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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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