Paul Krugman, Political Correctness, and the Roots of Western Anger: A Reflection on Elitism and Ideology
Paul Krugman has ended his collaboration with the New York Times. As a European reader of the newspaper, I must say I am disappointed, even though his last editorial was not much different from a pamphlet produced by those "revolutionary Marxist collectives" so popular among Italy’s upper bourgeoisie in the 1970s.
The story of a plutocracy of narcissists, drunk on delusions of omnipotence and threatening the freedom of the people, is an old one—and frankly, it has become tiresome.
While I don’t believe that the anger of the rich is a particularly significant social issue, I do agree with Krugman that Western society as a whole is angry. Unlike in the past, however, this anger is not solely rooted in economic reasons.
Like Krugman, I do not believe the origin of this anger lies in political correctness. At its core, political correctness is little more than a form of “etiquette,” invented by a privileged group as a pretext to distinguish themselves and express disdain toward ordinary people.
This is nothing new, nor is it unfamiliar. In the 19th century, a gentleman had to master a long and tedious list of social rules to participate in society. Today, one must adhere to a bizarre set of beliefs, largely based on the pseudoscientific notion that language can influence collective thought.
I had thought that, after the failed experiment of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr—who tried to instill class consciousness in the people by rewriting Russian grammar—a certain kind of magical thinking had been definitively abandoned. Humanity’s obsession with magical words, however, is evidently hard to kill.
Compared to the tribal rituals of past aristocracies, the only novelty of political correctness is its resurrection of bizarre theories to justify its own existence. In the past, so-called aristocracies had the good taste to define etiquette solely to underline their privileges, without invoking science. Unfortunately, we live in an era where good taste is in short supply.
However, like the ritualized etiquette of the 19th century and Marr’s newspeak in the Soviet Union, political correctness is nothing more than an irritating attempt by a small group of privileged individuals to emphasize their difference from ordinary people and signal their belonging to a particular clan. In short, it is nothing that small-town men like me have not already endured with patience in the past.
The anger afflicting the Western world certainly does not stem from the fact that its so-called elite has adopted a bizarre etiquette. It runs deeper and originates from the hatred for Western democracies taught within academia.
The so-called theory of Social Justice (which has nothing to do with two hundred years of Catholic scholarship on income distribution in my country), "gender studies," critical race theory, "fat studies," and post-colonialism theory are all tools of a bizarre ideology that, in the name of science, fosters division and social conflict.
The pattern of these pseudosciences is simplistic, yet evidently effective: it begins with the denunciation of a conflict, continues with the identification of a villain and the division of society into oppressors and oppressed, and culminates in a call for revolution.
The underlying idea common to all these pseudosciences is that the so-called free world is deeply corrupt, indifferent to exploitation, and unaware of the dynamics of oppression that limit minority rights.
This alleged unawareness—attributed to a majority of oppressors whose identity shifts depending on the chosen framework—is a guilt borne by ordinary people, who must be “awakened,” punished, and educated, even against their will.
If Professor Krugman were genuinely interested in understanding the roots of the anger afflicting Western society, I believe he would benefit from taking a stroll through the university campuses where he worked for so many years.
To paraphrase Keynes, we might say that human societies, though they believe themselves free from any intellectual influence, are often slaves of some defunct intellectual. Madmen, who hear voices in the air, distill their frenzy from the scribblings of some forgotten scribbler of years gone by.
The story of a plutocracy of narcissists, drunk on delusions of omnipotence and threatening the freedom of the people, is an old one—and frankly, it has become tiresome.
While I don’t believe that the anger of the rich is a particularly significant social issue, I do agree with Krugman that Western society as a whole is angry. Unlike in the past, however, this anger is not solely rooted in economic reasons.
Like Krugman, I do not believe the origin of this anger lies in political correctness. At its core, political correctness is little more than a form of “etiquette,” invented by a privileged group as a pretext to distinguish themselves and express disdain toward ordinary people.
This is nothing new, nor is it unfamiliar. In the 19th century, a gentleman had to master a long and tedious list of social rules to participate in society. Today, one must adhere to a bizarre set of beliefs, largely based on the pseudoscientific notion that language can influence collective thought.
I had thought that, after the failed experiment of Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr—who tried to instill class consciousness in the people by rewriting Russian grammar—a certain kind of magical thinking had been definitively abandoned. Humanity’s obsession with magical words, however, is evidently hard to kill.
Compared to the tribal rituals of past aristocracies, the only novelty of political correctness is its resurrection of bizarre theories to justify its own existence. In the past, so-called aristocracies had the good taste to define etiquette solely to underline their privileges, without invoking science. Unfortunately, we live in an era where good taste is in short supply.
However, like the ritualized etiquette of the 19th century and Marr’s newspeak in the Soviet Union, political correctness is nothing more than an irritating attempt by a small group of privileged individuals to emphasize their difference from ordinary people and signal their belonging to a particular clan. In short, it is nothing that small-town men like me have not already endured with patience in the past.
The anger afflicting the Western world certainly does not stem from the fact that its so-called elite has adopted a bizarre etiquette. It runs deeper and originates from the hatred for Western democracies taught within academia.
The so-called theory of Social Justice (which has nothing to do with two hundred years of Catholic scholarship on income distribution in my country), "gender studies," critical race theory, "fat studies," and post-colonialism theory are all tools of a bizarre ideology that, in the name of science, fosters division and social conflict.
The pattern of these pseudosciences is simplistic, yet evidently effective: it begins with the denunciation of a conflict, continues with the identification of a villain and the division of society into oppressors and oppressed, and culminates in a call for revolution.
The underlying idea common to all these pseudosciences is that the so-called free world is deeply corrupt, indifferent to exploitation, and unaware of the dynamics of oppression that limit minority rights.
This alleged unawareness—attributed to a majority of oppressors whose identity shifts depending on the chosen framework—is a guilt borne by ordinary people, who must be “awakened,” punished, and educated, even against their will.
If Professor Krugman were genuinely interested in understanding the roots of the anger afflicting Western society, I believe he would benefit from taking a stroll through the university campuses where he worked for so many years.
To paraphrase Keynes, we might say that human societies, though they believe themselves free from any intellectual influence, are often slaves of some defunct intellectual. Madmen, who hear voices in the air, distill their frenzy from the scribblings of some forgotten scribbler of years gone by.
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