A generation ago I first warned about the insidious and dangerous nature of political correctness, arguing the neo-Marxist inspired concept was being used to enforce cultural–left group think and mind control. 

At the time even I did not foresee how widespread and destructive PC would become and how it now controls what is taught in schools and universities, how events and public issues are reported by the media and how politicians, celebrities and citizens discuss and debate important issues. 

Historical statues are being graffitied and destroyed, book, films and television shows censored or banned and people’s jobs and occupations destroyed because of a misplaced word or a strongly held conviction.  Even the millennials’ much-loved author JK Rowling is not immune for daring to question transgenderism. 

If additional evidence of the dominance and insidious influence of far-left, politically correct ideology is required look no further than a recent speech by an Aboriginal activist at last weekend’s Black Lives Matter demonstration in Darwin. 

The young girl, who looked as if she had just finished secondary school, recited a litany of alleged crimes committed against her people.  After arguing Aborigines are unfairly targeted by police the young blacktivist read from her notes:  “We live under the white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy that has taught us homophobia, taught as transphobia, taught us to be ablest and taught us lateral violence”. 

The young Blacktivist’s diatribe encapsulates many of the key words and descriptions used to shut down debate, enforce mindless group think and to condemn and vilify any who might commit the unforgiveable crime of disagreeing and being politically incorrect. 

Much like in Orwell’s dystopian 1984 those failing to conform are guilty of ‘thoughtcrime’ and in need or re-education.  Political correctness is also similar to ‘Newspeak’ where words are twisted to restrict free speech and independent thought best illustrated by the slogan ‘War is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength’. 

In the same way Mao used his youthful Red Guards to shout revolutionary slogans and political cant heralding his cultural revolution throughout the Western world young generations are also being indoctrinated and mobilised to radically re-shape society and to herald the much-awaited neo-Marxist utopia. 

The radical Safe Schools program teaches primary and secondary school students gender and sexuality are fluid, limitless and non-binary and that those who believe otherwise or who are happy with their birth sex are guilty of being heteronormative, homophobic and transphobic. 

Students are told approximately 16 per cent of young people are either lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer or plus even though the figure is closer to 3 to 4 per cent. 

Teacher union bodies such as the Australian Education Union and Education International are happy to encourage and mobilise school students to wag school on the basis that unless urgent action is taken regarding climate change the world will end by 2030. 

For many years in schools across Australia, students have been given a steady diet of misleading and alarmist propaganda beginning with Al Gore’s video ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and working up to speeches and rants by the climate change messiah Greta Thunberg. 

In the national curriculum, while there are literally thousands of references across the compulsory years of schooling in all subjects lauding the significance and strengths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, spirituality and culture Western civilisation including Judeo-Christianity and concepts like liberalism are ignored. 

Australian universities are now also bastions of political correctness.  As argued by the eminent sinologist Pierre Ryckmans in his 1996 Boyer Lectures the ideal of a university championing objectivity, wisdom and truth is now dead. 

Universities have trigger warnings, safe spaces and Diversity Toolkits to ensure so-called disadvantaged and marginalised groups are safeguarded against sexism, homophobia, transphobia, white supremacism and racism. 

Students at the University of Sydney are taught about the dangers of ‘whiteness’, described as a  curriculum guilty of “racism, sexism, classism, historical injustice and prejudice based on religion”.  Established disciplines including history, literature and even mathematics and science are condemned as Eurocentric, oppressive and complicit in enforcing ‘white supremacism”. 

Political correctness is a disturbing and dangerous infection that now dominates and controls how people, especially the young, think and interact.  Rationality, reason and common sense no longer prevail as mob hysteria and mindless cultural-left group think prevail. 

Such is the chaos, violence and destruction that WB Yeats’ poem ‘The Second Coming’ has never been more relevant and apt.  

Yeats writes: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” and as a result “The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity”. 

Dr Kevin Donnelly is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University and author of ‘A Politically Correct Dictionary and Guide’ (available at kevindonnelly.com.au). 

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