An eruption of political correctness on Eastern Europe's populist right helps clarify the source of political correctness on the American left. Poland has just passed a law that imposes jail time for any claim about Poles or Poland "being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich." Poland suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis, but plenty of individual Poles collaborated with them and helped exterminate Jews.
...The US government, the Israeli government, the President of France and most of the Western world deplored the Polish law. As it happens, similar laws already are on the books in Ukraine and Latvia.
...Poland's Law and Justice Party government is right wing, Catholic and nationalist. It strongly opposes the European Community's attempt to impose immigration quotas on its members, in alliance with anothother right-wing populists, Hungary's Viktor Orban as well as the Czech Republic's Miloš Zeman. But there is no difference whatever between the American Left's witch hunt against "micro-aggressions" and the imposition of speech codes at American universities, and the new Polish law. They both criminalize speech that injures self-esteem, and they do so for exactly the same reason. |
