The Russian dissident writer Vladimir Bukovsky (the subject of the chastushka, “They swapped a hooligan / For Luis Corvalán”), who now lives in Great Britain, visited Bulgaria at the invitation of local publishers. His speech to readers, a critique of the ideology of “political correctness,” caused a major scandal. We present some fragments from his speech, in a reverse translation from the Bulgarian:
“The events whose 20th anniversary we are celebrating—the collapse and disintegration of the Soviet Union—did not surprise us dissidents. But then something strange happened.
After the Second World War and the collapse of Nazism, the entire political spectrum in the world shifted to the left. This is understandable: fascism and Nazism are identified with right-wing ideologies (in fact, this identification is completely unfair, but that is another topic). Communism collapsed—and it would seem that political sentiments should have shifted to the right. But nothing of the sort happened. In 1992, 1993, and 1994, the left came to power in Europe… The collapse of the socialist bloc coincided with the emergence of new utopian ideologies in the West.
Political correctness as an international phenomenon began in the 1990s, but as a movement, it had existed before. I first encountered it in 1983 or 1984. I was walking to my laboratory (Bukovsky is a neurophysiologist—Regions.ru), and two young women were coming down the stairs toward me. I held the door for them. They looked at me with contempt and said, “Male chauvinist pig.” I didn’t understand anything and was very surprised. I told my colleagues, and they started laughing: “Oh, they’re from Berkeley. All the radical left-wing movements come from there. It’s some new fad—feminists; they say that when we men treat a woman like a woman, we humiliate her.”
Feminists teach that “woman” is a social construct. Supposedly, if men behaved toward women as they do toward men, women would become men: our behavior toward them is what makes them women; a woman is a victim of male stereotypes. This concept, born at Berkeley, spread with astonishing speed throughout the world. In 1984, we laughed at it—ten years later, it had taken over the world. All universities opened “gender studies” departments. As for me, I don’t think anything has changed in the relations between the sexes in a million years, but these pseudosciences about male transgressions have proliferated horribly: we don’t look at women the right way, and we don’t treat them the right way.
And then it became pure Orwell: you can’t, for instance, address a woman as “Miss” or “Mrs.” because that defines a woman by her marital status. They introduced the impossible-for-English “Ms.”… They are constantly inventing new words, and if you don’t speak as you’re told, you are a male chauvinist pig. They are even rewriting the Bible so that God is female.
I was used to the company of lunatics from my time in Soviet psychiatric prisons. But the trouble is that American society immediately makes every idiotic new trend practically mandatory. In America, as, indeed, in Europe, the population behaves in an incredibly conformist way. You have to accept everything they foist on you as the norm. To be successful, you must be a conformist. And so these American templates are spreading everywhere as immutable rules, even affecting legislation.
Feminist movements declared that men are “sexists” who view women exclusively as sexual objects, and, therefore, everything related to sex must be excluded from daily interaction between men and women. Flirting was declared an act of aggression and an attempt to enslave women. Now, in the US, an employer dares not speak with a female employee alone—at least one witness must be present, or he could be accused of sexual harassment, which means the end of his career and social standing.
In the same way, other minorities—homosexuals, black people, members of sects, and so on—began to make their demands. Laws on “hate speech” appeared, something like Article 70 of the Soviet Criminal Code, under which I was tried. “Hate speech” was declared to be any mention of racial differences or sexual orientation. You are not allowed to acknowledge obvious facts. If you mention them publicly, it is a crime.
In England last year, all public Christmas events were canceled: the British flag contains the cross of St. George, and this would supposedly offend Muslims by reminding them of the Crusades. At the same time, the Muslims themselves are not demanding any such thing. A Muslim who runs a little shop near my house hung a flag with the cross in his window to demonstrate that he disagrees with this idiotic ban—but who will listen to him…
This has led to such censorship that Shakespeare could not have lived in our time. Half of his plays are no longer staged: The Merchant of Venice is anti-Semitism, Othello is racism, The Taming of the Shrew is sexism… One teacher in London refused to take her class to see Romeo and Juliet, calling the play a “disgusting heterosexual spectacle.”
Mass censorship is reinforced by criminal law. You can go to jail for a joke about homosexuals. Notice how quickly it has escalated to repression.
There was a philosopher named Herbert Marcuse, a revisionist Marxist. He disagreed with Marx on one point: Marx considered the proletariat to be the revolutionary class (which is obviously not true), while Marcuse taught that the true revolutionary class consists of various minorities. Pathology must be declared the norm, and the norm—pathology. “Only then,” Marcuse writes, “will we finally destroy bourgeois society.”
The activists who supposedly defend the rights of minorities—homosexual and feminist organizations—do not actually care about minorities. They, like Lenin with the workers in his time, use them as a tool of pressure and control over society, and they bring them more harm than anyone else. In America, a friend’s wife founded a movement called “Women of America Against Feminism” seven years ago. She started with a few friends, and now their magazine has a circulation of 2 million. Women are beginning to understand that feminism is hostile to them, that it destroys their lives, that it does not let them choose what they want, but rather what various activists impose on them.
In short, we are dealing with a serious ideology that is trying to destroy our society under the guise of political correctness. The worse things are for the minorities, the better it is for their leaders: they will have something to defend. But their task is to destroy our society, and this is a new, more vicious version of Marxism.
The censorship introduced by the defenders of “political correctness” has relieved them of the need for dialogue. If I were to argue with them, I would dismantle their points in a few minutes. But who would let me? I, a full citizen of Great Britain, cannot write an article on this topic, publish a book, or participate in a public debate on the matter—because there are no such debates. You will not hear any arguments for or against political correctness on television.
This ideology is being forced upon us. I have nothing against lunatics; I spent many years in psychiatric wards and am quite tolerant of them. My only condition is not to have someone else’s ideas imposed on me. I remember my first argument with a KGB investigator. I was 16 at the time. He asked me, “Why do you hate us so much?” I answered, “I don’t hate you. I simply don’t believe you. You want to build communism—great, go build it. But I don’t. Can I just have two square meters for myself where there won’t be any communism?”
[05.10.2009]
Based on materials from the portal E-vestnik