Saturday 21 January 2017

Long Live the Politically Correct

On Friday, as the world watched a fascist take the oath to become the leader of the free world, there were several moments of delight. Little moments peaking out from behind the curtain to remind us all not to despair for the fight continues on. The embarrassingly empty stadium seating that lined the walk from Capitol Hill, the woman of Asian descent who spent the entire inauguration giving Trump the middle finger and some glorious human being punched Richard Spencer right in the face. For those of you unfamiliar with Richard Spencer (man, do I envy you), he is a leading figure in the "alt-right". The "alt-right" for those of you who are unfamiliar (man, do I envy you) is the latest term that fascists, white-supremacists and Nazis  have coined in the hope that people won't notice all the hate-filled, fascist propaganda that spews from their orifices. It's an ironic turn of events, that a group of people who so despise the idea of "political correctness" would hope to introduce a new term for their deplorable beliefs in the vain hope that it might hide their true ugliness from themselves and others. They would champion, "saying it like it is" and "calling a spade a spade" but can't bring themselves to at least own their own prejudices.



It could be my age, I'm a member of that funny generation that are too old to be millennials and yet too young to be a part of generation X (generation housing-market-collapse?). It's probably more likely as a result of spending my teenage years sat inside watching television shows as opposed to out partying with friends but my introduction to the concept of political correctness was a positive one. I learnt of it from alternative comics from the late 1980s and early 1990s, the likes of Alexi Sayle, Stewart Lee or Arthur Smith. And it seemed simple enough, political correctness was simply a method of managing your language so as to show respect to the rest of humanity. Or, to put it more simply, just being polite. It wouldn't be until after the turn of the century that I would start to hear it described in a negative fashion, slowly but steadily more and more people where in the newspapers and on television complaining about how the views they were expressing in national press and television actually couldn't be expressed on account of "political correctness".

That slow but steady flow soon became the deluge that we are all now subjected to. As ten-a-penny provocateurs saturate our press, radio and television with more and more views that they are somehow not allowed to say (the fact that they have been given a national platform never seems to occur to them, perhaps they're all waiting for a pulpit and a stadium). Having observed this backlash, and on occasion, challenged it when brought up in conversation, I think I can place the people who hate political correctness into two loose groups. The first, don't really know what political correctness is, they're just worried that what they say might leave them stigmatised. For example, they might have read an article or seen a documentary on FGM. They, rightly, want to express their disgust at this practice but fear that by doing so, they will be labelled a racist or something. The second group, are cowards; the kind of people who've only ever read books written by Jeremy Clarkson and probably believe every false story about a muslim shop assistant who refuses to handle bacon. These people are exploiting the false enemy of political correctness because they're too afraid to call themselves what they are.

For that first group, consider the following statement; "it is raining, everyone has their umbrella open, open umbrellas must cause rain". The logic at the heart of the statement is ridiculous, yet it is this misrepresentation on  correlation that is at the heart of being politically correct. Let's rephrase the statement, "that housing estate is full of people from France, there is a high crime rate in that estate, all French people must be criminals". Again, the sentence covers all the facts but misses the conclusion by some distance. If you were to make such sweeping generalisations against the French, I daresay no-one would bat an eyelid. Yet, if I were to change the ethnic make-up of the fictional estate to that of a Muslim community, the statement would raise a few eyebrows. The inability to make the same sweeping generalisation, regardless of the genetic make-up of the fictional estate would be cited as political correctness gone mad.

Here's the thing though, it isn't. I'll put myself forward as an example here. I am a heterosexual caucasian male of western European descent. I was raised in a middle-class household and graduated from university. I have never faced, even the slightest hint of discrimination. It gets more ridiculous, at 6ft 2" in height with a 34" waist line, I've never been turned away from a ride in an amusement park or had to consider getting a second seat on an airline. I was even raised on the protestant side of the political divide in Northern Ireland, so in that regard I was already a part of the establishment. I don't even have ginger hair. At this point you're probably picturing me as a pale pink balloon tied to a yardstick and you'd not be far wrong. I've never had to ask an entire nation if I can marry the person I love. I've never had to pay VAT on an essential medical item because its deemed a luxury. And despite being the grandson of an Orangeman, I've never had someone label me a terrorist on account of the actions of others from a similar background. 

Again, being politically correct, is just managing language in a fashion that pays respect to the fact that many have not been as privileged as I have. How we use language is important as continued use of overtly incorrect, generalising statements will simply reinforce stereotypes and compound the discriminations built into society. Case and point, a woman who sleeps with a lot of men is a slut, a man who sleeps with a lot of women is a legend. If you're the kind of person who still takes umbrage at a woman taking many lovers and enjoying one night stands, then can I help you find a rock to climb back beneath? Perhaps there is a bridge nearby you can live under.

To that second group then, the cowards. Those of you who would claim that by not being given a platform, your side of the debate is being censored. We know what your side of the debate is, we've been fighting fascism for decades, many of our countrymen died fighting a war against your side of the debate. Just because you've given it a fancy new name and a bit of a makeover doesn't change what you are or the ugliness of the views you espouse. All I ask is that you have the courage of your convictions, go-on call a spade a fucking spade and at least call yourself what you are. Political correctness is silencing no-one, just admit it to yourself, you hate them because of their colour, you hate them because of who they pray to, you hate them because of who they go to bed with or because of what genitalia they've got between their legs. 



At the very least stop trying to muddy the waters of the debate to hide your true prejudices. It is one thing to have an issue with the method through which halal certification can be attributed and quite another to claim that the presence of halal meat in your local Tesco is a symptom of Islamification.  It's not Islamification, it's a capitalist enterprise recognising an opportunity to expand their market share. And you know well why Christianity is the butt of more jokes than Islam. Because Christianity is the dominant western religion, built into everything from our education system to our legal and political oaths. Great comedy will always kick up rather than down. To that second group, one last sign off. Fuck you, fuck you and everything that you stand for.