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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPaul Krugman- The New Political Correctness (Newspeak)
Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.
Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which unlike the liberal version has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.
Thus, even talking about the wealthy brings angry denunciations; were supposed to call them job creators. Even talking about inequality is class warfare.
And then theres the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about immigration and ethnicity or environmental history becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, hell name his new course US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans. That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.
more
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/the-new-political-correctness/
napoleon_in_rags
(3,991 posts)He came to Seattle a couple days ago, and the venue was sold out instantly...Or at least by the time I heard of it. People can't get enough...Its holistic observations of the whole culture, like this, with the solid academic grounding I think. But I love it too.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)I mean as a conscience effort to offend Nazis ,members of the KKK , misogynist , homophobic idiots . Making it palpably digestible for all is nullifying it's meaning ,to make a clear informative statement identifying the speakers mind, it's impossible not to offend someone ,besides the intended offended ,Thats honesty.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)nxylas
(6,440 posts)They brought a lot of Soviet-era baggage with them when they entered the Republican fold.
tcaudilllg
(1,553 posts)How many speech-death-by-jurists are gonna turn radical RW later?
What does that even mean?
nxylas
(6,440 posts)When they moved from the authoritarian left to the authoritarian right, they brought baggage with them, including seeing those who disagreed with them as enemies to be destroyed rather than opponents to be debated, and a desire to remake the language in their own image (which is what Krugman was writing about in the OP).
Response to nxylas (Reply #57)
agent46 This message was self-deleted by its author.
Baitball Blogger
(46,700 posts)ladjf
(17,320 posts)FarCenter
(19,429 posts)kardonb
(777 posts)A competition means that both teams have a chance to win . Class war fare , in this case , has one team heavily loaded (with money bags ).
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)Quantess
(27,630 posts)...okay...
hedda_foil
(16,372 posts)It does feel very much like they're working very hard to erase whole categories of words/ideas from our vocabularies. Words that cannot be said fade from use or radically change their meaning, leaving it almost impossible to define our inchoate feelings of loss. As long as the internet remains free and open, this can't happen,unless the thought police start trolling the net for "incorrect" usage ... and we accept it.
RC
(25,592 posts)I see no difference between them.
zbdent
(35,392 posts)was that it was "politically incorrect" to say anything even moderately not-glowing about George W. Bush ... all in the name of "not putting our troops in danger" or being told that, if you said something not quite flattering, "you hate America".
Biggest offenders using this new "political correctness" was all the "liberally-biased" pundits in the "liberally-biased media".
Fortunately (for Republicans), the "l.b.m." rediscovered that this form of being "politically correct" was not good journalism, and they let damn near everyone take their jabs at a Democratic President.
fruitsmoothie45
(22 posts)that Bush was a terrible president and Obama is a good one. It's not "politically correct" to make fun of a moron.
zbdent
(35,392 posts)and, when you're trying to prop up someone as far more intelligent than he must really be, then it's hard not to ridicule that someone ...
IDemo
(16,926 posts)From a commenter at the below link: "it was written as a sulk toward Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and it shows."
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/172803.A_Patriot_s_History_of_the_United_States
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)How many conservatives does it take to unscrew a light bulb?
And their side bitches at labor for 'padding the payroll', on job sites.
tclambert
(11,085 posts)If you want it unscrewed, ya gotta put the Democrats in.
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)DLevine
(1,788 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)Hate radio has a bunch of student terrorists who hope to get on Fox "News" by reporting any teachers who contradict the World According To Limpballs
liberalhistorian
(20,816 posts)in the 80's, and as the daughter of a now-retired history teacher, I have to say that history (and social studies/social science as well) has ALWAYS been under some form of attack in some way or another. It's a never-ending vigil. Some eras are worse with that than others, though, and we are, unfortunately, in one of them.
starroute
(12,977 posts)Reading both Krugman and the piece on the teaching of American history that he links to, it struck me that what the right is really unhappy about is the notion of presenting American history as the story of its minorities and their struggles.
But there are good reasons for doing that.
When I was in high school, the version of American history that we got had to do with the rise of democracy and the battle against totalitarianism, immigrants and the melting pot, and the gradual expansion of democratic rights to women and minorities. And as late as 1961-62, when I took 11th grade American history, that narrative seemed to account for everything, right up through the latest headlines.
But then the world changed and changed again, and this particular narrative became increasingly less useful for understanding what was going on *right now* -- whether your "right now" was the 1970s, the 1980s, or the 1990s.
That is why serious historians, for whom history is about explaining the past in a way that makes it possible to understand the present and build towards the future, had to change their focus. In particular, the "E pluribus unum" story about a motley collection of new arrivals being melted down and fused into a single people with a broadly shared set of social, political, and religious norms became obviously false.
Instead, it became apparent that Americans have never been a single people, that the persistent differences and conflicts among us are where you have to look for an understanding of events, and also that one particular minority group -- affluent, white, Christian men -- has always held a privileged position with respect to everyone else.
Basically, that's where we are now, and oddly enough, both the left and the right have bought into this new narrative. The only difference is that the left wants to concentrate on it and attempt to resolve the issues it raises, while the right wants to insist that the history of America *is* the history of the growing power of that one small privileged group and exclude everyone else on the grounds that examining things from any minority's point of view is negative and divisive.
One might almost conclude that the right has a deliberate objective of forcing the majority of Americans to hate America. But that would be giving insufficient credit to their stupidity and narcissism.
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)The history of their privileged position vs. the 99% is full of negative and divisive attacks on us, right up to their current attack on history itself. They attack us and history, by claiming we attack them and history. Their past attacks gave them the power to launch this attack -- a claim that past attacks never happened. And they're so mad and hurt about it all.
This is beyond GOP 'projection'. It's double-think with a memory hole built in after they succeed. Like those repug voting machine hacks that erase themselves after task completion.
chervilant
(8,267 posts)in college was a life-altering experience. Then, in grad school, I read LaFeber's The American Age. These two experiences helped me understand that our children are getting a highly sanitized, propagandist, 'patriotic' pap that fosters anti-intellectualism (don't DARE contradict the pap!) and the fear-driven neo-conservatism threatening our species.
You might want to review Bernays' role in developing advertising propaganda. Bernays used "engineering of consent" to describe his ideas for controlling the Hoi Polloi. (BTW, Bernays was Sigmund Freud's nephew.)
starroute
(12,977 posts)I don't know what the textbook was that we used in 11th grade, but it had quite a bit on the many U.S. invasions of Latin American countries and other discreditable episodes in our nation's past. But the problem was that it was all presented as *past* -- as something from the bad old days of gunboat diplomacy -- and was slotted into a general story-line where things were getting better all the time and we would never do that sort of thing again.
Only we did, of course -- but not till around 1965 or so. That was when the real disillusionment set in. And as a result of Vietnam, the dominant narrative had to be reworked to say that it was okay for the U.S. to intervene because we were *us* and they were commies, or failed states, or sponsoring terrorism, or whatever.
LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)was Maggie Thatcher calling the poll tax that she was trying to introduce (and which proved her downfall) 'the community charge'. As someone pointed out, that sounded like something that an angry herd of elephants might do.
More recently:
'Welfare/benefit dependency' = unemployment.
'Culture of dependency' = too many people being poor.
'Weaning people from benefit dependency' = cutting their benefits.
'Trapped on benefits' = poor.
'Compassionate conservative' = right-winger who claims that it's really good for poor or otherwise disadvantaged people to be stomped on.
'Scroungers' = unemployed and especially sick or disabled people.
'Workshy' (see 'scroungers')
'Welfare reform' = cuts.
'Increasing patient choice' = preparing to sell the NHS to the highest bidders.
'Increasing parent choice' = turning schools into businesses
'School business manager' = person, sometimes without teaching experience, placed in charge of helping to turn a school into a business.
Gregorian
(23,867 posts)They're bullies, which means they are weak. By pulling away the cloak that they veil their cheating with, we can get the less aware in our societies to see the truth.
Something like that. I'm still reeling from my afternoon bike ride.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)list could be made here, just slightly different terms in use.
kitt6
(516 posts)in the meeting of Citizens United?
Mc Mike
(9,114 posts)The link:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Citizens_United
We won't be getting the meeting minutes of the zillionaire nazis who donate to the 501(c)(4) status organization, though.
limpyhobbler
(8,244 posts)Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)There's no way I'm going to go along with somebody else framing the argument for me, and dictating re-definitions of words is part of that. When that happens, there's going to be an argument before the argument.
And when that fails, the argument is over, and there's another form of making a point.
Letting somebody else frame the argument is an automatic "lose" and a waste of time. So if these journalists and academics are that whipped around, they need to buy a clue from someone who has one.
Good piece by Krugman, on-point as always.
certainot
(9,090 posts)fooled the country into going along with the liberals-are-PC-cops myth in the first place.
about time someone like krugman noticed. the left and dems in general need to recognize the importance of talk radio and do something about it, this year especially.
certainot
(9,090 posts)reasonable refutations of sensible arguments for progress." Barry Crimmins
that's what talk radio has been doing so well the last 20 years while the left was listening to music, making hypocrisy and racism and sexism and anti science and education acceptable through unchallenged repetition, intimidating local meteorologists who would dare to utter the words "global warming", creating alternate realities in which canadians are streaming across the border for better health care, etc.
JHB
(37,158 posts)...for the Right to dismiss the notion that Liberals and Leftists have reasons for holding the views and promoting the policies they do.
In their view:
"On orders from Moscow" = agents of a foreign power and their dupes
"political correctness" = under the spell of a weird ideological cloud with little connection to practical reality
GeorgeGist
(25,319 posts)ignorance is bliss.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)And now thats happening in America.
Not recent, this started oh about fifteen years ago. It has to do with media concentration and who owns it. No, Harry Potter would not see the light of day in the US, and Heinlein's today would not be published either.
But some of what is published is exactly that. Thanks Paul for noticing.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)in 2007.
Media concentration did not make Harry Potter unpublishable, and I doubt it would make Heinlein unpublishable either. Neither threaten the status quo in any way.
zeemike
(18,998 posts)In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
You really need to read the whole thing...it is very technical but interesting to see that he got it even back then when we were far from where we are today...It seems to me that the right wing used his work as a play book for today's new speak.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)jmondine
(1,649 posts)... of course, I always precede it with the words, "Third World Sweatshop".
ck4829
(35,058 posts)ballaratocker
(126 posts)Last edited Tue May 29, 2012, 12:06 AM - Edit history (1)
Political correctness is a means of making language more inclusive i.e. instead of using chairman, we would use chairperson. When P.C. language was first promoted, many right wingers percieved this as an attack on their ability to denigrate segments of society they didn't like. People who were too stubborn and/or lazy to make an effort to use this way of speaking viewed it as an affront to their right of free speech (despite no law being made which forced them to use it). The former group saw an opportunity and therefore used the term 'political correctness' to vilify any line of progressive thought and dragged the latter group with them (who were too ignorant to realize that PC shouldn't be partisan or aligned with policy that aimed to change the structure of society). This has bought us to the current point where 'political correctness' is like a rabid totalitarian Soviet bear threatening the very fabric of Western civilization.
Putting ones hands over one's ears and saying it is offensive to label any thing or anyone in a certain manner is intellectually immature full stop, regardless of it coming from the left or the right. That is the crux of the matter. It has nothing to do with left wing/right wing political correctness. Let's scrap the nonsense P.C. label and call it for what it really is.
Freedom of speech is a two way road. Freedom of expression is also coupled with right of response. If your ideas are so weak that they crumble after the slightest questioning or labelling, they probably aren't worth a pinch of salt anyway. Screaming black and blue that the other party is being 'offensive' tells me that you aren't comfortable with your own ideas in the first place. And using the argument that you are being oppressed by 'political correctness' falls right into that category.
jade3000
(238 posts)Actually, it's always been politically correct to side with the oppressor, not the oppressed. The idea that liberal ideas were PC was always BS.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)in practice.
jade3000
(238 posts)I'll agree, liberals don't always side with oppressed. I think so-called PC language was/is often intended as protection for oppressed groups, but that wasn't/isn't always the case either.
To me, it makes sense to be conscientiousness about what we say but not to legislate restrictions or punishment for it.
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)They're winning the war on words, and considering their vocabulary, that's a problem.
LeftishBrit
(41,205 posts)The Centre for Social Justice is a predominantly right-wing think-tank founded by the disgusting character, current Welfare Secretary (and co-author of an article with Santorum), Iain Duncan-Smith.
http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/
Even they had the sense to oppose Cameron's planned cap on charitable donations, but mostly it's 'let's fight poverty by treating it as a moral failing',
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)That is the first I've heard of the right usurping the phrase rather than attacking it. Both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh have taken issue, which is the context I was thinking.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/glenn-beck-social-justice-christians-rage-back-nazism/story?id=10085008
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003120040