This is my response to Kevin Carson’s recently republished review of Sean Gabb’s book “Cultural Revolution, Culture War”

Libertarian Alliance

I doubt it’s possible to develop a thorough or effective critique of statism as it exists in contemporary Western industrialized democracies without a comprehensive critique of the PC ideology. The evidence is overwhelming that PC is simply a new form of political authoritarianism, and something that the ruling class is incorporating into its own ideological superstructure. I’m a Nietzschean-Stirnerite, not any kind of conservative, but I find it disappointing that so many of my fellow libertarians and anarchists are unable to see PC for what it is.

The bottom line is that PC is a manifestation of one of the primary insights of conflict theory: Former outgroups who become politically powerful will normally become just as abusive and exploitative as the former in-groups they replace. The historical evidence for this is overwhelming to the point where it can be considered a general historical law. Louis XVI goes out, the Jacobins come in. Czar Nicholas goes out, the Bolsheviks come in. Chang goes out, Mao comes in. The Western puppets in Southeast Asian go out, the Viet Mihn and Pol Pot come in.The Shah goes out, the Ayatollah comes in. Ian Smith goes out, Robert Mugabe comes in. The apartheid regime of South Africa goes out, the ANC comes in and homicide rates explode.

Many people still do not realize how pervasive the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s has been. In the 1960s, left-wing radicals formed the Free Speech Movement against things like loyalty oaths and academic censorship. By the 1980s, they were taking over academia and imposing speech codes. In the 1960s, homosexuals were considered felonious criminals in many Western nations. Today, expressing religious objections to homosexuality can land you in jail in some countries. A few decades ago, smoking was considered a routine if unhealthy pastime. Now, some U.S. localities have all but made smoking illegal. Stephen Baskerville has provided extensive documentation of the abuses that have occurred from feminist domination of family courts in some jurisdictions. Racism and sexism were universal and normal a half century ago. Now, even renowned scientists and presidents of major universities are forbidden from questioning liberal orthodoxy concerning race and gender. Forty years ago, leftists protested against imperialist war. Now, they are just as likely to justify imperialism in the name of “humanitarian intervention.” Leftists and liberals used to champion the drug culture, free speech, and free love. Now, they are just as likely to champion drug prohibition on therapeutic statist grounds, and support prohibition of pornography and prostitution on feminist grounds. It used to be that liberals would defend free speech even for neo-Nazi groups that wished to march in Jewish neighborhoods. Now, even some supposed civil libertarians will support hate speech laws.

These are just a few examples. Volumes could be written on these issues. Carson mentions the police state outrages that now occur on a daily basis in the U.S. I absolutely concur. There is hardly a day that goes by where someone does not send me a news report of some new police state atrocity. However, there is also hardly a day that goes by where I do not receive a report of some outrage or absurdity perpetrated in the name of PC. The growth of the PC and the expansion of the police state have occurred simultaneously and are mutually supportive of one another. PC represents the state’s use of the carrot: i.e. buying the loyalty of the rising upper middle class with its cosmopolitan values and the elite and affluent members of traditional outgroups with political favors. The police state represents the use of the stick: i.e. strengthening the state’s apparatus of repression when efforts at ideological co-optation and inculcation fail.