Introduction

Abstract

My argument in this book is that the ceaseless assault in recent decades by conservative polemicists against political correctness among academic leftists (along with the parallel assault on “the liberal media”) has in large part been calculated as a red herring to distract public attention from far more pervasive misdeeds by political and corporate conservatives. Although this assault may in some cases have some validity, in many other cases it does not, and I submit that conservative propagandists have widely subordinated scrupulous efforts to distinguish valid from invalid cases to the greater goal of scapegoating the American left for every socioeconomic or cultural ill. So it is necessary to place the conservative assault on leftist political correctness in the context of a continuous series of political and cultural offensives since the 1970s by what has variously been termed “the right-wing propaganda machine” (Conason), “the Republican noise machine” (Brock), “the conservative counter-establishment” (Blumenthal), or “the conservative echo-chamber” (Alterman). Subsequent chapters will describe in detail the origins, components, and political and rhetorical strategies of this apparatus.

Everything spiritual and valuable has a gross, revolting parody, which looks exactly like it. Only unremitting judgment can distinguish between them.

(William Empson, paraphrasing Jonathan Swift, Some 58.)