The legal precedent for gaining the ability to ban content under the guise of preventing the dissemination of “obscenity” allows the future banning of “obscene” political opinions and “obscene” dissent.
Once the “obscene” political content is banned, the language will change to “offensive”.
After “offensive” content is banned, then the language will change to “inappropriate”.
After “inappropriate”, the language will change to “oppositional”.
If you believe this is a “slippery slope” fallacy, then as a counterpoint, I would refer to the actual history of the term “politically correct”:
In the early-to-mid 20th century, the phrase politically correct was used to describe strict adherence to a range of ideological orthodoxies within politics. In 1934, The New York Times reported that Nazi Germany was granting reporting permits “only to pure ‘Aryans’ whose opinions are politically correct”.[5]
The term political correctness first appeared in Marxist–Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At that time, it was used to describe strict adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that is, the party line.[24] Later in the United States, the phrase came to be associated with accusations of dogmatism in debates between communists and socialists. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The term “politically correct” was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.
— “Uncommon Differences”, The Lion and the Unicorn[4]
You’re right but the example you gave seems to illustrate a different effect that’s almost opposite — let me explain.
The phrase “politically correct” is language which meant something very specific, that was then hijacked by the far-right into the culture war where its meaning could be hollowed out/watered down to just mean basically “polite”, then used interchangeably in a motte-and-bailey style between the two meanings whenever useful, basically a weaponized fallacy designed to scare and confuse people — and you know that’s exactly what it’s doing by because no right-winger can define what this boogeyman really means. This has been done before with things like: Critical Race Theory, DEI, cancel culture, woke, cultural Marxism, cultural bolshevism/judeo bolshevism (if you go back far enough), “Great Replacement”, “illegals”, the list goes on.
I see your point. I should’ve limited my citation to the phrase’s authoritarian origins from the early 20th century.
To clarify, the slippery slope towards “political correctness” I wanted to describe is a sort of corporate techno-feudalist language bereft of any real political philosophy or moral epistemology. It is the language of LinkedIn, the “angel investor class”, financiers, cavalier buzzwords, sweeping overgeneralizations, and hyperbole. Yet, fundamentally, it will aim to erase any class awareness, empiricism, or contempt for arbitrary authority. The idea is to impose an avaricious financial-might-makes-right for whatever-we-believe-right-now way of thinking in every human being.
What I want to convey is that there is an unspoken effort by authoritarians of the so-called “left” and “right” who unapologetically yearn for the hybridization of both Huxley’s A Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 dystopian models, sometimes loudly proclaimed and other times subconsciously suggested.
The legal precedent for gaining the ability to ban content under the guise of preventing the dissemination of “obscenity” allows the future banning of “obscene” political opinions and “obscene” dissent.
Once the “obscene” political content is banned, the language will change to “offensive”.
After “offensive” content is banned, then the language will change to “inappropriate”.
After “inappropriate”, the language will change to “oppositional”.
If you believe this is a “slippery slope” fallacy, then as a counterpoint, I would refer to the actual history of the term “politically correct”:
You’re right but the example you gave seems to illustrate a different effect that’s almost opposite — let me explain.
The phrase “politically correct” is language which meant something very specific, that was then hijacked by the far-right into the culture war where its meaning could be hollowed out/watered down to just mean basically “polite”, then used interchangeably in a motte-and-bailey style between the two meanings whenever useful, basically a weaponized fallacy designed to scare and confuse people — and you know that’s exactly what it’s doing by because no right-winger can define what this boogeyman really means. This has been done before with things like: Critical Race Theory, DEI, cancel culture, woke, cultural Marxism, cultural bolshevism/judeo bolshevism (if you go back far enough), “Great Replacement”, “illegals”, the list goes on.
I see your point. I should’ve limited my citation to the phrase’s authoritarian origins from the early 20th century.
To clarify, the slippery slope towards “political correctness” I wanted to describe is a sort of corporate techno-feudalist language bereft of any real political philosophy or moral epistemology. It is the language of LinkedIn, the “angel investor class”, financiers, cavalier buzzwords, sweeping overgeneralizations, and hyperbole. Yet, fundamentally, it will aim to erase any class awareness, empiricism, or contempt for arbitrary authority. The idea is to impose an avaricious financial-might-makes-right for whatever-we-believe-right-now way of thinking in every human being.
What I want to convey is that there is an unspoken effort by authoritarians of the so-called “left” and “right” who unapologetically yearn for the hybridization of both Huxley’s A Brave New World and Orwell’s 1984 dystopian models, sometimes loudly proclaimed and other times subconsciously suggested.
These are my opinions and not meant as gospel.