When considering something John Cleese said, one can consider where John Cleese has gone in the 3 years since he said it.
In Cleese's case, our understanding of his idea of "political correctness" is informed by his subsequent exiting of the UK because he feels London is "no longer English."
Those subtleties of messaging can certainly indicate affiliation.
But that's exactly what I'm saying. If that's become more important than the actual arguments, were headed down.
Would you mind clarifying the difference between the two for me? It sounds an awful lot like we're talking about thought crimes.
"What they technically said" are the words that were actually used. "What they actually said" are the likely intended meaning, since (as I'm sure you would agree) any given moderately-complex sentence could have a number of interpretations, especially in different contexts.
"We must protect our people" is a sentence of five simple words, but has a radically different meaning when spoken by: * A warlord invading another country * A fighter resisting an invasion * A doctor speaking about medical treatment
In this case, the OP is probably making the (reasonable) point that a speaker who has previously made overblown claims about the racial composition of a country, and has demonstrated xenophobia, can be reasonably assumed to also be on sketchy evidential grounds in his claims about political correctness
It generally indicates that you don't have a rational refute to the argument.
But arguing that previous miss-steps invalidate current arguments is irrational.
Of course he has a point. We should absolutely resist creating thought crimes and police states, but we should also prohibit hateful action.
We can do both, sensibly. Shouting about every slippery slope on the way doesn't help anyone.
If 'who said it' and 'what views do they hold' is more important than what they're actually saying, then we've become post-rational, and well on our way back to less open and enlightened culture.