The new Republican political correctness
Remember when Republicans opposed political correctness, because it inhibited free speech?
"Political correctness is just absolutely killing us as a country," Donald Trump said on the campaign trail in 2015, during his first run for the White House. "You can't say anything. Anything you say today, they'll find a reason why it's not good."
But in his second term, President Trump and his minions are establishing their own form of political correctness. They have found reasons why some speech isn't good, and they are absolutely trying to kill it. In short, the GOP has gone full-on PC.
Witness Trump's executive orders requiring federal agencies to remove terms like "diversity," "gender," and "inclusion" from their documents. Or his decision to bar Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One, because their employer refuses to use the new name that Trump assigned to the Gulf of Mexico.
"We're going to keep them out until such time as they agree that it's the Gulf of America," Trump declared. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt went even further, claiming that Trump was simply holding the AP "accountable" for its "lies" about geography. "It is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America," Leavitt said.
No, it isn't. It is a fact that the president of the United States is using that term. It is also a fact that he is using his power to try to enforce his preferred language on everybody else.
And you can't get more PC than that. The term "politically correct" was coined by Communist regimes that required people to say certain words and avoid others. In the Soviet Union, under Lenin and Stalin, being politically correct meant following the party line. In Mao Zedong's “Little Red Book” the term denotes adherence to his doctrines on class struggle, the bourgeois West and more.
The term was adopted ironically in the 1960s by American student radicals, who invoked it to tease people who were too ideologically rigid. "It was always used in a tone mocking the pieties of our own insular political counterculture," one veteran of the left recalled. "As in, 'We could stop at McDonald's down the road if you're hungry ... but it wouldn't be politically correct.'"
But starting in the late 1980s, PC got dead serious. On college campuses, especially, a new glossary of euphemisms arose to govern speech. Crippled people became "handicapped," and then "differently abled"; Hispanics became "Latinos," and then "Latinx;" homosexuals were "gay," then "LGBTQ," and finally "LGBTQIA." (In case you're wondering, the "I" and "A" stand for "intersex" and "asexual.")
If it was only about the words, it wouldn't matter. But the new terms also signaled a liberal political orthodoxy, which sometimes constrained free expression and debate.
That's what President George H. W. Bush said in 1991, on the 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights. Political correctness "arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred," Bush acknowledged, in a graduation address at the University of Michigan. But PC "replaces old prejudice with new ones," he added, and "declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits."
Abortion rights? In. Gun rights? Out. Affirmative action is good. Police are bad. And woe to dissenters from these views, who risk social censure — that is, "cancellation" — for saying what they think. The safest move is to keep quiet and move on.
Studies have confirmed that large swaths of students and faculty bite their tongues for fear of violating PC norms. The same thing happens in the broader culture, breeding anger and resentment. In a 2018 survey of over 8,000 Americans by the non-partisan group More in Common, 80 percent of respondents agreed that "political correctness is a problem in our country."
And if you think it's just white people who say that, think again. According to the More in Common study, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans were more likely to express disdain for PC than whites were.
That's precisely the sentiment harnessed by Trump, who drew increased numbers of minority voters in his victorious 2024 campaign. Now that's he's back in the White House, however, Trump is making new rules about what can and can't be said, particularly around race and gender. And his rules are vastly more dangerous, because they have the power of the presidency — and the law — behind them.
Is Trump being hypocritical, by railing against political correctness and then requiring it? Sure. But so are you, dear reader, if you demand strict adherence to left-wing PC and then denounce Trump for enforcing the right-wing version. To resist Trump, we need to rededicate ourselves to free speech for everyone. That's the only correct way to fight political correctness.
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania and serves on the advisory board of the Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest.
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