Political correctness as a means of subversion

An observation from the essayist Theodore Dalrymple from Our Culture, What’s Left Of It, interview of Theodore Dalrymple by Jamie Glazov

Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

I suspect that the path for political correctness was smoothed by Saul Alinsky's rules three, four, thirteen in his Rules for Radicals.

1. "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources – money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood.

2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

3. "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones.

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news.

8. "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist.

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition." It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.

11. "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog.

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem.

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

Those defending western civilization are so easily caught out by the rules for radicals. Their plain statement is shown to have an exception (Rule 3); they are shown not to live completely true to their own beliefs (Rule 4); they are attacked as individuals rather than as ambassadors of ideas (Rule 13).

You combine Rules for Radicals with the Marxist precepts embedded in postmodernism, deconstructionism, intersectionality, multiculturalism, and critical theory and you have the perfect weapon for shutting down free exchange of ideas and the means to coercively impose a belief system which no one believes and yet everyone becomes afraid to challenge. The narrative of the individual is displaced by the fictional narrative of the group. Since the fictional narrative of the group is necessarily a lie, you have now forced all participants in the conversation into an on-going fiction which they know to be untrue. But once in that quicksand, it is incredibly difficult to extricate oneself and return to the truths of individuals pursuing their own happiness.