Whilst two thirds of Americans of all ages, according to a 2015 Pew poll of 38 countries, agree that people should be able to say ‘offensive’ things about minority groups publicly, only 35% of people in all countries surveyed favoured free speech rights over ‘offense’. It is the most fervent of identity politics adherents who are leading the charge against free speech. The Pew survey found that 40% of American Millennials (who make up a large proportion of the ‘progressive activists’) believe that the government should restrict speech that the Millennials/’progressive activists’ regarded as offensive to minorities. By contrast, only 24% of Baby Boomers were in favour of government censorship of perceived offensiveness to minorities.
The most fertile petri-dish for the sprouting of modern political correctness is the contemporary campus Left, where the indignant worshippers at the altar of ‘Diversity’ demand ‘trigger warnings’ and ‘Safe Spaces’, organise around banning ‘micro-aggressions’ and ‘cultural appropriation’, aggressively ‘no-platform’ a blacklist of speakers whose ideas they disagree with. Their preference is to shut down rather than engage in debate and discussion and an abrogation of what higher education should be about – the free-ranging engagement with ideas and bold exploration of intellectual horizons.
Political correctness, on and off campus, is at its most hostile to free speech on the taboo issues of race, Islam and immigration, those highly pertinent political issues which are begging for honest and open public debate. The politically correct stiflers of debate, however, close down debate via social media shaming or ‘hate speech’ laws. ‘Hate speech’ laws legally codify the assault on free speech - in London over the past five years, for example, two and half thousand people have been arrested for posting messages on social media which have been deemed by the permanently outraged to be culturally insensitive or offensive, whilst the law, as directed by their multiculturalist political masters, has obligingly stepped in to punish people for what they think.
Freedom of speech is absolute: it means freedom for all, especially those we disagree with, to speak their minds. It also recognises that words are merely words and can be countered by better words, not bans. It maintains that beliefs and values should be always open to challenge and re-evaluation on the basis of argument and debate – opinions that never change amounts to dogma.
The fundamental right to free speech is a cause to which the Left once dedicated itself, in no small part because they were on the receiving end of state and religious censorship but with the Left’s abandonment of class-based socialist politics in favour of identity politics, free speech has become a casualty.