Who Will Stand Up To The PC Extremists?
by Sam White, Quillette:
As free markets ride out multiple global crises, the Conservative government discusses bringing back grammar schools, Ukip maintains it’s position as Britain’s third most popular party, and Labour continue their downward plunge in the opinion polls, you might be forgiven for thinking that the right wing is on a roll.
But that depends on what your definition of right wing is. There’s economic left and right, and in that field we can say that the right is more or less dominant. But it feels now like having conceded defeat in the economic arena, the left has decided to wage war in another area, and is currently crashing forward erratically in the culture wars.
This all began perfectly normally. In an effort to secure an end to discrimination of all kinds, and guarantees of equality and fair treatment, a relatively relaxed, acceptable form of political correctness was formed throughout the 1980s and 90s. However, those initial aims secured, rather than congratulating itself on a job well done, the left decided to push on, and is now making headway down a weird, looking glass path.
Like Marlow in Heart of Darkness, the further it sails down this maddening river, affected by heat, sun and devotion to an inevitable, unknown goal, the less conceivable it becomes to turn back, and it’s becoming clear that nothing good is waiting at the source.
These unhinged leftie sailors are now gripped irretrievably by a kind of hyper-enhanced identity obsession. The correctness of their politics has been buckled and warped, and is now tangibly incorrect and in need of repair. They no longer make sense, to themselves or to anyone else.
The logic in their peculiar model is illogical, and involves punishing people not because they’ve done something wrong, but because they’ve hurt someone’s feelings. The line at which a crime is deemed to have been committed isn’t fixed, it always lies at the precise point at which the accuser’s feelings were hurt. It’s a Kafkaesque distortion of justice, in which being accused of a previously non-existent crime (you’ve hurt my feelings) immediately means that you cannot not have committed the crime (you are guilty of having hurt my feelings, the proof is that my feelings are hurt.) You can’t win this argument, the evidence is invisible and subjective. Arguing your case or demanding a fair trial will, in this twisted court, only deepen your guilt — not only have you committed a crime, but you’re unrepentant: you are now the worst kind of aggressor. And the punishments can be Draconian, as victims and their legitimized lynch mobs demand at the very least public shaming, sometimes the suspension of social media accounts — an essential career tool for many — and in high profile cases that the ‘criminal’ be sacked, even when their fictional misdemeanor is unrelated to their job.
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
