[Alex Linder]

A more recent trend, and one more effective than Kennedy's denials, is to treat political correctness with a certain disdain or even silence without actually denying its left-wing credentials, and without renouncing the methods and goals of political correctness and multiculturalism. The BBC, Britain's state television and radio network, is especially adept at this sort of Orwellian deceit, appearing to state one thing but encouraging behavior and attitudes which are entirely consistent with politically correct objectives even if not referred to as such. Many Russians, Poles, Czechs, Bulgarians and East Germans who revered the BBC as a surrogate domestic broadcasting service during the Cold War will balk at such apparently harsh comments. Yet when it comes to the ugly side of multiculturalism in Britain today, and much of it is very ugly indeed, the BBC lacks that commitment to objectivity and truth, which once made it so feared by the men in the Kremlin. When Greg Dyke, who is appropriately known as the BBC's Director-General, apologises for the fact that the BBC is 'hideously white', one realises the degree to which politically correct ideas now control and shape the BBC. To paraphrase one of its first Director-Generals, the BBC has become a social menace of the first magnitude.

Despite the determined efforts of liberals and left-wingers to counter the association of political correctness with their favoured causes, the perception remains among the public that political correctness is essentially a creation of the left. The historical evidence, some of which I have marshaled here, supports that association, though evennow few seem to realise just how strong the Soviet legacy is. Enriched by his successors -- Soviet, Maoist, feminist, postmodernist and most recently multiculturalist -- political correctness still bears the stamp of Lenin, the founder of twentieth-century totalitarianism. The empire Lenin helped to build is, thankfully, no more. Yet one hundred years after his tract in revolutionary subversion, What is to be Done?, was first published, his ideas still command a great deal of loyalty. Ideas do indeed have consequences, as Richard Weaver has argued (Weaver, 1948). Contemporary versions of political correctness are Lenin's revenge.

To conclude I offer an allegory. It is pessimistic and belongs to the genre of low-budget horror films. Imagine a giant arachnid, defeated and mortally wounded, which, in its death throes, manages to ejaculate a stream of spores. The victor, savoring his hard-won triumph, fails to see that the spores have landed on his body. If not decontaminated they will begin the process of his metamorphosis into the very monster he has just vanquished.

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