Anthony Malcolm Daniels, writing under the nom de plume Theodore Dalrymple, is a retired physician with a varied career in medicine and several dozen books and countless articles to his credit. His single most significant insight is captured by this rather extensive quote from an interview he did in 2005 upon the publication of his book, Our Culture, What’s Left of It.
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.
Dalrymple has proven to be remarkably prescient as the Left has increasingly insisted that everyone loudly and frequently deny the plain facts of biology and human nature. It is no longer sufficient to assent to the Progressives’ lies; one must endorse them enthusiastically or be accused of an ever-growing litany of –ists and –phobics. Many of the lies are so obvious that no one believes them – not even their promulgators. One must conclude that the purpose is as Dalrymple claims: to humiliate and to create a society individuals who are easy to control.
I tagged this as TOTD to mean thought of the decade. It may be the thought of this age.
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