Political correctness is ubiquitous in public discourse. When people engage in public discourse, whether they are so-called experts or ordinary mortals, they mostly stick to political correctness. Because they know they will not be subjected to unnecessary scrutiny as long as they comply with political correctness, and therefore it has become an instrument to play safe.
Political correctness emerges from dominant narratives and an innate urge to avoid hurting others’ feelings. To gain acceptance for their words, the majority of people in any society adhere to political correctness. Now, are these dominant narratives objective? Are they rational? In most cases, they are neither rational nor objective. Despite that, people blindly subscribe to these dominant narratives just because they want to play safe and claim the moral high ground.
Humans, being social animals, comply with societal conventions. This compliance is innate to their psychology. And moreover, there is a notion that expert opinions are standard and hence should be adopted by the rest of society. Therefore, when so-called experts bring forth new narratives and peddle them through the mass media, people tend to adopt them.
How do the dominant narratives develop?
Every society gives rise to certain dominant narratives. Socio-political, cultural, and religious influences play a vital part in the development of these narratives. And the so-called experts in various fields, especially historians, social scientists, political commentators, and even religious preachers, act as thought leaders, and through their writings and teachings, pave the way for these narratives. By broadcasting these ideas, the media not only builds these narratives, but also solidifies them in society.
These dominant narratives are not built in a month or a year. They are built over decades and even centuries. And every narrative has an eco-system in which it thrives before it starts dominating public discourse. An ecosystem is a group of likeminded people who are considered to be intellectuals. And mind you, the credentials of many of these intellectuals are questionable. Most of us are familiar with William Shakespeare’s quote, “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them”. And these intellectuals, who are mostly found on university campuses and newspaper offices, peddle their subjective ideas and opinions through the mass media.
May be that is the reason we have left-wing historians and right-wing historians. All these historians or political commentators see things through their prisms and interpret things from their own perspective. Sometimes they even go beyond interpreting things to manipulate history, and even give a spin to history to propagate their narratives. And the media, which is far from being objective, provides a platform for such writers. And that is how some narratives become dominant. As media organisations never give a platform to ordinary people to express themselves, they just remain mute spectators to the propaganda, despite being important stakeholders in the discourse.
When the mainstream media was dominant, they controlled the narrative while providing a platform for a set of thought leaders. However, the situation has changed since the advent of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, which have democratised public discourse by providing a platform for even ordinary people. Ordinary people not only express themselves on social media platforms, but also question the mainstream media. When the mainstream media publishes misleading news items just to push their agenda, the netizens question them, fact-check them, and, in many cases, force them to withdraw their commentary. That does not mean the social media platforms are reliable and trustworthy. Many mischievous people misuse these platforms to spread fake news and propaganda. Even the blue-ticked handles are caught peddling fake news on SM platforms. However, despite these drawbacks, they succeeded in democratising public discourse by challenging the monopoly of the mainstream media.
The very fact that even many mainstream media organizations are depending on tweets made by state heads and celebs for their reporting and even embedding the tweets in their stories makes it amply clear that mainstream media no longer controls the narratives. Moreover, very few people are reading the long editorial columns and Op-eds and they got habituated to consuming the snippets and soundbites that are available online.
Narratives don’t play a prominent role in exact sciences such as mathematics or Physics. Being universal truths, they don’t leave any room to narrative building. Humanities, especially history, sociology, political science, economics, and even theology, not being exact sciences, leave a lot of room for speculation and narrative building. Because this is where most of the ideological wars are raging. Left-wing Vs right-wing, Islam Vs Christianity, capitalism Vs Socialism, democracy Vs theocracy and the list is unending. And people keep coining new terms such as ‘Brahminical Patriarchy’ to push their narratives.
Political correctness is such a powerful thing that as long as you sound politically correct, people don’t look into your real identity, your real nature, and your real intentions. For example, in India, even closet Islamists, who yearn for Sharia at the bottom of their hearts, talk about human rights, democracy, and gender justice, despite the fact that these progressive ideals don’t have any place in Sharia.
And the same is the case with Communists. Even though communism gave birth to highly authoritarian and repressive regimes led by people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc, the communists in India always talk about democracy and human rights as if they pioneered those concepts.
The political arena in most of the countries has become the center of these ideological wars. These wars are not won by deploying soldiers and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). These wars are won by nurturing an ‘intellectual’ ecosystem that peddles a particular narrative to promote the interests of some social, political, national, and religious groups. And ownership over the media has also become vital for transmitting these narratives.
The West, for long, enjoyed a hegemony over the rest of the world by owning transnational broadcasting companies such as the BBC, the CNN etc, to push through their narratives. If the West wants to demean a nation or a culture, they plant unfavourable news and opinion pieces against them. They use topics such as human rights and religious freedom as a cane to beat them up with. But that situation is gradually changing. For example, the Arab world opened their own 24×7 news channel called Al Jazeera to combat the propaganda from the west. Even some Indian channels such as Republic TV and WION have gone global to combat unfavourable western narratives towards India.
This battle of narratives is never-ending. Whoever nurtures the best ecosystems and manages to articulate their narrative in the best possible way emerges victorious, and their narratives define political correctness in a society.
However, political correctness does not always lead you to the truth. Most of the time, it makes people and governments appease a community or a section of society. The appeasement only gives enough time for violent and regressive forces to gain strength and even become undefeatable. These days, a tendency is developing all over the world to brand every criticism as hate speech just to appease certain sections of society. This tendency effectively buries the truth and may even take society back to the stone age.
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