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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

Strange how the meaning of "political correctness" has shifted, since it was coined to cover the deployment of "political officers" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar ) enforcing adherence to communism within the Soviet military and wider society. All of these films were made under a strict political censorship system.

(Russian cinema is legitimately great, though; why not watch the traditional pre-launch Soyuz quarantine film, "White Sun of Desert"; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066565/ It's rather like a more cynical, more Russian "Dollars Trilogy" film)

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To add a little background, the "White Sun of the Desert" belongs to the genre which is sometimes called the "eastern", in the footsteps of the American "western". It describes what was known in the Soviet historiography as "the establishment of the Soviet power in Central Asia".

It hasn't shifted.

>Strange how the meaning of "political correctness" has shifted, since it was coined to cover the deployment of "political officers" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_commissar )

What makes you say that? I did a word search on your link and don't see "political correctness" in there anywhere.

They probably mean they don’t like it being used to describe things they like being made ‘incorrect’ and taboo. Or at least a certain segment of our culture has if not themselves.

Being politically correct these days can be an exercise in sanity. That’s why all the big corps are hiring expensive professional firms to do progressive campaigns (even the cigarette companies here in Canada have “diversity and inclusiveness” on the lighters they sell hwith their cigarettes). There’s good money in helping the megacorps, academia, and gov agencies fit in with the young university crowd.

It’s like a race to include more and more things so it’s best to go hard as possible early to not be left behind. Especially when you don’t have to actually do anything real to help the groups IRL... just change your language and run the right ad and social campaigns. And not say the “wrong” things today, even if it was decades ago.

Apparent the “real” help and change (you know, things besides performative acts) will come as a product of these megacorps becoming politically correct in the modern sense.

It's very much a deliberate metaphor.

I have to disagree a bit, even when I was watching the movie on Soviet TV, when there was nothing else on for weeks or months, I was always bored to tears by 'White Sun of Desert'. To be fair, acting and characters are pretty good, but not very exciting otherwise..

Words can have multiple meanings. From a US perspective, this does seem weird, as "political correctness" is largely about not punching down on people who face adversity in our culture. The Russian definition seems to mean punching up; criticizing the government.

A Soviet would probably reply with the claim that the party was the direct representative of the working class, and therefore not any more of an acceptable target than members of the working class themselves.

Political correctness in the US is largely about people with "privilege" being offended on behalf of other people and enforcing rules that help no one.

Political correctness in the us means not straying too far from the mainstream. The specifics of what that means is constantly changing.

We just saw an example of how a joke about mobile game developers going out of their way to addict people was twisted into being a joke about mobile gamers, and therefore somehow directly into being racist and misogynist, and called "punching down", and used to call for boycotts and hate.

I'm sure that Soviets seventy years ago were just as convinced they were right(eous) as you are.

Clearly the Revolution and the Party serve the workers, so by challenging them you are threatening the glorious future of the Worker. In exactly the same way, the modern left uses "tolerance" and disadvantaged classes as a weapon against people they don't like.

Political correctness has always been about strengthening your hold on power.

Well, political correctness in that context is a term deployed by people opposing greater respect for minorities and such, so the pejorative association is intended. Nobody uses that term to describe their own work.

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