Is Political Correctness a false flag?

My answer on Quora.

No it is not. In fact it is the tip of a defining struggle that has dominated the body politic of the West for some time now – namely the Culture War. Big Issues are at stake here that include Immigration, Group versus Individual Rights, Freedom of Speech, the role of the Judiciary and at its very core the essence of values that define our Liberal Democracy.

Political Correctness is a neologism that represents the cumulative efforts to restrict the level of discourse to narrowly defined parameters predetermined by so-called acceptable ideology. The Will to Power plays a key role.

Both the right and the left have been guilty of this. The right held the floor in the US during the McCarthy era (late 40s early 50s) and defined the debate on Communism, damning alternatives to the strong oppositional viewpoint as Un-American. Today it is the left, a consequence of the Gramscian March Through the Institutions, that now sets the tone.

                                                                Antonio Gramsci

                                              Source: https://www.economist.com/prospero/2017/11/07/the-strange-afterlife-of-antonio-gramscis-prison-notebooks

Just like right wing extremism its actions here are wretched and liberals from both sides of the political spectrum ought to condemn it. Unfortunately many don’t. All too often they have been mislead into believing that political correctness is all about politeness. Such a take hits the three big ‘M’s....it is Meaningless, Misleading and ultimately Mind numbing.

There are big challenges facing our civilization, and the realities are often uncomfortable. What we would like to be true does not necessarily line up with the facts. There are many people on both sides of the aisle who genuinely want to see solutions that are pragmatic however in order to reach this point we have to risk hearing alternatives and debating alternatives that we ourselves may find offensive.

Political Correctness short circuits this intellectual approach by discounting various stakeholder positions thereby curtailing and limiting the necessary level of discussion essential for informed thought and action. Not only is such an approach anti-scientific it is affront to both the empirical and rationalist positions that have emerged, with great struggle, from both the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment.

One has to in the paraphrased words of Jordan Peterson ‘risk being offended’ especially if we are intent on meaningful discussion around vital topics. Politically Correct thinking is anathema to this. It defines that which is sacred and relegates the rest to a type of heresy not applicable in polite society. In this regard it parallels religious fanaticism. Ideologues make the agenda. The agenda defines the Culture War and the ideologues become its high priests.