History of Political Correctness Part 2

Part one is here.


The first selection continues John K. Wilson's account of the appearance of Political Correctness, from "The Myth of Political Correctness."

"Although no one is sure when or where politically correct was revived, nearly everyone agrees that it was used sarcastically among leftists to criticize themselves for taking radical doctrines to absurd extremes. Roger Geiger notes that political correctness was "a sarcastic reference to adherence to the party line by American communists in the 1930s." Herbert Kohl "first heard the phrase 'politically correct' in the late 1940s in reference to political debates between socialists and members of the United States Communist Party," where "politically correct" was "being used disparagingly to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion and led to bad politics." Ruth Perry traces PC to the late 1960s and the Black Power movement, perhaps inspired by Mao Tse-tung's frequent reference to "correct" ideas. "Politically correct" was used not by extremists on the left to describe their enemies but by more moderate liberals who objected to the intolerance of some leftists. Perry says that "the phrase politically correct has always been double-edged" and "has long been our own term of self-criticism."

The second selection is from Agustin Blazquez with the collaboration of Jaums Sutton, continuing their history of the term.

"Inspired by the brand new communist technique, Mao, in the 1930s, wrote an article on the "correct" handling of contradictions among the people. "Sensitive training"- sound familiar? - and speech codes were born.

In 1935, after Hitler came to power, the Frankfurt School moved to New York City, where they continued their work by translating Marxism from economic to cultural terms using Sigmund Freud's psychological conditioning mechanisms to get Americans to buy into Political Correctness. In 1941, they moved to California to spread their wings."

These two accounts aren't, strictly speaking, parallel; the second account is still in the 1940's and the first is all the way up to the 70s. And, in other ways, they are not parallel. The Newsmax account focuses strictly, so far, on how the phrase existed in Marxist circles; as of yet he hasn't explained how it moved from a group of German Marxists, filtered through Chairman Mao, and sank into widespread use by the 1980s. Presumably we'll get to that next time. No fair clicking on the link and figuring out how this story ends.