Semiotics

"Mario Perniola, Disgusti. Le nuove tendenze estetiche"

"‘Politically correct’ is based on claiming the status of victim: weakness is not thought of as something that must be changed into strength, because what matters, what makes strength, is precisely its ostentation. As one critic writes, the essence of ‘politically correct’ culture is complaining, whining; its motto is “don't step on me, I'm fragile” (Hughes 1993). This is a paradoxical strategy, because those who complain claim to win by asserting their “difference,” which consists in suffering. This cannot be transformed into joy, because in doing so the “difference” from the enemy would disappear. (p. 23)"

"But is it really necessary, in 1947, to teach children to use expressions like "native" and "Chinaman"?"

"The term "political correctness" has always appalled me, reminding me of Orwell's "Thought Police" and fascist regimes."

"We'll be right back to the politically correct program called "The Good, the Bad, and the Beauty Impaired.""

"I don’t like the term “political correctness” because conservatives tend to employ it to distract from serious racial, class, national, and gender discrimination. It’s a divisive phrase that perpetuates the so-called culture wars. I first heard the term in the 1970s, when it was used among progressive people as a safeguard against our own rigidness and the rigidness of other people on the left. Many political meetings ended with a period of evaluation and this was one of the problems acknowledged as something to avoid. The term has been bowdlerized since then."

"A term originally created by leftists in humorous self-mockery, "PC" is now used to evoke Stalinist demands for conformity. Thus PC-baiting has become a post-Cold War substitute for anti-communism, and a dangerously reactionary political expression."

"The modern academics find it politically incorrect to criticize the devastation under Islamic rule, even though post-colonial scholars have amply exposed the ruin created by the British."

"It really worries me that 84% of this audience agrees with that statement, because the kind of people that say "political correctness gone mad" are usually using that phrase as a kind of cover action to attack minorities or people that they disagree with. I'm of an age that I can see what a difference political correctness has made. When I was four years old, my grandfather drove me around Birmingham, where the Tories had just fought an election campaign saying, "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour," and he drove me around saying, "this is where all the niggers and the coons and the jungle bunnies live." And I remember being at school in the early 80s and my teacher, when he read the register, instead of saying the name of the one Asian boy in the class, he would say, "is the black spot in," right? And all these things have gradually been eroded by political correctness, which seems to me to be about an institutionalised politeness at its worst. And if there is some fallout from this, which means that someone in an office might get in trouble one day for saying something that someone was a bit unsure about because they couldn't decide whether it was sexist or homophobic or racist, it's a small price to pay for the massive benefits and improvements in the quality of life for millions of people that political correctness has made. It's a complete lie that allows the right, which basically controls media now, and national politics, to make people on the left who are concerned about the way people are represented look like killjoys. And I'm sick, I'm really sick — 84% of you in this room that have agreed with this phrase, you're like those people who turn around and go, "you know who the most oppressed minorities in Britain are? White, middle-class men." You're a bunch of idiots."

"I always tried to be correct, not politically correct."

"Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid-1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism. . . . What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism — by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents — they could discredit the whole political project."

"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."

"Political correctness is tyranny with manners."

"Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers."

"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this."

"I am politically incorrect, that's true. Political correctness to me is just intellectual terrorism. I find that really scary, and I won't be intimidated into changing my mind. Everyone isn't going to love you all the time."

"The phenomenon we know as political correctness thrives on people's permitting themselves to be intimidated by the people who are the enforcers of these norms and orthodoxies."

"Economic history is not politically correct. Many on the left therefore struggle with its findings."

"[...] secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff."

"Now rebadged as being ‘woke’, political correctness represents an existential threat to Western societies including concepts like rationality and reason, religious freedom and freedom of expression. We have entered an Orwellian world like 1984 where Big Brother and the Party control how citizens think and where anyone who questions the thought police is victimised, punished and silenced."

"Our universities, after a few aberrant decades of experimenting with open inquiry and the advance of knowledge, have reverted to their medieval purpose (the purpose that Chinese higher education always had): to train an intellectual elite for the propagation and defense of the state ideology. Then it was Christianity (in China, Confucianism); now it is utopian egalitarianism—“political correctness,” the Narrative."

"It is an article of passionate faith among 'politically correct' biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway."

"The appeal of political correctness is that it attempts to change men’s souls by altering how they speak. If one sufficiently reforms language, certain thoughts become unthinkable, and the world moves in the approved direction."

"Over the past few decades, we let ourselves be seduced by ideologies that sought not the truth, but absolute power. Ideology has settled in the domains of culture, education and communications, dominating the media, universities and schools. Ideology has invaded our homes and tried to dismantle what is the celula mater of any healthy society: the family. It has also tried to destroy the innocence of our children in an attempt to corrupt even their most basic and elementary identity: the biological one. “Political correctness” came to dominate the public debate, expelling rationality and replacing it with manipulation, recurring clichés and slogans. Ideology has invaded the human soul itself to reap it apart from God and from the dignity He has bestowed upon us. And with these methods, ideology has always left a trail of death, ignorance, and misery wherever it went. I am a living proof of this. I was cowardly knife-stabbed by a leftist militant and only survived by a miracle. Once again I thank God for my life. The United Nations can help us fight the materialistic and ideological environment that undermines some basic principles of human dignity. This Organization was created to promote peace between sovereign nations, as well as social progress with freedom, in accordance with the preamble of the UN Charter."

"‘Politically Correct’ was originally a phrase on the Leninist left to denote someone who steadfastly toed the party line. Then it evolved into ‘PC’, an ironic phrase among wised up leftists to denote someone whose line-toeing fervour was too much to bear. Only in connection with the PC debate itself did the phrase get picked up by people who had no fidelity to radicalism at all, but who relished the nasty syllables for their twist of irony."

"We believe that political correctness stifles debate and will not facilitate a frank and mature discussion or solutions to get to the root of why the above pattern is emerging in these crimes and how to help find a solution to the problem."We will not be able to do that if we mask the identity of those involved based on misguided views of 'protecting a vulnerable community' of the perpetrators and not looking at the vulnerable community of victims."

"the real divide between the "politically correct" and their antagonists on the right is not free speech but equality. Heavily invested in a conception of freedom as a property right, including the right to fight for or maintain dominance in social hierarchies, conservatives have historically viewed any form of government-mandated social equality as tyranny. As the anti-P.C. shock troops see it, the right to engage in what others might call verbal bigotry is not only freedom of speech, but the substance of freedom itself, and so they often cross the line between merely defending its legality and tacitly or openly encouraging it."

"We no longer talk about ‘political correctness’, but instead refer to its even more terrible child, the church of ‘woke’, which is the same thing, but more intense, intolerant and dogmatic. As with fashion, all ideologies will tend to the extreme. ‘Woke’ is turbocharged ‘PC’ for the social-media age, in which there is ever-more pressure to conform to ultra-liberal dogma, invariably in the name of ‘not giving offence’."

"Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth."

"These "disguises" make us look like those politically-correct, multi-ethnic gangs that only rob people in bad TV shows."

"We have now reached the point where every goon with a grievance, every bitter bigot, merely has to place the prefix, 'I know this is not politically correct, but...' in front of the usual string of insults in order to be not just safe from criticism, but actually a card, a lad, even a hero. Conversely, to talk about poverty and inequality, to draw attention to the reality that discrimination and injustice are still facts of life, is to commit the sin of political correctness. Anti-PC has become the latest cover for creeps. It is a godsend for every curmudgeon and crank, from fascists to the merely smug."

"If I could believe that this was said sincerely, I could put up with anything."

"Immoral (definition): Obsolete expression meaning "politically incorrect"."

"Need I remind you that Stone Mountain and Birth of a Nation are also exercises in political correctness for their time, as are the inscriptions on the monuments erected by several southern states in honor of the service of their state’s Confederate forces at Gettysburg? ... Ranting about “political correctness” is best read as “I can’t really deal with the merits of your interpretation, so I’ll deride it largely because it doesn’t reinforce my own preferences and prejudices.”"

"The anti-political correctness types are really just trying to enforce their own standards of acceptable discourse and are furious at their inability to do so"

"Political correctness is a war on noticing."

"Political correctness is like the sting of the spider wasp. Recall that the afflicted spider is dragged to the wasp's burrow in a zombie-like state and is subsequently eaten in vivo by the wasp's offspring. Political correctness achieves the same macabre objective — it allows nefarious ideas to slowly consume us while we sit quietly in a zombie-like state, too afraid to speak out."

"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it."

"Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."

"Sarcasm is the refuge of losers."

"Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on earth tolerable."

"Sarcasm: the last defense of the truly witless."

"Sarcasm is not the rapier of wit its wielders seem to believe it to be, but merely a club: it may, by dint of brute force, occasionally raise bruises, but it never cuts or pierces."

"Sarcasm is the refuge of a shallow mind."

"Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that."

"If you’ve ever sat in a room with twins, immediately you’re forced to deal with this confusion. You’re afraid to call them by name because you’re afraid you’re going to get it wrong. At first being a twin is a source of power, you can switch, you can fool people—but then it becomes a vulnerability because people confuse you when you don’t want them to. The famous story of the twins who were both spanked when either one of them did something wrong because the parents wanted to make sure they got the right twin. So that would immediately make each twin totally responsible for the other one’s actions and therefore would make you want to control the other twin’s actions. It gets quite twisted and the confusion of identities becomes quite intense."

"I don't blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they'll realize there's more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously."

"There is nothing so certain to lead to inequality as identity."

"When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is a recognition of a spiritual identity."

"If you look for an identity you find inequality. If you look for similarities you separate one truth from another."