“It’s political correctness gorn mad!” is probably a phrase you would associate more with a gruff, Daily Mail reading, UKIP supporter, than you would with a Guardian reading, quinoa eating, Lib Dem. Political correctness is the stick that progressives get beaten with time and time again by people like Nigel Farage, who like to claim that the left care more about censoring discussion than about common sense politics.
I also get annoyed by people who obsess over what you can and can’t say at the expense of what is actually true, but my argument is that, increasingly in British politics, the right are worse in this regard than the left.
Theresa May’s central argument in the 2017 General Election was that a vote for her was a vote for Britain and that those who opposed her were “talking Britain down.” Supporting the Conservatives and their hard Brexit agenda was almost pitched as a patriotic duty, rather than a matter of political persuasion and opinion.
Elsewhere during the campaign season, Jeremy Corbyn remarked that Britain’s aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East has made terrorist attacks at home more likely, and boy did the Conservatives play the outrage card. A red faced Michael Fallon almost exploded in fury at how hideously offensive Corbyn’s remarks apparently were. Well, I don’t really care if you are offended Michael, because Mr Corbyn was right, and to admit the impact that our foreign policy has on our domestic safety does not in any way condone terrorism.
Alex Nowrasteh wrote an excellent piece in the Washington Post last year about the way right wing political correctness, or “patriotic correctness” as he called it, was taking hold in America. And the hypocrisy in the USA is very clear to see, when you have Donald Trump – the most sensitive human being on earth, and the most eager to stifle free speech and demonise dissenting voices – constantly complaining that America has become too politically correct and sensitive.
The hypocrisy is more subtle in this country, but it still exists, and it’s on the rise. Try arguing against the actions of Israel without one day being branded anti-Semitic. Try arguing against the actions of the British Army, or declining to support the Poppy Appeal in November, without someone calling you a Britain-hating bigot. These are all perfectly legitimate positions to hold that are stifled by the sensitivity police – the political correctness brigade.
So we mustn’t accept the narrative that progressives are the only one’s guilty of this behaviour. We mustn’t allow the right wing media and politicians to pretend they are above it all. And next time a Conservative gasps at your “offensive” opinion, remember to tell them that their outrage is just political correctness gone mad.
* Jon is a political consultant for the public affairs agency Field Consulting, based in London. He joined the Lib Dems after Brexit and wants a People’s Vote.
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14 Comments
How can it be patriotic to allow the communist government of China to have a stake in The National Grid and water companies?
How can it be patriotic for 75% of our passenger rail services to be outsourced to foreign state railways?
How can it be patriotic to allow an Australian press baron who changed his nationality to American for business purposes own major media and accuse people of being unpatriotic in his rags?
How can it be patriotic to side with the reprehensible Saudi monarchy, to the point where we show them deference on one knee and redact anything critical of them?
How can it be patriotic to cut our armed forces by 20,000 posts, shaft our ex servicemen, privatise Army recruitment to the vile Crapita, privatise Royal Mint security to the vile G4S and privatise search and rescue to a US company?
The Tories have no right to play the patriot card whatsoever.
Yes and no…the poppy appeal supports veterans, even a pacifist could and should.. to not deliberately as a protest at goodness knows what , is not my idea of a stance I like.
And anybody can make a reasoned and reasonable , strong and staunch criticism of Israel, the problem today is people on the far left go much further, they only single out Israel, in a completely skewed way, not recognising it is with all it does very wrong under certain governments, the only place where Arabs and Muslims , outside the West, can exercise their democratic rights if an Israeli citizen, as well as LGBT ones too.
The balance of the article is not quite right , yes the right are a joke, but the left are often also.
It is why this party is in the radical and moderate centre and centre left.
I agree with some of this. However, I would suggest that it’s the inherent flaw with an emphasis on identity politics, giving causes special status and notions of victimisation based around generalisations. . These sorts of arguments are incredibly adaptable. What is Right Wing and What is Left Wing? Do right wingers argue that the war on terror was a success or is sensible? Not Peter Hitchings, not Max Hastings, not quite a few Republican senators. Was Tony Blair, left wing or right wing? What is a valid identity and so on. It’s trikes me that Left and Right easily become arguments about the moral status of various special interest groups and causes when you remove economics and differing approaches to the role of social structures from the mix.
Well, the Conservatives had taken for granted the values of patriotism which they have never represented. In the past, they protected monarchies and opposed liberal nationalism. Now, they allow foreign SOEs to acquire stakes in our strategic firms freely.
Oh they are so patriotic that they totally ignore the report which emphasize the link between British Muslim extremism and Saudi Arabia.
Jon
I think you have mis-attributed a line of argument:
“Talking Britain down”
Was a Harman/Brown line.
The Tory equivalent is “underming Britain’s negotiating position”
“Try arguing against the actions of Israel without one day being branded anti-Semitic”
I have never had a problem with expressing dislike of the actions of the Israeli government without being accused of anti-semitism. But there is a great deal of anti-semitism expressed when people are criticising of the Israeli government.
These arguments are old. Parts of the Right wing of American’s (as well as elsewhere) have always called the opposition unpatriotic, parts of the Left as been no platforming since at least the 1960s. To me the bigger issue is that rather too much of the mainstream Left has brought into the “positive” ” forces of corporatism, franchising public services, neo-colonial war mongering, low taxation, the destruction of trade unionism and such as like to the point that Left and Right are meaningless fights about identity. Trump is bad because he says uncouth things, but Clinton is good because she is more socially nuanced. Of course they’re both quite happy to sanction bombings and cuts to services, both also somewhat iffy businesswise. Look at the willingness of papers like the Guardian to still present Tony Blair as the voice of the “centre” as if wars, money grabbing self interest and self aggrandisement are minor issues in an otherwise noble career! Or to present the useless mean spirited flim flam merchant George ” austerity emergency budget” Osborne as the acceptable face of the Conservative party. But hey guys, it’s really all just a battle between who has the most safe spaces and who is the real special snow flake, coz of course disagreeing about anything more substantial may undermine institutions and is possibly some form of left-wing populism. To me that’s the real problem.
Political correctness has a very broad meaning to begin with, but there is a point about language that it often missed by those railing against the prevailing trends.
Languages change. The meanings of words change, as does their level of acceptance, and indeed the specific situations in which their use is acceptable. It is that change that many rail against, irrespective of their underlying political beliefs.
The case of Anne Marie Morris is a classic example for me. A former teacher colleague of mine argued the use of the N word was fine because the phrase she used it in has a “history” of meaning something else (and we were all too easily offended too). Well s**t still means faeces, and has for quite some time, but no teacher allows it to be used unchallenged by students in a classroom. That’s because, at some point, it became unacceptable.
Another example. On a local politics group I was referred to as a Libt***. When I called the user of the term out on it, both he and a left wing activist sought to justify it based on a) the originating word’s history and b) the fact that it is used commonly in the US. Neither of these things changed the fact that the root word is now regarded as unacceptable (there’s even advice on .gov.uk about not using it). We shouldn’t need to denigrate the vulnerable to make a point.
Final example. As a kid I remember being told “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain” when I said something like “Jesus!” or “Christ!” (you’ll note the lack of *** here). That doesn’t happen very often to people anymore, to my knowledge. The language, or the number of people enforcing the rule at least, has changed. Yet, I expect, there were plenty of people who happily enforced that very rule, whilst railing against other, newer ones (such as not using the N word, or the P word).
Language is a powerful tool. It’s use reflects our thought processes as individuals, but also as a society. Many of those who rail against so called political correctness will use the excuse that a phrase doesn’t mean anything (or means something different), and that people are too easily offended. They are only half right. People are often too easily offended. But there are some words and phrases that inherently perpetuate discrimination. Tackling the use of such words and phrases is important, isn’t “mad” (casual bit of mental health discrimination there), and needn’t stifle genuine debate.
It’s is not what you say but how you say it that is just as important in expressing views. What others hear is not necessarily what the speaker intended. The left is full of passionate people but I sometimes wonder if they spend too long with core supporters who already share views such that they become sensitive to how they come across to a wider audience while the right can be more acute to thinking about the delivery of the message as well as the underlying content of the message itself.
Some may argue that polishing the form of the message is duplicitous and ultimately makes the public cross with politicians. Moreover there are some pretty good examples of the right just saying anything at the moment although someone like Rees Mogg is a natural at polishing more extreme views for public consumption – on the hoof if needs be. The trick is to polish the delivery so detractors cannot drive a wedge into it and make the story about the wedge.
The right have been far better at getting the public to accept and adopt some of their political correctness.
Gary.
The problem is that when you change the language the insult only changes it’s form as well. The ideas do not go away. You can find people using terms like cultural enrichment, minorities and diversity as insults. Lots of insults we use now were previously perfectly acceptable medical terms. Moron, idiot and so on being examples. This is because they fell out of use formally. Eventually the same will be true of current terms to the point where the lib…. insults will probably not be seen as denigrating anyone except liberals. People even fling the word racist around informally as in things “like that’s racist against potatoes” or something. The point is that insults develop new mutations alongside the attempts to instil a less loaded language.
the other point about political correctness is that originally mostly used ironically by leftists to describe people who obsessed over terminology rather than substance. It would be used to describe those meetings where the introductions grew longer than the debate because there would be endless arguments about which groups were being excluded or felt they were not being given enough respect for their position or felt the language was off. Think of the political meeting in Life of Brian and that’s what Political Correctness was really describing.
Glenn
“Trump is bad because he says uncouth things”
That sums up a lot of problems with current political discussion today. So many times people are criticised for basically being uncouth. It is odd that the distain for this has always been there in the media but in the past the attacks from politicians would have looked like snobbish right wing attacks, now they are sneering left wing attacks. So many of those who are attacked for stylistic reasons have glaring weaknesses in areas that are left untouched, because hyperbolic attacks on how uncouth they are appeals more.
Followed by claims those who point this out are “supporting” or “defending” those with whom they disagree.
Gary Fuller
“there is a point about language that it often missed by those railing against the prevailing trends.”
Unfortunately this is both a strength and weakness of the way the English language works.
The evolutionary nature in some circumstances allows words to be used to better describe something to help clarify and aid communication and understanding.
However this also leaves the language open to linguistic activism where people engage in persuasive redefinition where they start to stretch the definition (or reinvent it completely) to describe someone or some action with an enlarged or extended definition because they know the word will carry some emotional weight with the majority of the less interested audience. Over time this just erodes the meaning of words, makes communication more difficult between people so we all lose.
There are many descriptions of people that 20 years ago I would have taken seriously if I heard someone had been described as that as people had a clear meaning (not that they were always appropriately applied), now I don’t consider them to be any more serious than “poo poo head” as they are thrown around so much by certain quarters, with little to support them.
The important thing in my view is to set remarks in context. We should be free to express ourselves clearly without fearing that our words will be used inappropriately. Political correctness can be taken too far and when used to show your own take and even a personality is a barrier to a vibrant democracy.