Rileggendo Marcuse, si scoprono le radici storiche e filosofiche della censura, determinata dalla cosiddetta “correttezza ideologica”. Ma alla base di tutto, oggi come nel ’68, si annida una sfiducia nella democrazia
From the very beginning, the doctrines of political correctness were intended to silence and paralyze the Right. The locus classicus of this demand is Herbert Marcuse’s essay on “Repressive Tolerance,” written in the early 1960s when he was a Brandeis professor:
Liberating tolerance…would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance: … it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word.
Tolerance would only be granted to those with proper ideas, and committed to proper actions. And who would decide which ideas and actions were proper, and which were to be forbidden?
People rather like himself:
…everyone “in the maturity of his faculties” as a human being, everyone who has learned to think rationally and autonomously.
His students and followers, in other words. He wanted to create:
[a] democratic educational dictatorship of free men… in Mill, every rational human being participates in the discussion and decision–but only as a rational being. (In contemporary America) this would be a small number indeed, and not necessarily that of the elected representatives of the people. The problem is not that of an educational dictatorship, but that of breaking the tyranny of public opinion and its makers in the closed society.
Marcuse denied he was an elitist, insisting that once people were “educated” to accept ideas and actions that the society at large considered subversive, true freedom would reign supreme.
He’d be quite surprised to learn that his proposals are gathering momentum, precisely among those who consider themselves members of the intellectual elite. The movement extends from college campuses (for which he had some hope) to international “scientific” bodies (think about the campaigns against those who refuse to accept the dogmas of “climate change”), to the broader society. We have reached a point where a radical “activist” can go on national TV and call for the imprisonment of anyone in public office who disagrees with him. And the host murmurs that there might not be enough room.
Like Marcuse, the advocates of this rule-by-right-thinking-inellectuals invariably claim to be democracy’s best friends, even as they work for its doom. Take David Brooks for example, who proclaims that we’re in an era of democratic complacency and decay. He thinks that we’ve recently learned about the shortcomings of democratic republics: “The events of the past several years have exposed democracy’s structural flaws.”
And then he tells us things we learned back in the 1830s from Alexis de Tocqueville: democratic countries are lousy at long-range planning, our system of checks and balances can paralyze badly needed policies, etcetera etcetera and so forth. We show up badly, he says, when compared to innovative “Guardian States” like China and Singapore. Our schools stink when compared to South Korea’s. And best of all, he insists, “They are better at long-range thinking and can move fast because they limit democratic feedback and don’t face NIMBY-style impediments.”
Brooks, just like Marcuse, insists that he has come to save democracy, not to bury it. He wants “a strategy to make democracy dynamic again…use Lee Kuan Yew means (aka benevolent dictatorship, ML) to achieve Jeffersonian ends — to become less democratic at the national level in order to become more democratic at the local level.”
And what is his glorious solution? The model for the revivification of democracy?
Michael Ledeen
