The triumph of “politically correct” makes the US and China more similar
The virtual summit The Summit for Democracy , convened by US President Joe Biden on 9 and 10 December, did not have the hoped-for success. The irritation of some countries at not having been invited was obvious. But the participants also showed little enthusiasm.
Obviously, the setback suffered with the very disorganized and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan weighs heavily, which the promise to defend Taiwan from a possible Chinese invasion has not at all mitigated. In short, the feeling of being at the source of a decline of the American empire, already evoked – with tones worthy of Oswald Spengler's “Sunset of the West” – by numerous intellectuals and analysts is gaining ground.
Elements that confirm such a bleak picture do not derive only from considerations relating to the maintenance or otherwise of US military supremacy. Culture in the broadest sense of the term is in crisis in today's America. That is the sector that has guaranteed the soft power of the United States and the spread of the American way of life in the world.
In fact, the crisis manifests itself, first of all, in American (and also British) universities with the limitless spread of politically correct , a phenomenon that requires the spread of a single thought and that goes so far as to silence those who are not agree with certain theses.
And that's not enough. The tendency to fire teachers, even famous and in many cases not at all reactionary, who do not adapt to prepackaged theses passed off as "absolute truths" is gaining in strength.
The problem is that these are not cases involving small colleges in Arkansas or North Dakota. The most prestigious universities of the Ivy League such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Cornell, MIT etc. are mainly involved. So the very ones that are theoretically the heart of American culture, and which every year manage to attract millions of foreign students, primarily Chinese.
Since at first it seemed like a "left" trend, scholars and teachers, overwhelmingly progressive, willingly and strongly supported it. Later the more astute among them, especially the elderly like Noam Chomsky, began to smell the danger.
If you automatically deny the floor to those who do not agree with you, and if you then organize campaigns to fire them, trusting in the acquiescence of compliant (or simply frightened) rectors, you are carrying out an attack on freedom of expression as a whole. It also disrupts the main characteristics of cultural communication in your country (the United States).
In short, this culture becomes "illiberal", since it takes away the right to speak to opponents. And this – at least until now – was not possible in America. Instead, it was in the China of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, and it still is in that of Xi Jinping.
How then can Americans convene a global summit on democracy, accusing uninvited countries of not respecting human rights and freedom of expression, if very similar phenomena occur at home? Hence the failure of the Summit and President Biden's embarrassment in responding to these accusations.
It is true that the US government is not directly responsible for this situation, since its universities are politically autonomous. However, it could more vigorously defend the right to free expression of ideas, and protect dissent wherever it arises.
This in reality does not happen because much of the US liberal culture, and many representatives of the American Democratic Party in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, are aligned with the follies of politically correct and support them without any remorse.
Be careful though. If the current trend continues with the same strength, or even expands, we will have a consequence that to define "curious" is an understatement. In fact, students from the People's Republic of China will find themselves inserted in a cultural environment much more similar to theirs than they can imagine.
In Chinese universities, any manifestation of dissent is immediately repressed, and the departments that promote Marxism-Maoism as the only official and admitted philosophy carefully watch over ideological orthodoxy. During the Cultural Revolution promoted by Mao, countless teachers were tried, sent into exile in the countryside and, very often, killed.
If the American political correctness were to take root more and more, also thanks to the presence of a weak president like Joe Biden, would it not be reasonable to expect a significant decrease in the ideological distance between the two superpowers competing today? Some will reply that America has the antibodies necessary to prevent such a bad outcome. The writer, however, begins to have doubts about it.
The post The triumph of “politically correct” makes the US and China more similar appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL https://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/il-trionfo-del-politically-correct-rende-piu-simili-usa-e-cina/ on Mon, 03 Jan 2022 03:44:00 +0000.