Political Correctness is MARXISM and was started to DESTROY OUR COUNTRY as we know it

Since I was less than impressed with my sojourn into the pages of the Telegraph and feeling even less sure about what Political Correctness Gone Mad actually is, I thought I'd head over to the Campaign Against Political Correctness to find out.  They get mentions in the press, they have a representative in Parliament who is also the go to guy for quotations in fatuous tabloid stories and they got a founder member elected as Mayor of Doncaster, so they must be able to help.

Handily, they include a definition on their website (a site that presumably reflects what the internet would look like if we all recognised 'accessibility' and 'looking nice' as the politically correct nonsense they are).  Apparently:

Actually, political correctness is quite difficult to define.  Most dictionary definitions of the word are in themselves politically correct and so not a lot of use!

Damn those politically correct dictionaries!  Apparently, Political Correctness is not 'the avoidance of terms or behaviour considered to be discriminatory or offensive to certain groups of people' (from AskOxford), but is instead:

Political correctness is where people change their words or behaviour to try to avoid causing offence but usually do not consult the people they are trying not to offend before taking this action which often leads to offence and upset in itself.

I think that's way more snappy.  It's illustrated with the Daily Express front page, headlined 'NOW IT'S 'BAA BAA RAINBOW SHEEP'', which is apt, since the story is one of the most famous PC Gone Mad myths of all time.  It would appear that political correctness is also 'where people playfully change the words of nursery rhymes to expand children's vocabularies and have a bit of fun' too.

But, of course, the definition doesn't end there.  Political correctness is also positive discrimination, it encourages offence to be taken where none is intended and it involves rewriting history or something.  The interesting bit is where it comes from.  Where is that?

Well, it is understood that the concept was thought up by a group of intellectuals who came together to form the “Frankfurt School” in 1923.   They developed “Cultural Marxism” and “Critical Theory”. The institute was modelled on the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow.   In 1933 the members of the Frankfurt School moved to the United States and eventually spread out onto the campuses of American Colleges.  These intellectual Marxists included Herbert Marcuse who coined the phrase, “Make Love Not War” during the anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

Dun-dun-durnnn.  It's the Marxists again!  Run for your lives.  There are a couple of links to Wikipedia articles about the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism to make this explanation look a bit more impressive and less like a crazy, poorly supported assertion, but it really isn't.  According to part of the Cultural Marxism entry:

According to Richard Lichtman, a social psychology professor at the Wright Institute, the Frankfurt School is "a convenient target that very few people really know anything about.... By grounding their critique in Marxism and using the Frankfurt School, [cultural conservatives] make it seem like it's quite foreign to anything American. It takes on a mysterious cast and translates as an incomprehensible, anti-American, foreign movement that is only interested in undermining the U.S." Lichtman says that the "idea being transmitted is that we are being infected from the outside."

And:

Progressive author Bill Berkowitz adds, "It's not clear whether this diffusion of the cultural Marxism conspiracy theory into the mainstream will continue. Certainly, the anti-Semitism that underlies much of the scenario suggests that it may be repudiated in the coming years. But for now, the spread of this particular theory is a classic case of concepts that originated on the radical right slowly but surely making their way into the American mind."

Presumably, since the Campaign Against Political Correctness get quoted so widely and have contacts in Parliament and all that stuff they must have plenty of in-depth coverage of these things to show they're not just people who have fallen for a bizarre wingnutty conspiracy theory without knowing much about the subject.  Except they don't, but they are gullible enough to fall for the BAA BAA RAINBOW SHEEP stuff, so make of that what you will.

There's way more argument-by-unsupported-assertion fun that I can't be arsed to look at, but I particularly like this:

You can’t categorise whole groups of people, treat them differently based on that grouping and then expect them to integrate happily after that.

Since it comes after this:

It means that those spouting political correctness assume that they have the right to give opinions for people they perceive to be from "minorities" without usually first consulting the people they purport to speak for.

Which assumes that you can in fact categorise groups of people and even manage to consult those groupings to decide whether or not you should treat them differently.  Ooh!  Brainaches!

Another favourite bit is this:

Political correctness is intolerant of any view which is not in line with its view. 

Because it comes directly after this:

Nothing good is likely to come from something which was started to destroy our country as we know it and which is so controlling and dictating.

Which itself comes directly after an entire section headed 'What is wrong with political correctness?'

I'm confused - who is intolerant?  This page is illustrated with headlines from two stories about people doing things differently to be a bit fun and creative as examples of something that 'was started to destroy our country as we know it'.  Scratch the surface of anyone vociferously anti-PC and you'll find the mirror image of the PC boogeyman they're so angry about.

This site really is a lot of fun, especially the news section.  The first link there is to a story that misrepresents the Metropolitan Police's reasoning to start using the term 'multiple-perpetrator rape' rather than 'gang-rape'.  The police say it's because it could be confusing since 'gang-rape' implies the involvement of gangs - Telegraph says it's because it's 'too emotive', which is a nonsense red herring.  There are loads more links to stuff that's been debunked loads of times over.

The trouble is, if you're looking for somewhere you can find proper debate about what political correctness is, along with concrete examples that you can actually get to grips with, this ain't it.