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As the authors to whom I have referred demonstrate, many of the proponents of “politically correct thinking” in American academia are refugees and exiles from the leftist political causes of the 1960s — for example, they who resisted American intervention in Vietnam because they supported socialist revolution in the Third World. They protested against “the establishment’ at home because they hated capitalism and saw themselves as the vanguard of a coming “people’s democracy” that would replace the existing “fascist Amerika”; and they protested because they hated the “commercial society” and resented the “oppression” of market relationships.
Unable to win their war in the streets or in the political world, they retreated into the halls of ivy, which they now increasingly dominate. Everything they dislike is the product of “white capitalist power.” Everything they cherish is found in the non-market communalism and collectivism of the Third World.
They use all the standard Marxian ideological and linguistic tricks. Language has no inherent objective meaning; words are tools of “class,” ” race” and “sexual” exploitation. Truth is not merely difficult to discover; it, in fact, does not exist. The claim that there are universal truths about man, society and nature — truths that are valid for all people in all places at all times — are philosophical tricks used by the “ruling class” to get the masses to accept their inferior stations in life and view their oppression and exploitation as both inevitable and necessary.
Even to think or speak in terms of individuals and individual rights is considered suspect; any person who does so is either the victim of or the apologist for the male, capitalist exploiting class. The rulers wish to deceive us into thinking about ourselves as “mere individuals” so they can hide from view the race, sex and class relationships that are the actual foundations of the existing social order.
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