From this 2005 interview:
“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” – Dr. Theodore Dalrymple
By cleverly utilizing dishonest terms and phrases, we have been manipulated into conceding the debate to leftists/Marxists before it is begun simply because of words are redefined to frame the debate. “Corporate Tax Loophole” and “Legalized Tax Fraud” (see article here) are phrases used by liberals and socialists to make it seem like taking completely legal advantage of tax law is somehow immoral or unethical. Like anyone utilizing tax deductions or laws to pay as little tax as possible, corporations are demonized for doing the same, as if it is somehow their moral obligation not to find ways to pay as little tax as possible. They are being demonized by the left by the lie of mischaracterization when they use a term to describe something that is not what that term means.
Take the term “hate”. The left paints anyone that doesn’t agree with their social agenda as espousing “hate”, or “violence”, against some protected group. Using their domination of the major media and entertainment market, and employing rabid gangs of “Social Justice Warriors”, anyone that simply disagrees with them and states their disagreement publicly is attacked as a “hater” or a “bigot”. If you call an illegal immigrant “illegal”, you’re a racist – it doesn’t even matter the race of the immigrants in question. If you express concerns about public bathrooms becoming gender neutral, you can be fired, like Curt Schilling. In this way, honest debate is avoided and supplanted by emotionally charged false terminology that frames the debate in an entirely dishonest way.
Such as “tax cuts” “budget cuts” [corrected thanks to hrun]. With baseline budgeting, “cutting taxes the budget” can only mean “reduction in the rate of tax budget increase”. Thus the debate is lost before it begins; the debate is never about actually cutting taxes the budget, but only about reducing the amount of increase. Your “rights” can mean anything a leftist/progressive thinks you should get for free from the government, or provide you with whatever protections they think one ought to have. Requiring a photo ID to vote becomes “racism” and “disenfranchisement”. Refusing to force the public to pay for women’s contraceptives and abortions becomes a hate-filled “war on women” or being “against women’s rights” (while the real war on women, being conducted by Islamists worldwide, goes on unnoticed by leftists). Performers boycott North Carolina for it’s “anti-LGBT” bathroom law, while the same performers gleefully perform in Dubai where homosexuals are executed. Those who simply doubt a particular view held by many scientists are framed as “anti-science”. The term “skepticism” now only applies if one ridicules that which it is politically correct to ridicule and dismiss; if you are skeptical of the wrong things, you are no longer a skeptic, you are a “denier”.
We live in a time where telling truths against the politically correct narrative, or simply voicing an opinion that contradicts it, is dangerous, because truthful terminology has been politically re-characterized by the leftists in media, politics and academia as hate speech.
“In times of deceit telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” – George Orwell.