Political correctness is a society-wide groupthink that can be very dangerous.

Sir, In the Shrink and the Sage’s “Can we get used to anything?” of May 16, the Sage mentions “society-wide groupthink”. And the best example of current society-wide groupthink I can think of is “political correctness”.

I just came back from a week in Sweden. There I heard many expressing to me, in sotto voce, sort of ashamed, sort of “don’t tell anyone about this”, some very ordinary and human concerns about there being too many migrants and about the risk they felt that could dilute their meaning of being a Swede.

My immediate thought was that political correctness, if it blocks this way citizens from venting their concerns, then it must be a dangerous powerful growth hormone for extremism.

In other words, if you use a “That’s like Hitler” in response to too many of people concerns, then too many might end up thinking “That Hitler guy sound’s quite right for me”.

Let us never forget that the emotions involved in the not liking something for the wrong reasons, are just as strong as that of the not liking something for "the right reasons".

PS. My father suffered years of concentration camp because of Hitler. I don’t remember him saying, “That’s like Hitler” about anything or anyone… perhaps because he would never want to diminish Hitler’s evilness to something being sharable.

@PerKurowski

You have to root out the monsters in their homeland first

Sir Stefan Wagstyl should perhaps have expanded the title “Stalin still looms large over eastern Europe” with the “because he still looms large over Russia” August 31. Wagstyl rightly points us to see that the way countries victimized by foreign monsters can overcome such events starts with how the monsters´ homelands overcome being just that. Since Germany has done so much more in accepting the horrendous realities of a Hitler, than Russia those of Stalin, Germany has been more able to overcome its own demons and shames, and, consequentially the world has been much more able not to hold it against it. Besides, these monster´s, if not pulled out completely, with all their roots, can rot and infect and propagate.

Would shorting England be acceptable?

Sir Christopher Caldwell concludes his “Why Kerviel is so unsettling” February 9, saying “The problem is not the rise of the super-empowered individual. It is that the super-empowered individual tends more and more to be an amoral individual.” He is right of course but how did we get here?

We have currently a system that allows for the creation of all kinds of amoral vested interests…like making profits out of an increased mortgage default rate, something not much different from having allowed Englishman to short England and created a group of nationals with a transparent and legal vested interest in Hitler winning the war.

Also when Caldwell refers to “What is striking here is the contrast between the mediocrity of the trader and the scale of the catastrophe” this is really peanuts when compared to the contrast between the super-sophistication of the financial wizards and the credit rating experts and the scale of our current catastrophe.

Unsettling indeed is how we settle to focus on Kerviel as our convenient scapegoat. Hang Kerviel we’re innocent!