How The Rise Of Political Correctness, So Hostile To Philosophical Correctness, Led To The Mood That Brought Us The “Miniature Nuclear Attack In London”:
Nearly ten years after, a British judge, Sir Robert Owen, looking as grave, serious, gloomy and ponderous as a human being can ever be, formally accused Vladimir Putin to have ‘probably’ ordered what a British Parliamentary committee called “a miniature nuclear attack in London”.
Meanwhile the second largest lake in Bolivia, lake Pupo, is fully dry. This has to do with the fact, announced simultaneously by the highest scientific authorities in the USA and the European Union, that 2015 was, BY FAR, much warmer than 2014, previously the warmest year ever.
How did we get there? Political Correctness has a lot to do with it. Political Correctness was always the Trojan Horse of evil. Plutocracy cannot do without Political Correctness. PC is a notion which implies its own demise. In contrast to its opposite, PhC, Philosophical Correctness.
Putin At Work. Putin Loves the Fresh Bellies Of Boys. And Dead Rivals. Alexander Litvinenko Dying From Nuclear Poisoning In London.
What is Political Correctness? The history of the term is revealing. “PC” in Latin derived grammar is for “Parti Communiste”. It is indeed how the term “Political Correctness” started, in the first half of the Twentieth Century: as “Party Correctness”. The Communist Party required to toe the “Party” line. And that meant, in practice, to obey Stalin (not his real name), the “Man of Steel”, who was often allied with evil preaching the exact opposite of real communism, for all to see. Stalin was born from an alliance with German fascists for decades, culminating in an official military alliance with Hitler against France and Poland (August 1939). In the 1950s, the Moscow “Communists” allied themselves, for all to see, with president Eisenhower and Nazi collaborator Allan Dulles’ USA against France, Britain and Israel.
Following the Communist Party’s doctrine thus became an exercise in Intellectual Fascism in its purest form: follow the Leader, not matter what. Intellectual Fascism uses the principle of “Pensée unique“. An example is Margaret Thatcher’s slogan “There is no alternative”, parroted later by German Kanzler Gerhard Schröder’s “Es gibt keine Alternative”.
In recent usage, the term was introduced in the USA by the Supreme Court, and came to the fore with debates on books such as Allan Bloom‘s The Closing of the American Mind (1987), Roger Kimball’s Tenured Radicals (1990), and Dinesh D’Souza’s book Illiberal Education (1991). None of this sharp criticism stopped the Political Correctness movement. It has blossomed further recently with “Safe-spacers”, a new sort of anti-intellectual critters infesting Anglo-Saxon campuses.
“Safe-spacers” believe they need space free from all and any debate adverse to their beliefs.
I have myself advocated that some forms of propaganda should be unlawful. The archetype is the Wahhabist propaganda from Saudi Arabia, which has perverted the practice of Islam, worldwide. Instead of having ever more modern Islam (which used to exist), we got a completely enraged, horrendously obsolete Islam… Which goes hand in hand with the Politically Correct mood.
In both cases, radical Islam and radical Political Correctness, youth has been oriented towards frantically loud protests about completely unreal, if not surreal issues, turning into completely useless protests of no bearing whatsoever. And not just youth: watch the British Parliament debate about banning Trump for banning some (Muslim) visitors, although that is not as outrageous as Britain’s proposed banning of other Europeans. Trump’s proposed ban is perfectly legal, what Britain proposes is perfectly illegal (in light of European law).
Compare today’s youth with that of the 1960s. Then youth was protesting stridently to force the governments in the West to do the exact opposite of what they were doing. Be in France, Czechoslovakia, the USA, etc. Where is youth now? With few exceptions, nowhere, youth is too busy with inconsequential matters. (When Bush decided to attack, invade and occupy Iraq, only San Francisco erupted seriously in the USA: there were 5,000 arrests, all discreetly amnestied later, to criminal Bush’s rage.)
Vladimir Putin apparently ordered the murder of Alexander Litvinenko after the latter claimed the Russian President was a practising paedophile, and claiming a film of him abusing young boys existed. Litvinenko had made many shocking allegations against Putin and the nasty ways of the FSB, many with long tendrils all over the West. In short, the holocaust in Chechnya was organized in Moscow (with real Muslim Fundamentalist attacks in Russia, organized by the FSB, to feed the mood for a mighty counter-attack).
Mr Litvinenko accused his KGB rival of abusing children just weeks before two assassins slipped radioactive polonium 210 into his cup of tea in a London hotel in October 2006: “He (Putin) was a paedophile”.
Former High Court Judge Robert Owen started the inquiry on Litvinenko’s assassination as a coroner. His 320 page report ignited a war of words between Britain and Russia with his conclusion President Putin had ‘probably’ personally ordered the killing of Alexander Litvinenko.
- The report found Mr Litvinenko was deliberately poisoned by Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun. (One is a businessman, the other a Russian MP.)
- It is a strong probability that Mr Lugovoi poisoned Mr Litvinenko under the direction of Moscow’s FSB intelligence service. Mr Kovtun was also acting under FSB direction.
- The FSB operation to kill Mr Litvinenko was probably approved by then-FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev and also by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The accusations were confirmed by the British Interior Minister.
Putin made his miniature nuclear attack in London in 2007, after years of G. W. Bush’s strong approval (Bush had “looked into Putin’s eyes, and seen his soul”). Both Putin and Bush used similar methods.
So the lack of protest against G. W. Bush in the West fed a mood which led Mr. Putin to believe he could get away with anything.
The rise of plutocracy in the 1990s, in the USA, Russia, Britain and the world was related. And related to the rise of Bush and Putin. Advisers to Russian president Yeltsin were rabid free marketers from Harvard. At the same time, the same mood that the allegedly free market was all the brain, mind, soul and guide we needed, affected other countries: in France, Prime Minister Balladur was privatizing along the same lines as Yeltsin in Russia (with the same result: collapse).
This friendliness to plutocracy boosted the wealth of London (maybe not Londoners). by selling its soul, and, it turned out, its security.
Political Correctness is anti-ethical, because the only correctness which is truly human, is correctness itself. Either things are true, or they are false, or still undetermined. Philosophical Correctness admits this, and, thus, that the world, including morality itself, is immensely complex. We have to engage that complexity by seriating problems and values. We can’t just whine, put our head in the sand, each time something is not pretty, according to the little priests of Political Correctness.
British Prime Minister David Cameron today, in Davos, said that what had happened with Litvinenko was ‘absolutely appalling’ and called it a “murder commanded by a state”. But Cameron admitted the Syrian crisis meant Britain had to cooperate with Russia. Albeit with ‘clear eyes and a cold heart’.
In the book “The Martian”, the astronauts risk getting out of food, so they devise the plan to leave resources for the youngest of them, by putting an end to their lives. Let’s not smirk. It’s not just that Earth’s life probably originated on Mars, and perilously travelled over. We are all Martians from spaceship Earth. And if spaceship Earth gets in too much trouble, desperate solutions.
The French and British Prime Ministers met in Davos. Valls, the Catalan born and educated French Prime Minister from Ticino, Switzerland (!) called the possible “Brexit” the exit of Britain from Europe, a “drama” (“drame”).
Let’s not get overexcited. Political Correctness, ultimately, is a loss of nerves, a failure to consider all the possibilities, and, thus, an implosion of imagination and thus, paradoxically, of precaution. Just as the failure of Western protests against Bush made Putin believe he could get away with everything, Political Correctness is plutocracy’s best friend. Plutocracy reigns through complex structures, its best friend is a simplistic mood.
Political correctness is also meek: instead of envisioning that a country such as Russia can fall under the spell of an evil man, PC just focuses on appearances. It is similar to the Victorian mood of dressing the feet of tables with textile, out of prudery, worrying strongly about that, and about that alone, while, and because, it allowed to live unaware of the reality that imperial powers, out there, were carving giant empires in blood and bullets.
Patrice Ayme’
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 