"I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism"
About this Quote
Calling political correctness "linguistic fascism" is an intentionally provocative bait-and-switch: P. D. James yokes a soft-power cultural norm to a hard-power regime, then pulls the lever marked memory. The line isn’t a careful equivalence so much as an emotional argument delivered with the authority of lived history. By invoking "my generation who went to war against fascism", she’s not just making a claim about speech; she’s staking ownership over the moral vocabulary of the 20th century, reminding listeners that for some people censorship is not a campus controversy but a fought-for boundary between democracy and coercion.
The phrase "can be" does important legalistic work. It keeps her from arguing that political correctness is fascism, while still laundering the accusation into the room. "Linguistic" narrows the charge to language policing - euphemisms, enforced terminologies, social penalties - but "fascism" expands it into existential dread. That mismatch is the point: she wants the reader to feel the disproportion, because she’s arguing that language is where authoritarianism rehearses.
Context matters. James came of age during wartime Britain, when propaganda and social conformity had visible stakes, and she spent decades writing crime fiction obsessed with institutions, rules, and the thin line between order and oppression. Her subtext is less "don’t be polite" than "don’t let moral certainty harden into compulsion". The shiver she describes is cultural: a generational alarm system triggered when public virtue starts sounding like enforced unanimity.
The phrase "can be" does important legalistic work. It keeps her from arguing that political correctness is fascism, while still laundering the accusation into the room. "Linguistic" narrows the charge to language policing - euphemisms, enforced terminologies, social penalties - but "fascism" expands it into existential dread. That mismatch is the point: she wants the reader to feel the disproportion, because she’s arguing that language is where authoritarianism rehearses.
Context matters. James came of age during wartime Britain, when propaganda and social conformity had visible stakes, and she spent decades writing crime fiction obsessed with institutions, rules, and the thin line between order and oppression. Her subtext is less "don’t be polite" than "don’t let moral certainty harden into compulsion". The shiver she describes is cultural: a generational alarm system triggered when public virtue starts sounding like enforced unanimity.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|
More Quotes by D. James
Add to List
