Last week, the editor of Spiked Magazine and Telegraph contributor Brendan O’Neill gave a speech on the tyranny of political correctness, subsequently published on Spiked here.
The title and conclusion of the piece seems to be that political correctness is not something enforced by the elites but something internal. However, this thesis doesn’t last very long, as argues that ‘the new elites clamp down on and closely govern what were previously considered to be normal interactions’.
This swivelling confusion aside, O’Neill argued that the rise of PC is down to the ‘internal moral rot amongst more traditional sections of society’, highlighting how 15 years ago the Girl Guides (apparently ‘suddenly’) rewrote their constitution. Girl Guides no longer promised to respect their ‘duty to God’, but instead to ‘love my God’ and the oath of loyalty to the Queen was removed. Changes caused because ‘in our relativistic times, when both Truth and Christianity are no longer untarnished values, there are many gods’.
For those who don’t know O’Neill, or Spiked, it might be worth pointing out here that he and his magazine are passionate republicans, and the general ‘shtick’ of the magazine is to oppose the prevailing consensus, or as Nick Cohen put it, ‘the willingness to fill space and generate controversy by saying the opposite of what everyone else is saying just because everyone else is saying it – an affectation most people get over around puberty.’
Even if you don’t agree with Cohen criticism, to lament the loss of monarchism and homogenous thought which being contrarian republicans is gloriously inconsistent. Later on, O’Neill does concede that this weakening ‘did not have to be a bad thing’, provided that it was replaced by a ‘more progressive, human-centred moral outlook’. Quite what this outlook should be is unsaid, but I’m guessing it’s the type of agenda that Spike’s advocates. It's fair enough to call for such an agenda, but to complain about the tyranny of PC because the Girl Guides added the word ‘my’ fifteen years ago, whilst then calling for the Girl Guides to reground itself on entirely new philosophy amenable to the good people of spiked magazine is chutzpah indeed.
Given the scale of PC tyranny that worries O’Neill however, it’s worth looking at the specific examples he cites as to its domination.
He highlights how teachers are no longer allowed to use the word blackboard; a five second Google search however, would show that this ‘story’ was nothing but a media fabrication.
He refers to a case of ‘a book of children’s ditties refashioned the old classic ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor?’, replacing ‘drunken sailor’ with ‘grumpy pirate’. The old song said ‘Stick him in a bag and beat him senseless’; the new one says ‘Tickle him till he starts to giggle’. O’Neill rhetorically askes, ‘What kind of society takes such an Orwellian, Ministry of Truth approach?. What indeed.
Again, a five second google search would have taken him to a BBC article where the authors explicitly state that the changes had "absolutely nothing to do with political correctness." Furthermore, "the shift from drunken sailor to "grumpy pirate" was to make the rhyme fit a pirate theme, rather than censorship” and that "The inclusion of action lyrics like 'wiggle' and 'tickle' offer parents and small children an opportunity to interact, have fun and enjoy acting out the rhyme together."
The worst excesses of PC tyranny therefore is the Girl Guides introducing the word ‘my’ into a sentence fifteen years ago, and two claims which are demonstrably bogus. When people have to base their arguments on such flimsy grounds, it’s no wonder that they eventually collapse
Most articles of the ‘political correctness gone mad’ type are based on entirely distorted or just simply fabricated, and O'Neill follows in that dishonorable tradition. PC critics frequently cry out that nowadays ‘you can’t say this, you can’t say that’. In truth, they’re perfectly free to say whatever they like (obtuse libel laws aside). What infuriates them is the speech of others who criticise them for calling people faggots, pakis and niggers. They want the freedom to criticise without being criticised in turn.
In fairness, O’Neill is close to being right on the point that PC is overwhelmingly internally generated rather than externally controlled (that is, when he doesn’t make the opposite point in the same piece), though this is caused more by an atmosphere – essentially media fabricated – that PC controls everything. It’s this that causes the few entirely ludicrous but actually true cases of ‘political correctness gone mad’ which appear in the media – almost none of which are caused by pressure ‘on high’. It’s this febrile atmosphere also which contributes towards some idiots becoming so enraged by political correctness as to take literally invocations such as O’Neill’s, to ‘pull your socks up and get your guns out.’
Contrary to their comforting delusions, criticising political correctness isn’t brave, dangerous or a sure path to social martyrdom. It’s routine, usually boorish, and so conventional that any myth can be invented in its name and it will be swallowed whole, to be endlessly regurgitated ad nauseum in the media and pseudo-critical web alike.
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