1970s energy crisis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

1970s energy crisis

Real and nominal price of oil, 1968–2006.
Date	1973–1980
Also known as	1970s oil crisis

The 1970s energy crisis occurred when the Western world, particularly the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, faced substantial petroleum shortages as well as elevated prices. The two worst crises of this period were the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 energy crisis, when, respectively, the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution triggered interruptions in Middle Eastern oil exports.

The crisis began to unfold as petroleum production in the United States and some other parts of the world peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s. World oil production per capita began a long-term decline after 1979. The oil crises prompted the first shift towards energy-saving (in particular, fossil fuel-saving) technologies.

The major industrial centers of the world were forced to contend with escalating issues related to petroleum supply. Western countries relied on the resources of countries in the Middle East and other parts of the world. The crisis led to stagnant economic growth in many countries as oil prices surged. Although there were genuine concerns with supply, part of the run-up in prices resulted from the perception of a crisis. The combination of stagnant growth and price inflation during this era led to the coinage of the term stagflation. By the 1980s, both the recessions of the 1970s and adjustments in local economies to become more efficient in petroleum usage, controlled demand sufficiently for petroleum prices worldwide to return to more sustainable levels.

The period was not uniformly negative for all economies. Petroleum-rich countries in the Middle East benefited from increased prices and the slowing production in other areas of the world. Some other countries, such as Norway, Mexico, and Venezuela, benefited as well. In the United States, Texas and Alaska, as well as some other oil-producing areas, experienced major economic booms due to soaring oil prices even as most of the rest of the nation struggled with the stagnant economy. Many of these economic gains, however, came to a halt as prices stabilized and dropped in the 1980s.

Key periods

Arab-Israeli conflict

Ever since Israel declared independence in 1948 there was conflict between Arabs and Israelis in the Middle East, including a number of wars. The Suez Crisis, also known as the Second Arab–Israeli war, was sparked by Israel's southern port of Eilat being blocked by Egypt, which also nationalized the Suez Canal belonging to Anglo-French investors. One of the objectives of the invasion was the removal of President Gamal Abdel Nasser who was aligning with the Soviet Union.

The Six-Day War of 1967 included an Israeli invasion of the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula, which resulted in Egypt closing the Suez Canal for eight years. The canal was cleared in 1974 and opened again in 1975 after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Egypt tried to take back the Sinai. OAPEC countries cut production of oil and placed an embargo on oil exports to the United States after Richard Nixon requested $2.2 billion to support Israel in the war. Nevertheless, the embargo lasted only until January 1974, though the price of oil remained high afterwards.

Production peaks around 1970

United States oil production peaked in 1970.

Further information: Peak oil

The real price of petroleum was stable in the 1970 timeframe, but there had been a sharp increase in American imports, putting a strain on American balance of trade, alongside other developed nations. During the 1960s, petroleum production in some of the world's top producers with extraction technology at the time began to peak. West Germany reached its production peak in 1966, Venezuela and the United States in 1970, and Iran in 1974. Canada's conventional oil production peaked around this same time (though non-conventional production later helped revive Canadian production to some degree). The worldwide production per capita peaked soon afterward.

Although production in other parts of the world was increasing, the peaks in these regions began to put substantial upward pressure on world oil prices. Equally as important, control of the oil supply became an increasingly important problem as countries like West Germany and the U.S. became increasingly dependent on foreign suppliers for this key resource.

1973 oil crisis

Main article: 1973 oil crisis

The 1973 oil crisis is a direct consequence of the US production peak in late 1960 and the beginning of 1971 (and shortages, especially for heating oil, started from there). The "embargo" as described below is the "practical name" given to the crisis. For the main Arab producers, the "embargo" allowed them to show to "the Arab street" that they were doing something for the Palestinians. In real market terms (number of barrels) the embargo was almost a non-event, and only from a few countries, towards a few countries.

The "Embargo" was never effective from Saudi Arabia towards the US, as reported by James E. Akins in interview at 24:10 in the documentary "la face cachée du pétrole part 2". Akins, who audited US capacity for Nixon after US peak, was US ambassador in Saudi Arabia at that time. Lawrence Rocks and Richard Runyon captured the unfolding of these events at the time in The Energy Crisis book. In October 1973, the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC) proclaimed an oil embargo "in response to the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military" during the Yom Kippur war; it lasted until March 1974. OAPEC declared it would limit or stop oil shipments to the United States and other countries if they supported Israel in the conflict. With the US actions seen as initiating the oil embargo, the long-term possibility of embargo-related high oil prices, disrupted supply and recession, created a strong rift within NATO; both European countries and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from the US Middle East policy. Arab oil producers had also linked the end of the embargo with successful US efforts to create peace in the Middle East, which complicated the situation. To address these developments, the Nixon Administration began parallel negotiations with both Arab oil producers to end the embargo, and with Egypt, Syria, and Israel to arrange an Israeli pull back from the Sinai and the Golan Heights after the fighting stopped. By January 18, 1974, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai. The promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was sufficient to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. By May, Israel agreed to withdraw from the Golan Heights.

Graph of oil prices from 1861 to 2007, showing a sharp increase in 1973, and again in 1979. The orange line is adjusted for inflation.

Independently, the OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil to stabilize their real incomes by raising world oil prices. This action followed several years of steep income declines after the recent failure of negotiations with the major Western oil companies earlier in the month.

For the most part, industrialized economies relied on crude oil, and OPEC was their major supplier. Because of the dramatic inflation experienced during this period, a popular economic theory has been that these price increases were to blame, as being suppressive of economic activity. However, the causality stated by this theory is often questioned. The targeted countries responded with a wide variety of new, and mostly permanent, initiatives to contain their further dependency. The 1973 "oil price shock", along with the 1973–1974 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect.

1979 energy crisis

Main article: 1979 energy crisis

Production in top countries by year (million barrels per day)

A crisis emerged in the United States in 1979 during the wake of the Iranian Revolution. Amid massive protests, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fled his country in early 1979, allowing the Ayatollah Khomeini to gain control. The protests shattered the Iranian oil sector. While the new regime resumed oil exports, it was inconsistent and at a lower volume, forcing prices to go up. Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations, under the presidency of Dr. Mana Alotaiba increased production to offset the decline, and the overall loss in production was about 4 percent. However, a widespread panic resulted, driving the price far higher than would be expected under normal circumstances.

In 1980, following the Iraqi invasion of Iran, oil production in Iran nearly stopped, and Iraq's oil production was severely cut as well.

After 1980, oil prices began a decline as other countries began to fill the production shortfalls from Iran and Iraq.

1980s oil glut

Main article: 1980s oil glut

The 1973 and 1979 energy crisis had caused petroleum prices to peak in 1980 at over US$35 per barrel (US$129 in today's dollars). Following these events slowing industrial economies and stabilization of supply and demand caused prices to begin falling in the 1980s. The glut began in the early 1980s as a result of slowed economic activity in industrial countries (due to the 1973 and 1979 energy crises) and the energy conservation spurred by high fuel prices. The inflation adjusted real 2004 dollar value of oil fell from an average of $78.2 per barrel in 1981 to an average of $26.8 in 1986.

In June 1981, The New York Times stated an "Oil glut! ... is here" and Time Magazine stated: "the world temporarily floats in a glut of oil", though the next week a New York Times article warned that the word "glut" was misleading, and that in reality, while temporary surpluses had brought down prices somewhat, prices were still well above pre-energy crisis levels. This sentiment was echoed in November 1981, when the CEO of Exxon also characterized the glut as a temporary surplus, and that the word "glut" was an example of "our American penchant for exaggerated language". He wrote that the main cause of the glut was declining consumption. In the United States, Europe and Japan, oil consumption had fallen 13% from 1979 to 1981, due to "in part, in reaction to the very large increases in oil prices by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil exporters", continuing a trend begun during the 1973 price increases.

After 1980, reduced demand and overproduction produced a glut on the world market, causing a six-year-long decline in oil prices culminating with a 46 percent price drop in 1986.

Effects

Recession

Main article: 1973–75 recession

In the parlance of recession shapes, the Recession of 1973–75 in the United States could be considered a U-shaped recession, because of its prolonged period of weak growth and contraction.
  Percent change from preceding period in real gross domestic product (annualized; seasonally adjusted)
  Average GDP growth 1947–2009
Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis

The U.S. reported a negative economic growth during the period concerning the 1970s and it remained weak till the 1980s as the post world war II economic boom drew to a close. But it was a different type of recession as it was a scenario of stagflation which is a rare economic consequence.

Other causes that contributed to the recession included the Vietnam War, which turned out costly for the United States and the fall of the Bretton Woods system. The emergence of newly industrialized countries rose competition in the metal industry, triggering a steel crisis, where industrial core areas in North America and Europe were forced to re-structure. The 1973–1974 stock market crash made the recession evident.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the U.S. economy slid into a recession during the period of 1973-75. Inflation levels remained high even when an economic expansion took place afterwards.

During this recession, the Gross Domestic Product of the United States fell 3.2%. Although the recession ended in March 1975, the unemployment rate did not peak for several months. In May 1975, the rate reached its height for the cycle of 9%.

The recession also lasted from 1973 to 1975 in the United Kingdom. The GDP declined by 3.9% or 3.37% depending on the source. It took 14 quarters for the UK's GDP to recover to that at the start of recession.

Emergence of new oil producers

High oil prices in the 1970s induced investment in oil production by non-OPEC countries, particularly for reserves with a higher cost of production. These included Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, the North Sea offshore fields of the United Kingdom and Norway, the Cantarell offshore field of Mexico, and oil sands in Canada.

Strategic petroleum reserves

Main article: Global strategic petroleum reserves

United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve
Weekly data points since 1982

  Barrels of oil

As a result of the 1973 crisis many nations created strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs), crude oil inventories (or stockpiles) held by the governments of particular countries or private industry, for the purpose of providing economic and national security during an energy crisis. The International Energy Agency (IEA) was formed in the wake of this crisis and currently comprises 31 member countries. According to the IEA, approximately 4.1 billion barrels (650,000,000 m³) of oil are held in strategic reserves by the member countries, of which 1.4 billion barrels (220,000,000 m³) is government-controlled. The remainder is held by private industry. These reserves are intended to be equivalent to at least 90 days of net imports. At the moment the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one of the largest government-owned reserves, with a capacity of up to 713.5 million barrels (113,440,000 m³).

Recently, other non-IEA countries have begun creating their own strategic petroleum reserves, with China being the second largest overall and the largest non-IEA country.

Middle East

Further information: Arab–Israeli conflict

Since Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 this state has found itself in nearly continual conflict with the Arab world and some other predominantly Muslim countries. The animosity between the Arabs and the Israelis became a global issue during the 1970s. The Yom Kippur War of 1973, with the supplying of Israel by its Western allies while some Arab states received Soviet supplies, made this one of the most internationally threatening confrontations of the period.

The large oil discoveries in the Middle East gave some Muslim countries unique leverage in the world, beginning in the 1960s. The 1973 and 1979 crises, in particular, were demonstrations of the new power that these countries had found. The United States and other countries were forced to become more involved in the conflicts between these states and Israel.

OPEC

Further information: OPEC

One of the first challenges OPEC faced in the 1970s was the United States' unilaterally pulling out of the Bretton Woods Accord and taking the U.S. off the established Gold Exchange Standard in 1971. The change resulted in instability in world currencies and depreciation of the value of the U.S. dollar, as well as other currencies. The revenues of OPEC also took a hit since they priced oil in dollars.

Finally OPEC started pricing oil against gold to combat the situation. But OPEC still struggled to maintain stability in the region as the negotiations between them and other Western oil companies bore little to no positive results.

"Oil Patch"

The major oil-producing regions of the U.S.—Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Alaska—benefited greatly from the price inflation of the 1970s as did the U.S. oil industry in general. Oil prices generally increased throughout the decade; between 1978 and 1980 the price of West Texas Intermediate crude oil increased 250 percent. Although all states felt the effects of the stock market crash and related national economic problems, the economic benefits of increased oil revenue in the Oil Patch states generally offset much of this.

Energy mix

Following the 1970s, the global energy consumption per capita broke away from its previous trend of rapid growth, instead remaining relatively flat for multiple decades until the next century with the rise of large Asian economy like China. In the meantime the use of nuclear energy have picked up, but until 1990s after the Chernobyl disaster occurred, the growth of nuclear energy stopped, and its place have been taken by re-accelerated growth of natural gas, as well as the growing use of coal following an almost a century long stagnation, as well as the growth of other alternative energy.

Political correctness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness

 
"Political correctness" (adjectivally "politically correct"; commonly abbreviated to P.C.) is a term used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended to avoid offense or disadvantage to members of particular groups in society. Since the late 1980s, the term has been used to describe a preference for inclusive language and avoidance of language or behavior that can be seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people disadvantaged or discriminated against, particularly groups defined by ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or disability. In public discourse and the media, the term is generally used as a pejorative with an implication that these policies are excessive or unwarranted.

The phrase politically correct first appeared in the 1930s, when it was used to describe dogmatic adherence to ideology in totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Early usage of the term politically correct by leftists in the 1970s and 1980s was as self-critical satire; usage was ironic, rather than a name for a serious political movement. It was considered an in-joke among leftists used to satirise those who were too rigid in their adherence to political orthodoxy. The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century, with many describing it as a form of censorship.

Commentators on the political left in the United States contend that conservatives use the concept of political correctness to downplay and divert attention from substantively discriminatory behavior against disadvantaged groups. They also argue that the political right enforces its own forms of political correctness to suppress criticism of its favored constituencies and ideologies. In the United States, the term has played a major role in the culture war between liberals and conservatives.

History

Early-to-mid 20th century

Main article: Party line (politics)

In the early-to-mid 20th century, the phrase politically correct was used to describe strict adherence to a range of ideological orthodoxies within politics. In 1934, The New York Times reported that Nazi Germany was granting reporting permits "only to pure 'Aryans' whose opinions are politically correct".

The term political correctness first appeared in Marxist–Leninist vocabulary following the Russian Revolution of 1917. At that time, it was used to describe strict adherence to the policies and principles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, that is, the party line. Later in the United States, the phrase came to be associated with accusations of dogmatism in debates between communists and socialists. According to American educator Herbert Kohl, writing about debates in New York in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

The term "politically correct" was used disparagingly, to refer to someone whose loyalty to the CP line overrode compassion, and led to bad politics. It was used by Socialists against Communists, and was meant to separate out Socialists who believed in egalitarian moral ideas from dogmatic Communists who would advocate and defend party positions regardless of their moral substance.

— "Uncommon Differences", The Lion and the Unicorn

1970s

Main article: New Left

In the 1970s, the American New Left began using the term politically correct. In the essay The Black Woman: An Anthology (1970), Toni Cade Bambara said that "a man cannot be politically correct and a [male] chauvinist, too." William Safire records this as the first use in the typical modern sense. The term "political correctness" was believed to have been revived by the New Left through familiarity in the West with Mao's Little Red Book, in which Mao stressed holding to the correct party line. The term rapidly began to be used by the New Left in an ironic or self-deprecating sense.

Thereafter, the term was often used as self-critical satire. Debra L. Shultz said that "throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the New Left, feminists, and progressives... used their term 'politically correct' ironically, as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts." PC is used in the comic book Merton of the Movement, by Bobby London, which was followed by the term ideologically sound, in the comic strips of Bart Dickon. In her essay "Toward a feminist Revolution" (1992) Ellen Willis said: "In the early eighties, when feminists used the term 'political correctness', it was used to refer sarcastically to the anti-pornography movement's efforts to define a 'feminist sexuality'."

Stuart Hall suggests one way in which the original use of the term may have developed into the modern one:

According to one version, political correctness actually began as an in-joke on the left: radical students on American campuses acting out an ironic replay of the Bad Old Days BS (Before the Sixties) when every revolutionary groupuscule had a party line about everything. They would address some glaring examples of sexist or racist behaviour by their fellow students in imitation of the tone of voice of the Red Guards or Cultural Revolution Commissar: "Not very 'politically correct', Comrade!"

The term probably entered use in the modern sense in the United Kingdom around 1975.

1980s and 1990s

Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, a book first published in 1987, heralded a debate about "political correctness" in American higher education in the 1980s and 1990s. Professor of English literary and cultural studies at CMU Jeffrey J. Williams wrote that the "assault on ... political correctness that simmered through the Reagan years, gained bestsellerdom with Bloom's Closing of the American Mind." According to Z.F. Gamson, Bloom's book "attacked the faculty for 'political correctness'". Prof. of Social Work at CSU Tony Platt says the "campaign against 'political correctness'" was launched by Bloom's book in 1987.

An October 1990 New York Times article by Richard Bernstein is credited with popularizing the term. At this time, the term was mainly being used within academia: "Across the country the term p.c., as it is commonly abbreviated, is being heard more and more in debates over what should be taught at the universities". Nexis citations in "arcnews/curnews" reveal only seventy total citations in articles to "political correctness" for 1990; but one year later, Nexis records 1,532 citations, with a steady increase to more than 7,000 citations by 1994. In May 1991, The New York Times had a follow-up article, according to which the term was increasingly being used in a wider public arena:

What has come to be called "political correctness," a term that began to gain currency at the start of the academic year last fall, has spread in recent months and has become the focus of an angry national debate, mainly on campuses, but also in the larger arenas of American life.

— Robert D. McFadden, "Political Correctness: New Bias Test?", 1991

The previously obscure far-left term became common currency in the lexicon of the conservative social and political challenges against progressive teaching methods and curriculum changes in the secondary schools and universities of the U.S. Policies, behavior, and speech codes that the speaker or the writer regarded as being the imposition of a liberal orthodoxy, were described and criticized as "politically correct". In May 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, then U.S. President George H. W. Bush used the term in his speech: "The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits."

After 1991, its use as a pejorative phrase became widespread amongst conservatives in the US. It became a key term encapsulating conservative concerns about the left in cultural and political debates extending beyond academia. Two articles on the topic in late 1990 in Forbes and Newsweek both used the term "thought police" in their headlines, exemplifying the tone of the new usage, but it was Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus (1991) which "captured the press's imagination". Similar critical terminology was used by D'Souza for a range of policies in academia around victimization, supporting multiculturalism through affirmative action, sanctions against anti-minority hate speech, and revising curricula (sometimes referred to as "canon busting"). These trends were at least in part a response to multiculturalism and the rise of identity politics, with movements such as feminism, gay rights movements and ethnic minority movements. That response received funding from conservative foundations and think tanks such as the John M. Olin Foundation, which funded several books such as D'Souza's.

Herbert Kohl, in 1992, commented that a number of neoconservatives who promoted the use of the term "politically correct" in the early 1990s were former Communist Party members, and, as a result, familiar with the Marxist use of the phrase. He argued that in doing so, they intended "to insinuate that egalitarian democratic ideas are actually authoritarian, orthodox, and Communist-influenced, when they oppose the right of people to be racist, sexist, and homophobic".

During the 1990s, conservative and right-wing politicians, think tanks, and speakers adopted the phrase as a pejorative descriptor of their ideological enemies, especially in the context of the culture wars about language and the content of public-school curricula. Roger Kimball, in Tenured Radicals, endorsed Frederick Crews's view that PC is best described as "Left Eclecticism", a term defined by Kimball as "any of a wide variety of anti-establishment modes of thought from structuralism and poststructuralism, deconstruction, and Lacanian analyst to feminist, homosexual, black, and other patently political forms of criticism".

Liberal commentators have argued that the conservatives and reactionaries who used the term did so in an effort to divert political discussion away from the substantive matters of resolving societal discrimination, such as racial, social class, gender, and legal inequality, against people whom conservatives do not consider part of the social mainstream. Jan Narveson wrote that "that phrase was born to live between scare-quotes: it suggests that the operative considerations in the area so called are merely political, steamrolling the genuine reasons of principle for which we ought to be acting..." Commenting in 2001, one such British journalist, Polly Toynbee, said "the phrase is an empty, right-wing smear, designed only to elevate its user", and in 2010 she wrote "the phrase 'political correctness' was born as a coded cover for all who still want to say Paki, spastic, or queer". Another British journalist, Will Hutton, wrote in 2001:

Political correctness is one of the brilliant tools that the American Right developed in the mid–1980s, as part of its demolition of American liberalism.... What the sharpest thinkers on the American Right saw quickly was that by declaring war on the cultural manifestations of liberalism – by levelling the charge of "political correctness" against its exponents – they could discredit the whole political project.

— Will Hutton, "Words Really are Important, Mr Blunkett", 2001

Glenn Loury wrote in 1994 that to address the subject of "political correctness" when power and authority within the academic community is being contested by parties on either side of that issue, is to invite scrutiny of one's arguments by would-be "friends" and "enemies". Combatants from the left and the right will try to assess whether a writer is "for them" or "against them". Geoffrey Hughes suggested that debate over political correctness concerns whether changing language actually solves political and social problems, with critics viewing it less about solving problems than imposing censorship, intellectual intimidation and demonstrating the moral purity of those who practice it. Hughes also argues that political correctness tends to be pushed by a minority rather than an organic form of language change.

Usage

The modern pejorative usage of the term emerged from conservative criticism of the New Left in the late 20th century. This usage was popularized by a number of articles in The New York Times and other media throughout the 1990s, and was widely used in the debate surrounding Allan Bloom's 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind. The term gained further currency in response to Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals (1990), and conservative author Dinesh D'Souza's 1991 book Illiberal Education. Supporters of politically correct language have been pejoratively referred to as the "language police".

Education

Modern debate on the term was sparked by conservative critiques of perceived liberal bias in academia and education, and conservatives have since used it as a major line of attack. Similarly, a common conservative criticism of higher education in the United States is that the political views of teaching staff are more liberal than those of the general population, and that this contributes to an atmosphere of political correctness. William Deresiewicz defines political correctness as an attempt to silence "unwelcome beliefs and ideas", arguing that it is largely the result of for-profit education, as campus faculty and staff are wary of angering students upon whose fees they depend.

Preliminary research published in 2020 indicated that students at a large U.S. public university generally felt instructors were open-minded and encouraged free expression of diverse viewpoints; nonetheless, most students worried about the consequences of voicing their political opinions, with "[a]nxieties about expressing political views and self-censorship ... more prevalent among students who identify as conservative".

As a conspiracy theory

Main article: Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory

Some conservative commentators in the West argue that "political correctness" and multiculturalism are part of a conspiracy with the ultimate goal of undermining Judeo-Christian values. This theory, which holds that political correctness originates from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School as part of a conspiracy that its proponents call "Cultural Marxism". The theory originated with Michael Minnicino's 1992 essay "New Dark Age: Frankfurt School and 'Political Correctness'", published in a Lyndon LaRouche movement journal. In 2001, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote in The Death of the West that "political correctness is cultural Marxism", and that "its trademark is intolerance".

Media

See also: Media bias

In the US, the term has been widely used in books and journals, but in Britain the usage has been confined mainly to the popular press. Many such authors and popular-media figures, particularly on the right, have used the term to criticize what they see as bias in the media. William McGowan argues that journalists get stories wrong or ignore stories worthy of coverage, because of what McGowan perceives to be their liberal ideologies and their fear of offending minority groups. Robert Novak, in his essay "Political Correctness Has No Place in the Newsroom", used the term to blame newspapers for adopting language use policies that he thinks tend to excessively avoid the appearance of bias. He argued that political correctness in language not only destroys meaning but also demeans the people who are meant to be protected.

Authors David Sloan and Emily Hoff claim that in the US, journalists shrug off concerns about political correctness in the newsroom, equating the political correctness criticisms with the old "liberal media bias" label. According to author John Wilson, left-wing forces of "political correctness" have been blamed for unrelated censorship, with Time citing campaigns against violence on network television in the US as contributing to a "mainstream culture [that] has become cautious, sanitized, scared of its own shadow" because of "the watchful eye of the p.c. police", protests and advertiser boycotts targeting TV shows are generally organized by right-wing religious groups campaigning against violence, sex, and depictions of homosexuality on television.

Inclusive language

Main article: Inclusive language

Inclusive or Equity Language is a language style that avoids expressions that its proponents perceive as expressing or implying ideas that are sexist, racist, or otherwise biased, prejudiced, or insulting to any particular group of people; and instead uses language intended to avoid offense and fulfill the ideals of egalitarianism. This language style is sometimes referred to as a kind of "political correctness", either as a neutral description or with negative connotations by its opponents. At least some supporters deny an association between the two. ("Political correctness is focused on not offending whereas inclusive language is focused on honoring people's identities.")

Satirical use

Political correctness is often satirized, for example in The PC Manifesto (1992) by Saul Jerushalmy and Rens Zbignieuw X, and Politically Correct Bedtime Stories (1994) by James Finn Garner, which presents fairy tales re-written from an exaggerated politically correct perspective. In 1994, the comedy film PCU took a look at political correctness on a college campus. Other examples include the television program Politically Incorrect, George Carlin's "Euphemisms" routine, and The Politically Correct Scrapbook. The popularity of the South Park cartoon program led to the creation of the term "South Park Republican" by Andrew Sullivan, and later the book South Park Conservatives by Brian C. Anderson. In its Season 19 (2015), South Park introduced the character PC Principal, who embodies the principle, to poke fun at the principle of political correctness.

The Colbert Report's host Stephen Colbert often talked, satirically, about the "PC Police".

Science

See also: Politicization of science

Groups who oppose certain generally accepted scientific views about evolution, second-hand tobacco smoke, AIDS, global warming, race and other politically contentious scientific matters have used the term "political correctness" to describe what they view as unwarranted rejection of their perspective on these issues by a scientific community that they believe has been corrupted by liberal politics.

Right-wing political correctness

"Political correctness" is a label typically used to describe liberal or left-wing terms and actions but rarely used for analogous attempts to mold language and behavior on the right. In 2012, economist Paul Krugman wrote that "the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which – unlike the liberal version – has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order." Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute referred to the right's own version of political correctness as "patriotic correctness".

Left–right political spectrum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left%E2%80%93right_political_spectrum

The left–right political spectrum is a system of classifying political positions, ideologies and parties, with emphasis placed upon issues of social equality and social hierarchy. In addition to positions on the left and on the right, there are centrist and moderate positions, which are not strongly aligned with either end of the spectrum. It originated during the French Revolution based on the seating in the French National Assembly.

On this type of political spectrum, left-wing politics and right-wing politics are often presented as opposed, although a particular individual or group may take a left-wing stance on one matter and a right-wing stance on another; and some stances may overlap and be considered either left-wing or right-wing depending on the ideology. In France, where the terms originated, the left has been called "the party of movement" or liberal, and the right "the party of order" or conservative.

History

Origins in the French Revolution

5 May 1789 opening of the Estates General of 1789 in Versailles

The terms "left" and "right" first appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the Ancien Régime to the president's right and supporters of the revolution to his left. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained: "We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp".

When the National Assembly was replaced in 1791 by a Legislative Assembly composed of entirely new members, the divisions continued. "Innovators" sat on the left, "moderates" gathered in the centre, while the "conscientious defenders of the constitution" found themselves sitting on the right, where the defenders of the Ancien Régime had previously gathered. When the succeeding National Convention met in 1792, the seating arrangement continued, but following the coup d'état of 2 June 1793 and the arrest of the Girondins, the right side of the assembly was deserted and any remaining members who had sat there moved to the centre. Following the Thermidorian Reaction of 1794, the members of the far left were excluded and the method of seating was abolished. The new constitution included rules for the assembly that would "break up the party groups". Following the Restoration in 1814–1815, political clubs were again formed. The majority ultra-royalists chose to sit on the right. The "constitutionals" sat in the centre while independents sat on the left. The terms extreme right and extreme left, as well as centre-right and centre-left, came to be used to describe the nuances of ideology of different sections of the assembly.

The terms "left" and "right" were not used to refer to political ideology per se, but, strictly speaking, to seating in the legislature. After 1848, the main opposing camps were the "democratic socialists" and the "reactionaries" who used red and white flags to identify their party affiliation. With the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the terms were adopted by political parties: the Republican Left, the Centre Right and the Centre Left (1871) and the Extreme Left (1876) and Radical Left (1881). The beliefs of the group called the Radical Left were actually closer to the Centre Left than the beliefs of those called the Extreme Left.

Beginning in the early twentieth century, the terms "left" and "right" came to be associated with specific political ideologies and were used to describe citizens' political beliefs, gradually replacing the terms "reds" and "the reaction". The words Left and Right were at first used by their opponents as slurs. Those on the Left often called themselves "republicans", which at the time meant favoring a republic over a monarchy, while those on the Right often called themselves "conservatives" By 1914, the Left half of the legislature in France was composed of Unified Socialists, Republican Socialists and Socialist Radicals, while the parties that were called "Right" now sat on the right side. The use of the words Left and Right spread from France to other countries and came to be applied to a large number of political parties worldwide, which often differed in their political beliefs. There was asymmetry in the use of the terms Left and Right by the opposing sides. The Right mostly denied that the left–right spectrum was meaningful because they saw it as artificial and damaging to unity. However, the Left, seeking to change society, promoted the distinction. As Alain observed in 1931: "When people ask me if the division between parties of the Right and parties of the Left, men of the Right and men of the Left, still makes sense, the first thing that comes to mind is that the person asking the question is certainly not a man of the Left." In British politics, the terms "right" and "left" came into common use for the first time in the late 1930s in debates over the Spanish Civil War. The Scottish sociologist Robert M. MacIver noted in The Web of Government (1947):

The right is always the party sector associated with the interests of the upper or dominant classes, the left the sector expressive of the lower economic or social classes, and the centre that of the middle classes. Historically this criterion seems acceptable. The conservative right has defended entrenched prerogatives, privileges and powers; the left has attacked them. The right has been more favorable to the aristocratic position, to the hierarchy of birth or of wealth; the left has fought for the equalization of advantage or of opportunity, for the claims of the less advantaged. Defence and attack have met, under democratic conditions, not in the name of class but in the name of principle; but the opposing principles have broadly corresponded to the interests of the different classes.

Ideological groupings

Generally, the left wing is characterized by an emphasis on "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism" while the right wing is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism".

Political scientists and other analysts usually regard the left as including anarchists, communists, socialists, democratic socialists, social democrats, left-libertarians, progressives, and social liberals. Movements for racial equality, as well as trade unionism, have also been associated with the left.

Political scientists and other analysts usually regard the right as including conservatives (among whom there are many strains, including traditionalist conservatism, libertarian conservatism, neoconservatism, and ultraconservatism); right-libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, monarchists, fascists, and reactionaries.

Various political ideologies, such as Christian democracy, progressivism, some forms of liberalism, and radical centrism, can be classified as centrist.

A number of significant political movements do not fit precisely into the left–right spectrum, including Christian democracy, feminism and regionalism. Though nationalism is often regarded as a right-wing doctrine, many nationalists favor egalitarian distributions of resources. There are also civic nationalists, as well as left-wing nationalists. Populism is regarded as having both left-wing and right-wing manifestations in the form of left-wing populism and right-wing populism, respectively. Green politics is often regarded as a movement of the left, although there are also green conservatives. Andrew Dobson suggests that green politics contains an inherent conservatism as it is "adverse to anything but the most timid engineering of the social and natural world by human beings". As such, the green movement is perhaps difficult to definitively categorize as left or right.

The following are contemporary mainstream political ideologies according to their left–right position.

Left Democratic socialism Social democracy Progressivism

Centrist Christian democracy Classical Liberalism Social Liberalism

Right Conservatism Conservative liberalism Nationalism

Political parties

Seating in the 2024 European Parliament
  The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL (46)
  Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (136)
  Greens–European Free Alliance (53)
  Renew Europe (77)
  European People's Party Group (188)
  European Conservatives and Reformists Group (78)
  Patriots for Europe (84)
  Europe of Sovereign Nations (25)
  Non-Inscrits (32)

Political scientists have made models in which the ideologies of political parties are mapped along a single left–right axis. Klaus von Beyme categorized European parties into nine families, which described most parties. Beyme was able to arrange seven of them from left to right: communist, socialist, green, liberal, Christian democratic, conservative and right-wing extremist. The position of agrarian and regional/ethnic parties varied. A study conducted in the late 1980s on two bases, positions on ownership of the means of production and positions on social issues, confirmed this arrangement.

There has been a tendency for party ideologies to persist and values and views that were present at a party's founding have survived. However, they have also adapted for pragmatic reasons, making them appear more similar. Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan observed that modern party systems are the product of social conflicts played out in the last few centuries. They said that lines of cleavage had become "frozen".

The first modern political parties were liberals, organized by the middle class in the 19th century to protect them against the aristocracy. They were major political parties in that century, but declined in the twentieth century as first the working class came to support socialist parties and economic and social change eroded their middle class base. Conservative parties arose in opposition to liberals to defend aristocratic privilege, but to attract voters they became less doctrinaire than liberals. However, they were unsuccessful in most countries and generally have been able to achieve power only through cooperation with other parties.

Socialist parties were organized to achieve political rights for workers and were originally allied with liberals. However, they broke with the liberals when they sought worker control of the means of production. Christian democratic parties were organized by Catholics who saw liberalism as a threat to traditional values. Although established in the 19th century, they became a major political force following the Second World War. Communist parties emerged following a division within socialism first on support of the First World War and then support of the Bolshevik Revolution. Right-wing extremist parties are harder to define other than being more right-wing than other parties, but include fascists and some extreme conservative and nationalist parties. Green parties were the most recent of the major party groups to develop. They have mostly rejected socialism and are very liberal on social issues.

These categories can be applied to many parties outside of Europe. Ware (1996) asserted that in the United States both major parties were liberal, even though there are left–right policy differences between them.

Contemporary terminology

Worldwide

The left-right political spectrum can change over time in a process that affects the views on politicians from more than one country. In most countries, classical liberalism is thought of as a right-wing ideology, but when classical liberal ideas made their debut, they were thought of as leftist.

Western Europe

In the 2001 book The Government and Politics of France, Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright say that the main factor dividing the left and right wings in Western Europe is class. The left seeks social justice through redistributive social and economic policies, while the right defends private property and capitalism. The nature of the conflict depends on existing social and political cleavages and on the level of economic development.

Left-wing values include the belief in the power of human reason to achieve progress for the benefit of the human race, secularism, sovereignty exercised through the legislature and social justice for all people. To the right, this is regularly seen as anti-clericalism, unrealistic social reform, doctrinaire socialism, class hatred and a way to authoritarianism through the gradual lessening of individual rights in favour for the collective.

The right wing believes in the established church both in itself and as an instrument of social cohesion, and they believe in the need for strong political leadership to minimize social and political divisions. To the left, this is seen as a selfish and reactionary opposition to social justice, a wish to impose doctrinaire religion on the population and a tendency to authoritarianism and repression.

The differences between left and right have altered over time. The initial cleavage at the time of the French Revolution was between supporters of absolute monarchy (the right) and those who wished to limit the king's authority (the left). During the 19th century, the cleavage was between monarchists and republicans. Following the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, the cleavage was between supporters of a strong executive on the right and supporters of the primacy of the legislature on the Left.

United States

A 2005 Harris Poll of American adults showed that the terms left wing and right wing were less familiar to Americans than the terms liberal or conservative. Peter Berkowitz writes that in the U.S., the term liberal "commonly denotes the left wing of the Democratic Party" and has become synonymous with the word progressive, a fact that is usefully contextualized for non-Americans by Ware's observation that at the turn of the 21st century, both mainstream political parties in the United States, generally speaking, were liberal in the classical sense of the word.

Michael Kazin writes that the left is traditionally defined as the social movement or movements "that are dedicated to a radically egalitarian transformation of society" and suggests that many in the left in the United States who met that definition called themselves by various other terms. Kazin writes that American leftists "married the ideal of social equality to the principle of personal freedom" and that contributed to the development of important features of modern American society, including "the advocacy of equal opportunity and equal treatment for women, ethnic and racial minorities, and homosexuals; the celebration of sexual pleasure unconnected to reproduction; a media and educational system sensitive to racial and gender oppression and which celebrates what we now call multiculturalism; and the popularity of novels and films with a strongly altruistic and anti-authoritarian point of view." A variety of distinct left-wing movements existed in American history, including labor movements, the Farmer-Labor movement, various democratic socialist and socialist movements, pacifist movements, and the New Left.

Criticism

Political scientists have frequently argued that a single left–right axis is too simplistic and insufficient for describing the existing variation in political beliefs and include other axes to compensate for this problem.

American libertarian writer David Boaz argued that the political terms left and right are used to spin a particular point of view rather than as simple descriptors, with those on the left typically emphasizing their support for working people and accusing the right of supporting the interests of the upper class; and those on the right usually emphasizing their support for individualism and accusing the left of supporting collectivism. Boaz asserts that arguments about the way these terms should be used often displace arguments about policy by raising emotional prejudice against a preconceived notion of what the terms mean.

In 2006, British Prime Minister Tony Blair described the main cleavage in politics as not left versus right, but open versus closed. According to Blair, attitudes towards social issues and globalisation are more important than the conventional economic left–right issues. In this model, "open" voters tend to be culturally liberal, multicultural and in favour of globalisation while "closed" voters are culturally conservative, opposed to immigration and in favour of protectionism. The open–closed political spectrum has seen increased support following the rise of populist and centrist parties in the 2010s.

Norberto Bobbio saw the polarization of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in the 1990s as evidence that the linear left–right axis remained valid. Bobbio thought that the argument that the spectrum had disappeared occurred when either the left or right were weak. The dominant side would claim that its ideology was the only possible one, while the weaker side would minimize its differences. He saw the left and right not in absolute terms, but as relative concepts that would vary over time. In his view, the left–right axis could be applied to any time period.

A survey of Canadian legislative caucuses conducted between 1983 and 1994 by Bob Altemeyer showed an 82% correlation between party affiliation and score on a scale for right-wing authoritarianism when comparing right-wing and social democratic caucuses. There was a wide gap between the scores of the two groups, which was filled by liberal caucuses. His survey of American legislative caucuses showed scores by American Republicans and Democrats were similar to the Canadian right and liberals, with a 44% correlation between party affiliation and score.

While in many Western European democracies, traditionally the left is associated with socially liberal and economically left values, while the right is traditionally associated with socially conservative and economically right values, Eastern European, post-communist parties are frequently juxtaposed, with economically left parties holding nationalist positions more frequently and economically right parties being liberal and internationalist.