In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was teetering on the edge of the dustbin of history, and freedom was on the march – but not on American campuses. There, to escape the subtle and not-so-subtle coercion of their would-be Leftist indoctrinators, students were compelled to act as Vaclav Havel’s “greengrocers,” even as the Berlin Wall was poised to topple.
While at the time the irony may have escaped these students’ notice, they were acutely aware of Left-wing faculty and administrators’ efforts to impose “political correctness.” Some on the Left embraced it; some on the Right resisted it; most just regurgitated what was necessary to avoid a spiteful Leftist professor saddling your GPA with a low grade for expressing an opinion politically to the right of Lenin.
In hindsight, did Gen X’s capacity to faithlessly echo political correctness to earn degrees fool the Left into presuming the indoctrination had been successful and, emboldened, led them to ratchet up their insanity to the extremist level of today’s DIE cult (“diversity, inclusion, and equity”)? Or did the Left realize they had been outfoxed by Gen X; and, consequently, deem more intensive and coercive methods of indoctrination and cultural control necessary? Perhaps, it was neither; and the current situation is the latest manifestation of the Left’s long-term psychological assault on American culture.
The most lucid prism in which to view the Left’s current assaults on American culture is provided by Mr. Greg Copley, who wrote in his August, 2022, Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy:
“We have come to use the term ‘information dominance’ to identify the process, but it is far less adequate as a framework than the earlier phrase, ‘psychological strategy.’
“Information dominance is not merely about controlling the narrative by volume (although that is a part of it); it is about defining the meaning of words, thoughts, and, therefore, options. It is about the imposition of one’s will on another, often co-opting and distorting words and meanings to suit the initiator. This requires ‘concept dominance’ [emphasis mine]; it is far broader than ‘information dominance.’
“Information, in essence, is tactical; concepts can be strategic. They form an underpinning of psychological strategy.
Using Mr. Copley’s prism, we can glean the Left’s psychological strategy. Their initial politically correct movement was an attempt at information dominance, whereby they flooded the universities and, later, the society at large, with their PC narrative. Today, the Left is aiming to attain concept dominance, whereby words that were once universally understood have now been radically revised or censored altogether – such as when a Leftist Supreme Court nominee professes how she cannot define the term “woman.”
Keep reading
You must be logged in to post a comment.