12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect” terminology are n

12. Those who are most sensitive about “politically incorrect”

terminology are not the average black ghetto-dweller, Asian immigrant,

abused woman or disabled person, but a minority of activists, many of

whom do not even belong to any “oppressed” group but come from

privileged strata of society. Political correctness has its stronghold

among university professors, who have secure employment with

comfortable salaries, and the majority of whom are heterosexual, white

males from middle-class families.

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of

groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American

Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists

themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit

it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely

because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with

their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE

inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as

strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women

may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,

good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western

civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The

reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not

correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West

because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so

forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in

primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he

GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points

out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in

Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the

leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates

America and the West because they are strong and successful.

16. Words like “self-confidence,” “self-reliance,” “initiative”,

“enterprise,” “optimism,” etc. play little role in the liberal and

leftist vocabulary. The leftist is anti-individualistic,

pro-collectivist. He wants society to solve everyone’s needs for them,

take care of them. He is not the sort of person who has an inner sense

of confidence in his own ability to solve his own problems and satisfy

his own needs. The leftist is antagonistic to the concept of

competition because, deep inside, he feels like a loser.

17. Art forms that appeal to modern leftist intellectuals tend to

focus on sordidness, defeat and despair, or else they take an

orgiastic tone, throwing off rational control as if there were no hope

of accomplishing anything through rational calculation and all that

was left was to immerse oneself in the sensations of the moment.

18. Modern leftist philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science,

objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally

relative. It is true that one can ask serious questions about the

foundations of scientific knowledge and about how, if at all, the

concept of objective reality can be defined. But it is obvious that

modern leftist philosophers are not simply cool-headed logicians

systematically analyzing the foundations of knowledge. They are deeply

involved emotionally in their attack on truth and reality. They attack

these concepts because of their own psychological needs. For one

thing, their attack is an outlet for hostility, and, to the extent

that it is successful, it satisfies the drive for power. More

importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they

classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and

other beliefs as false (i.e. failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings

of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification

of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or

inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the

concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are

antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior

because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or

inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or

blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is

“inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been

brought up properly.

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of

inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter,

a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith

in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but

he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong,

and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant

behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings

of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as

individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the

leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization

or a mass movement with which he identifies himself.

20. Notice the masochistic tendency of leftist tactics. Leftists

protest by lying down in front of vehicles, they intentionally provoke

police or racists to abuse them, etc. These tactics may often be

effective, but many leftists use them not as a means to an end but

because they PREFER masochistic tactics. Self-hatred is a leftist

trait.

21. Leftists may claim that their activism is motivated by compassion

or by moral principle, and moral principle does play a role for the

leftist of the oversocialized type. But compassion and moral principle

cannot be the main motives for leftist activism. Hostility is too

prominent a component of leftist behavior; so is the drive for power.

Moreover, much leftist behavior is not rationally calculated to be of

benefit to the people whom the leftists claim to be trying to help.

For example, if one believes that affirmative action is good for black

people, does it make sense to demand affirmative action in hostile or

dogmatic terms? Obviously it would be more productive to take a

diplomatic and conciliatory approach that would make at least verbal

and symbolic concessions to white people who think that affirmative

action discriminates against them. But leftist activists do not take

such an approach because it would not satisfy their emotional needs.

Helping black people is not their real goal. Instead, race problems

serve as an excuse for them to express their own hostility and

frustrated need for power. In doing so they actually harm black

people, because the activists’ hostile attitude toward the white

majority tends to intensify race hatred.

22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would

have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse

for making a fuss.

23. We emphasize that the foregoing does not pretend to be an accurate

description of everyone who might be considered a leftist. It is only

a rough indication of a general tendency of leftism.