This essay examines how political correctness, promoted in the name of “equality” and “fairness,” has worked as a tool to undermine free and democratic societies from within.
Through a dialogue on South Korea’s leftward shift, the dismantling of Western civilization, and the hidden nature of the cultural Cold War, it sharply reveals the danger of this ideological strategy.

2019-04-14
“Equality” sounds good.
But I have once again come to feel keenly that PC, political correctness in the name of equality and fairness, was in fact a tool for destroying free and democratic society.

The following is from the book below, which a highly well-read friend strongly recommended that I read.

Political Correctness That Destroys Freedom and Democracy

Hong
The pro-China and anti-American forces are thoroughly destroying the Western civilization of liberal democracy that had taken root in South Korea.
They flatly deny capitalism, siphon money away from large corporations and the wealthy, and are single-mindedly pressing ahead only with the realization of socialism.
“Equality” sounds good, but I have once again come to feel keenly that PC, political correctness in the name of equality and fairness, was in fact a tool for destroying free and democratic society.

Sakurai
Specifically?

Hong
In December 2017, when I went to Seoul for reporting, I came across an excellent book titled The True Nature of PC That Elected Trump, which has not yet been translated into Japanese.
Its author, Hong Ji-su, is someone who has long studied journalism in Europe and the United States.
When I read her book, the long-standing mystery of why free and democratic countries such as the United States and South Korea had fallen into their present condition was finally solved.

What first surprised me in the book was the question, “Who was the first to use the term PC?”
The answer is “Lenin.”
The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 succeeded, but this “class revolution” did not spread to the capitalist countries of Western Europe.
So the communists of that time reviewed and reconsidered matters, and began putting forward a new line of struggle.

Communists such as Antonio Gramsci, who analyzed the errors of Marxism, and Georg Lukács, the politician who advocated “Western Marxism,” arrived at the following way of thinking.

“Western civilization blinds the working class and prevents it from understanding its true class interests.
Therefore, in order for the communist revolution to succeed, Western civilization itself must be destroyed.”

In other words, it was a shift from class struggle to “revolution through the destruction of civilization and culture.”
Cultural terrorism aimed at creating new values began, and while destroying South Korea’s traditional values, it also began the destruction of civilization and culture by imposing sex education on children.

Sakurai
It is the first time I have heard that PC was a political term used by Lenin.
So it was one of socialism’s cultural strategies for destroying traditional culture?

Hong
Yes.
South Korea’s leftward shift began in earnest with the “Gwangju Incident” in 1980, and after the Seoul Olympics it advanced rapidly.
I was truly astonished at how quickly South Korean society tilted to the left, and I began investigating the cause.
Books and papers by researchers traced the history of this leftward shift, but many unresolved questions still remained.

What interested me most was the development of the Korean Peninsula after the West won the Cold War, the Soviet Union collapsed, and America pulled back from the Cold War.
Even though the seeds of a new U.S.-China Cold War centered on China were already visible in Asia, America lost its vigilance toward communism.
Within the free camp, South Korea alone was left behind against the offensive of the communist bloc, and a large part of the story is that the country rapidly tilted leftward.
I understood that much, but many mysteries still remained as to the reason why.
However, when I read The True Nature of PC That Elected Trump, which I mentioned earlier, the mystery was solved.

After the Second World War ended and the East-West Cold War began, capitalist countries began to adopt socialist policies on a large scale and imitate them.
Since socialist countries boasted that “all welfare is free for us, and we have realized ideal welfare,” capitalist countries were inevitably forced into competition to introduce welfare systems as well.

Sakurai
Indeed, after the Cold War, capitalist countries one after another introduced generous welfare systems.
You can see this clearly in the case of Japan, but these may well be called policies amounting in effect to socialism.
The state imposed heavy inheritance taxes and the like, took parents’ estates away in taxes, and introduced progressive taxation so that enormous taxes were imposed on high-income earners.
Then the collected taxes were distributed to the poor.
That is precisely a socialist way of thinking.
Conditions may differ by country, but were socialist policies such as those described here also strongly promoted in South Korea?

Hong
It can be said that the struggle of PC, which destroys the roots of Western civilization, was persistently waged against South Korea over many decades and bore fruit.

The East-West Cold War proceeded in two aspects: a political and economic Cold War, and a cultural Cold War.
Unfortunately, however, the true nature of the cultural Cold War was not sufficiently visible to our eyes.
The fact that this weakness was thoroughly exploited has now become a major problem for the advanced
nations of today.