The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.
I’ve received some criticism for trying to figure out the ideological and historical roots of Multiculturalism. Critics claim that it’s all about hate, about a desire to break down the Established Order at any cost. Many of the proponents don’t believe in the doctrine of Multiculturalism themselves, so we shouldn’t waste any time analyzing the logic behind it, because there is none. A desire to break down Western society is certainly there, but I do believe there are some ideas about the desired end result articulated as well.
On one hand, we’re supposed to “celebrate” our differences at the same time as it is racist and taboo to recognize that any differences between groups of people exist at all. This is hardly logically coherent, which is why Multiculturalism can only be enforced by totalitarian means. Perhaps it boils down to the fact there are no major differences, just minor quirks, all cute, which should be celebrated at the same time as we gradually eradicate them.
We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is “colorful,” an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other. In fact, it is good to change it every now and then. Don’t you get tired of that old sofa sometimes? What about exchanging it for the new sharia model? Sure, it’s slightly less comfortable than the old one, but it’s very much in vogue these days and sets you apart from the neighbors, at least until they get one, too. Do you want a sample of the latest Calvin Klein perfume to go with that sharia?
We should remember that this view of culture as largely unimportant is essentially a Marxist view of the world, which has now even been adopted by segments of the political Right, united with Leftists in the belief that man is homo economicus, the economic man, the sum of his functions as worker and consumer, nothing more. Marxism doesn’t say that cultures or ideas are of absolutely no consequence, but that they are of minor or secondary importance next to structural and economic conditions.
I have heard individuals state point blank that even if Muslims become the majority in our countries in the future, this doesn’t matter because all people are equal and all cultures are just a mix of everything else, anyway. And since religions are just fairy-tales, replacing one fairy-tale, Christianity, with another fairy-tale, Islam, won’t make a big difference. All religions basically say that the same things in different ways. However, not one of them would ever dream of saying that all political ideologies “basically mean the same thing.” They simply don’t view religious or cultural ideas as significant, and thus won’t spend time on studying the largely unimportant details of each specific creed. This is Marxist materialism.
The unstated premise behind this is that the age of distinct cultures is over. All peoples around the world will gradually blend into one another. Ethnic, religious and racial tensions will disappear, because mankind will be one and equal. It’s cultural and genetic Communism. Nation states who create their own laws and uphold their own borders constitute “discrimination” and an obstacle to this new Utopia, and will gradually have to be dismantled, starting with Western nations of course, replaced by a world where everybody has the right to move wherever they want to and where international legislation and human rights resolutions define the law, upheld by an elite of — supposedly well-meaning — transnational bureaucrats managing our lives.
What the proponents of this ideology don’t say is that even if it were possible to melt all human beings into one people, which is in my view neither possible nor desirable, this project would take generations or centuries, and in the intervening time there would be numerous wars and enormous suffering caused by the fact that not everybody would quietly allow themselves to be eradicated.
All aspects of your person, from language via culture to skin color and religion, are treated as imaginary social constructs. We are told that “all cultures are hybrids and borrow from each other,” that we were “all immigrants” at one point in time and hence nobody has a right to claim any specific piece of land as “theirs.”
Since “we” are socially constructed, we can presumably also be socially deconstructed. The Marxist “counter-culture”of the 1960s and 70s has been remarkably effective at attacking the pillars of Western civilization. It is, frankly, scary to notice how much damage just one single generation can inflict upon a society. Maybe it’s true that no chain is stronger than its weakest link. Our education system is now used to dismantle our culture, not to uphold it, and has moved from the Age of Reason to the Age of Deconstruction. Socialism has destroyed the very fabric of society. Our countries have become so damaged that people feel there is nothing left fighting for, which no doubt was the intention. Our children leave school as disoriented wrecks and ideological cripples with no sense of identity, and are met with a roar of outrage if they demonstrate the slightest inkling of a spine.
Codie Stott, a white English teenage schoolgirl, was arrested on suspicion of committing a section five racial public order offense after refusing to sit with a group of South Asian students because some of them did not speak English. She was taken to Swinton police station, had her fingerprints taken and was thrown into a cell before being released. Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said: “A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions – the aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.”
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Bryan Cork of Carlisle, Cumbria in the Lake District, was sentenced to six months in jail for standing outside a mosque shouting, “Proud to be British,” and “Go back to where you came from.” This happened while Muslims were instituting sharia laws in British cities and got state sponsorship for having several wives.
Antifascistisk Aktion in Sweden, a group that supposedly fights against “racists,” openly brag about numerous physical attacks against persons with their full name and address published on their website. According to AFA, this is done in order to fight against global capitalism and for a classless society. They subscribe to an ideology that killed one hundred million people during a few generations, and they are the good guys. Those who object to being turned into a minority in their own country through mass immigration are the bad guys.
The extreme Left didn’t succeed in staging a violent revolution in the West, so they decided to go for a permanent, structural revolution instead. They now hope that immigrants can provide raw material for a violent rebellion, especially since many of them are Muslims who have displayed such a wonderful talent for violence and destruction. The Western Left are importing a new proletariat, since the previous one disappointed them.
A poll carried out on behalf of the Organization for Information on Communism found that 90 percent of Swedes between the ages of 15 and 20 had never heard of the Gulag, although 95 percent knew of Auschwitz. “Unfortunately we were not at all surprised by the findings,” Ander Hjemdahl, the founder of UOK, told website The Local. In the nationwide poll, 43 percent believed that Communist regimes had claimed less than one million lives. The actual figure is estimated at 100 million. 40 percent believed that Communism had contributed to increased prosperity in the world. Mr. Hjemdahl states several reasons for this massive ignorance, among them that “a large majority of Swedish journalists are left-wingers, many of them quite far left.”
I have personally read statements by leading media figures not just in Sweden, but all over Western Europe, who openly brag about censoring coverage of issues related to mass immigration and the Multicultural society.
The Muslim writer Abdelwahab Meddeb believes that as a result of French influence, the whole of the Mediterranean region “is suited to becoming a laboratory for European thought.” First of all, I don’t think Islam can be reformed, and even if it could, France currently lacks the cultural confidence to lead such an effort. Behind their false pride, they are a nation deeply unsure about themselves, and still carry psychological wounds from their great Revolution of 1789. And second: A bridge can be crossed two ways. Will France be a bridge for European thought into the Islamic world or for Islamic thought into Europe? Right now, the latter seems more likely. And finally: I greatly resent seeing tens of millions of human beings described as a “laboratory.” Unfortunately, Mr. Meddeb is not alone in entertaining such ideas.
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt has said: “Belgium is the laboratory of European unification.” What kind of confidence does it inspire in citizens that their supposed leader talks about their country as a laboratory? Are their children guinea pigs? Apparently, yes.
In 1960, 7.3% of the population of Belgian capital Brussels was foreign. Today the figure is 56.5%. Jan Hertogen, a Marxist sociologist, can hardly hide his excitement over this great experiment in social engineering, and believes this population replacement “is an impressive and unique development from a European, or even a world perspective.” Yes, it is probably the first time in human history that a nation demographically has handed over its capital city to outsiders without firing a single shot, but judging from trends in the rest of Europe, it won’t be the last. The European Union and the local, Multicultural elites will see to that.
The Dutch writer Margriet de Moor provides another example of why Multiculturalism is a massive experiment in social engineering, every bit as radical and dangerous as Communism. Ms. de Moor lives in some kind of alternate reality where “Europe’s affluence and free speech” will create an Islamic Reformation. But Muslim immigration constitutes a massive drain on the former, and is slowly, but surely destroying the latter:
“When I’m feeling optimistic I sometimes see the Netherlands, a small laconic country not inclined towards the large-scale or the theatrical, as a kind of laboratory on the edge of Europe. Now and then the mixture of dangerous, easily inflammable substances results in a little explosion, but basically the process of ordinary chemical reactions just continues.”
What kind of person refers to her own country as a laboratory? Ms. de Moor sounds like a scientist, dispassionately studying an interesting specimen in her microscope. I’m sure Theo van Gogh would be pleased to hear that he was basically a lab rat when he ended up with a knife in his chest for having “insulted” Islam, along with that of the “racist” Pim Fortuyn the first political murder in Holland for centuries. What was once one of the most tolerant nations in the world is now being ruined by Muslim immigration. But hey, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right? These murders were an unfortunate business, no doubt, but one mustn’t call off the entire Multicultural experiment because of a few minor setbacks.
We all told that Arabs triggered the Renaissance in Europe. Michelangelo was commissioned by the Pope to paint the ceiling of The Sistine Chapel within the Vatican. He painted God creating Adam. Did any of the Caliphs or Sultans ever commission an artist to pant the image of Allah in Mecca? Why not, if all cultures are one and the same? Likewise, the political works of the ancient Greeks were never translated to Arabic, as they presented systems such as democracy where men ruled themselves according to their own laws. This was considered blasphemous to Muslims. The same texts were later studied with great interest in the West.
Far from being irrelevant, culture is a massively important factor in shaping a society. Islam’s hostility to free speech is why Muslims never had any Scientific or Industrial Revolution, for instance. If you believe in evolution, isn’t it then also likely that some cultures are more evolved than others? That kind of blows Multiculturalism away, doesn’t it?
British PM Tony Blair is stepping down after having ruined his country more in one decade than arguably any other leader has done before him. He ran on the platform of New Labour, but as it turned out, his party was still wed to the same old ideas of international Socialism.
According to the writer Melanie Phillips, “He is driven by a universalist world view which minimises the profound nature of the conflicts that divide people. He thinks that such divisions belong essentially to a primitive past. (…) Hence his closely-related obsession with ‘universal’ human rights law. Hence also his belief that national borders no longer matter, that mass immigration is a good thing and that Britain’s unique identity must give way to multiculturalism. This is the way, he thinks, to eradicate conflict, prejudice and war, and create a global utopia. What a profound misjudgment. It is, instead, the way to destroy democracy and the independent nations that create and sustain it.”
Marie Simonsen, the political editor of the Norwegian left-wing newspaper Dagbladet, wrote in March 2007 that it should be considered a universal human right for all people everywhere to migrate wherever they want to. This statement came just after a UN report had predicted a global population growth of several billion people to 2050.
It doesn’t take much skill to calculate that unlimited migration will spell certain death for a tiny Scandinavian nation — not in a matter of generations, but theoretically even within a few weeks. Ms. Simonsen is thus endorsing the eradication of her own people, and she does so almost as an afterthought. Her comments received no opposition from anyone in the media establishment, which could indicate that most of them share her views, or at least have resigned themselves to the fact that our death as a people is already inevitable.
Karl Marx has defined the essence of Socialism as abolishing private property. Let’s assume for a moment that a country can be treated as the “property” of its citizens. Its inhabitants are responsible for creating its infrastructure. They have built its roads and communications, its schools, universities and medical facilities. They have created its political institutions and instilled in its people the mental capacities needed for upholding them. Is it then wrong for the citizens of this country to want to enjoy the benefits of what they have themselves created?
According to Marxist logic, yes.
Imagine you have two such houses next to each other. In House A, the inhabitants have over a period of generations created a tidy and functioning household. They have limited their number of children because they wanted to give all of them a proper education. In House B, the inhabitants live in a dysfunctional household with too many children who have received little higher education. One day they decide to move to their neighbors’. Many of the inhabitants of House A are protesting, but some of them think this might be a good idea. There is room for more people in House A, they say. In addition to this, Amnesty International, the United Nations and others claim that it is “racist” and “against international law” for the inhabitants of House A to expel the intruders. Pretty soon, House A has been turned into an overpopulated and dysfunctional household just like House B.
This is what is happening to the West today. Europe itself could become a failed continent by importing the problems of Africa and the Islamic world. The notion that everybody should be free to move anywhere they want to, and that preventing them from moving into your country is “racism, xenophobia and bigotry,” is the Communism of the 21st century. And it will probably lead to immense human suffering.
One of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist thinking has penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the universities to the media. While the “hard” Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the “soft” Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we mistakenly deemed it to be less threatening.
Ideas about Multiculturalism and de-facto open borders have achieved a virtual hegemony in public discourse. By hiding behind labels such as “anti-racism” and “tolerance,” Leftists have achieved a degree of censorship they could never have achieved had they openly stated that their intention was to radically transform Western civilization and destroy its foundations.
According to the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, “the lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: A source of violence.”
Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. This led him to write the book How the West Was Lost. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.
In a culture where language is power and words are used as weapons, those who control the most fearsome of these weapons control society. In the West, where equality in all walks of life is the highest virtue and “discrimination” is a mortal sin, the “racist” is the worst of creatures. Those who control the definition of “racist,” the nuclear bomb of glossocracy, have a powerful weapon they can utilize to intimidate opponents. The mere utterance of the word can destroy careers and ruin lives, with no trial and no possibility of appeal.
Currently, the power of definition largely rests in the hands of a cartel of anti-racist organizations dominated by the extreme Left, often in cooperation with Muslims. By silencing all opposition to mass immigration as “racism,” they can stage a transformation of society every bit as massive as that of Communism, yet virtually shut down debate about it.
Boot totally rejects the claim that Marxism has been misunderstood:
“Any serious study will demonstrate that Marx based his theories on industrial conditions that either were already obsolete at the time or had never existed in the first place. That is no wonder, for Marx never saw the inside of a factory, farm or manufactory. […] Whatever else he was, Marx was not a scientist. […] Marx ideals are unachievable precisely because they are so monstrous that even Bolsheviks never quite managed to realize them fully, and not for any lack of trying. For example, the [Communist] Manifesto (along with other writings by both Marx and Engels) prescribes the nationalization of all private property without exception. Even Stalin’s Russia of the 1930s fell short of that ideal. In fact, a good chunk of the Soviet economy was then in private hands […] Really, compared with Marx, Stalin begins to look like a humanitarian. Marx also insisted that family should be done away with, with women becoming communal property. Again, for all their efforts, Lenin and Stalin never quite managed to achieve this ideal either. So where the Bolsheviks and Nazis perverted Marxism, they generally did so in the direction of softening it.”
The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy, who has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union, thinks that while the West won the Cold War in a military sense, we lost it in the context of ideas: “Communism might have been dead, but the communists remained in power in most of the former Warsaw bloc countries, while their Western collaborators came to power all over the world (in Europe in particular). This is nothing short of a miracle: the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 quite logically brought a shift to the Left in world politics, while a defeat of communism in 1991 brought again a shift to the Left, this time quite illogically.”
Bukovksy is right: We never had a thorough de-Marxification process after the Cold War, similar to the de-Nazification after WW2, and we are now paying the price for this. Many Marxist ideas have been allowed to endure and mutate, such as the notion that culture is unimportant or that it is OK to stage massive social experiments on hundreds of millions of people. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm has stated that had the Soviet Union managed to create a functioning Socialist society, tens of millions of deaths would have been a worthwhile price to pay. But Marxist ideals of forced equality can only be enforced by a government with totalitarian powers, and will thus inevitably lead to a totalitarian society. There is no “enlightened Marxism,” and the idea that there is has ruined more lives than probably and other ideology in modern history.
Marxism is an organized crime against humanity.
The Australian writer Keith Windschuttle warns that the consequence of cultural relativism is that if there can be no absolute truths, there can be no absolute falsehoods, either, which explains Western weakness when confronted with Islamic Jihad. Our sense of right and wrong has been deeply damaged by Marxist thinking. Windschuttle praises Greek historian Thucydides’ writings about The History of the Peloponnesian War from the 5th century BC:
“Rather than being impelled by great impersonal forces, political history reveals the world is made by men and, instead of being ‘absolved of blame’, men are responsible for the consequences of their actions. This was the very point that informed Thucydides’ study of the Peloponnesian War: the fate of Athens had been determined not by prophets, oracles or the gods, but by human actions and social organisation.”
Ideas matter. Individuals matter. Cultures matter. Truth matters, and truth exists. We used to know that. It’s time we get to know it again, and reject false ideas about the irrelevance of culture. We are not racists for desiring to pass on our heritage to future generations, nor are we evil for resisting to be treated as lab rats in social experiments on a horrific scale. We must nip the ideology of transnational Multiculturalism and unlimited mass migration in the bud by exposing it for what it is: A Communism for the 21st century.
That’s a tightly reasoned article. I suspect that I may have to revise my own view of the origins of multiculturalism. Fjordman never ceases to amaze me with his essays.
The end result desired is what? that we all be things? But that those who impose this soulless materialist condition on us be the thing masters?
I put the above in the form of questions because I’m groping. Is the modern world caught in the nightmare of pure power intoxication on the part of the politicized class? or should I call it the political caste?
For some reason this reminds me of Kipling’s poem The Stranger.
We really are different as peoples, and the forcing of all to merge into one frankenstein’s monster of an amorphous blob is a recipe for disaster. In fact, I wonder if it might provide more and better opportunities for inter-cultural and inter-racial relations if we were to acknowledge ourselves and each other as inherently different, but that might be another topic entirely.
What a shame some people want this disaster.
How about a rousing chorus of “It’s a small world after all”?
Trying something new here. I’m gonna sort of “live blog” the article as I read it…
**It sounds like the multi-culti crowd takes it’s whole theory from Lennon’s “Imagine”, which I’ve long considered the stupidest song I’ve ever heard- goes back to a professor in college that pointed out the song imagines the end of… Ideas.
**’Nation states who create their own laws and uphold their own borders constitute “discrimination” and an obstacle to this new Utopia, and will gradually have to be dismantled’.
Love it. I’ve long held that the concept of “one world government” was flawed, because at some point any nation that dissented would have to be forced into joining. That’s against all the laws of self-determination that western society holds- rather, “held”- so dear.
**’Robert Whelan of the Civitas think-tank said: “A lot of these arrests don’t result in prosecutions – the aim is to frighten us into self-censorship until we watch everything we say.”’
Wow. A kinder, gentler Fascism.
**’I have personally read statements by leading media figures not just in Sweden, but all over Western Europe, who openly brag about censoring coverage of issues related to mass immigration and the Multicultural society’
I despise people that abuse the freedoms we hold dear in order to destroy the society that grants the freedoms. That’s one reason for my contempt towards Clinton. Didn’t take a lot of moral courage for an American to protest the Vietnam War in front of the Kremlin.
**’In 1960, 7.3% of the population of Belgian capital Brussels was foreign. Today the figure is 56.5%. ‘
Wow. That blows me away. Shouldn’t a nation’s capital be an example of , or a tribute to, their nation?
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This gets my vote as Fjordman’s best.
It’s a shame that many people, and I include myself, never made a bigger issue of Communism after it fell. I for one felt that the inherent failures-and they are legion- would show anyone with half a brain that it was a flawed, horrible, bloodthirsty idea, unworthy of any more attention.
I guess it just shows that stupid ideas, like viruses, can never be wiped out. They just mutate and kill again from another angle.
Trackbacked by The Thunder Run – Web Reconnaissance for 05/11/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.
One quote jumped out at me in the above brilliant, tight and relevant article. It was the Australian writer Keith Windschuttle saying “the consequence of cultural relativism is that if there can be no absolute truths, there can be no absolute falsehoods, either, which explains Western weakness when confronted with Islamic Jihad.”
This seems to be right on the button.
We are a people in our own cultures and we want to contribute to the life of our cultures. The one thing that stops a people behaving naturally and being truly free are political systems of the command & control school.
A Great Silence has descended on the UK Citizenry. It is sometimes called political correctness. Its consequence is that citizens do not feel they can contribute to their society. They are not avble to contribute only consume political goodies.
The notion of stewardship is slipping out of their hands. It is a fact that the UK is – was – a Christian country. But you would not believe it after ten years of Tony Blair.
Christianity exhorts its followers to “Love their enemies” whereas virulent Islam is self-seeking. As in bombers blowing up other people – fellow citizens – so that they may be in Paradise along with 72 virgins. That is self-seeking.
Congratulations, Fjordman. Your articles are always superb!
Did you read Tony Blankley’s book The West’s Last Chance?
He’s optimistic about the future of Europe, and his arguments are interesting.
You can read here a review of the book: http://web2.venet.net/libridelponte/det-articolo.asp?ID=99
Regards
The correct link:
The West’s Last Chance
My God, man, what a brilliant essay!
If one tries to accuse you of being racist, simply state that you believe in a multi-racial society, not a multi-cultural one.
The internal contradiction of “multiculturalism” is that if all cultures are blended together there will be no distinct cultures but just one. But one of the basic tenets of multiculturalism and anti-globalization is that each culture should be allowed to remain separate and distinct. Ancient useless languages like Welsh and Irish should have their own radio stations and historical buildings should be kept in the same state forever. So it doesn’t make any sense. And they celebrate that very nonsensicality! Their real enemy is reason. That’s what they are trying to destroy, because they can’t deal with it.
Brilliant as he always is, Fjordman however fails to notice one contradiction. Multiculturalism is the product of Enlightenment, that is true. But the European culture, and Fjordman himself, are also to a large extent products of Enlightenment. So the question is: what do we need to eradicate in ourselves to win over multiculturalism, and what we can leave in its place? And if our aim is to keep our culture, how can we do it when our culture tends to ruin itself?
Meanwhile many Americans are searching for their roots through genealogy and embracing their lost cultural values.
The multicults are gonna have their hands full, especially considering all of the contrary Scots/Irish in America. No where left for the sons of Mil to run.
Fjordman’s analogy between private property rights and a nation’s control over its immigration gives me this idea:
The attempt to abolish private property leads in reality to the transfer of property to the state, or its bureaucratic elite. Similarly the attempt to abolish national borders might produce not worldwide freedom of migration, but the control of migration by a transnational bureaucracy. (Promoting the ideal of free migration may be a temporary rhetorical strategy on the part of those who would eliminate national independence.) Perhaps this is simplistic, though, as the nation/property analogy isn’t a perfect one.
Spog,
Of course. Remember, these are all leftist elites. And like all leftist elites, their true desire is for the coveted title of “Vanguard of the Proletariat”.
Looks good on a job application…errr, I mean, it puts you in a position of authority over everyone else.
Pick the “culture” that gets you the best Science, the most far-reaching medical achievements, the most prfound art and literature and music, ranges out into the Universe with the finest interplanetary craft, incorporates the most freedom of thought, and considers human liberties inviolate and inborn, not the “gift” of some government.
If the “culture” doesn’t work toward these ends, who cares if it has cool clothes, or neat dances, or a lot of resentment about its past grievances?
Having “multi-cultures” is about as rational as using multi-measurements. (Which lost a Mars lander a few years back when metric and inches weren’t co-ordinated into either one or the other.)
The Multiculuralists seek to destroy those qualities which have produced the greatest advances in civilization in human history. These advances arose as a result of Western meritocracy and values, which encourage higher achievement and advancement.
Meritocracy is essentially based on individual effort, which rewards creativity and innovation. A society’s best minds are rewarded, in general, proportionate to the value and production they deliver. This stimulates further productivity, and advancement is compounded, and you end up with a country like America.
Multiculturalism will destroy such progress, because it doesn’t raise everyone to the highest level, it brings the highest level down to the lowest, therefore making everyone “equal”, but impoverished in values, morals, spirit, culture and society.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Read about the same issue in Canada:
Karl’s comrades
Excellent essay, and I would like to throw out there an additional analogy to the house analogy, that of the family….
Basically, it doesn’t matter exactly to what extent cultural differences between races are directly genetically determined. No doubt to some extent they are, but the main reason behind the extent to which cultural differences between races exist is that people (except few deranged but influential individuals in western societies) define themselves culturally based on race, which reinforces and magnifies any other genetic factors that contribute to racial cultural differences. This phenomena of cultural self-identification based on race is not so irrational and arbitrary as the leftists believe, such as the hypothetical identifying culturally based on height or hair color that they like to cite as a red herring, which indeed would be arbitrary. Rather, there is no doubt an evolutionary advantage and likely a genetic basis to such identification. Common race generally indicates common geographically origin, and more importantly, genetic research shows that it does correlate with the extent of relatedness between individuals. Essentially, it offers a way for an individual to make a snap judgment on degree of relatedness that is usually surprisingly quite accurate.
Now from a biologically evolutionary perspective, degree of relatedness is crucial. In human society there always was a behavior by which related individuals were treated better then unrelated individuals. This has evolutionary advantages, and therefore likely the evolutionary advantages caused the behavior to be at least partly grounded in genetics. The evolutionary advantages are – 1. Such behavior better ensures one’s genes are passed on, because survival of related individuals ensures survival of the those genes of yours that those related individuals share with you, which is higher then the number of genes shared by you and an unrelated individual. 2. Since this behavior ultimately increases an individual’s evolutionary fitness (ability to pass on genes), it is likely to be reciprocated by the individuals related to you, further magnifying it’s evolutionary advantage. The end result of such behavior is a cohesive group that can better survive adverse conditions and challenges by evolutionary rivals. This why human societies have always organized themselves as a “peoples” , from the bottom up – family/clan/tribe/people – and the “peoples” were and are collections of genetically related individuals with common culture and language.
Again, in everyday life, this behavior manifests itself in families tending to help relatives out more then they help unrelated individuals. The rationality behind it is the family that does that tends to prosper, and from an evolutionary perspective, their genes get passed on. I don’t see any moral problems with this, as long as it doesn’t go to aggressively killing other individuals, and limits itself to competition with other families. In fact, virtually all religions not only endorse, but command, preferential treatment for family members (and by extension, the people). So the human identification with culture based on race is a phenomena originating in the same behavior, as is the tendency to define oneself culturally, and to self-segregate by race. It’s universal, you can look at all the cultures from Japan to South Africa, and you’ll see it. Now, the only place where this is out of style is in an influential minority in the western countries that holds the governmental power and controls the propaganda outlets – media. The reason why such evolutionarily wrong and disastrous ideas could ever take hold there was because the scientific revolution in the west created such wealth that it largely removed the western nations from natural selection for a good while, ESPECIALLY the wealthy class that holds the power (and it is ironic that the communists in the Soviet Union and now the western leftist elites are the WEALTHY class). There are other evolutionarily wrong ideas that took hold there, such as the media propaganda campaign to feminize men and to demean the contribution to society women who make self-sacrifices (career wise) to rear children (“housewives”), or to ridicule women who prefer monogamous and pernament sexual relationships as “frigid”. This of course purposeful, because in the absence of the “stay at home mom” or a strong family, the state by default takes on more child-rearing duties, and can mold the kids to what it wants. And it is no coincidence that the media and government that pushes multiculturalism also seeks to advance other behaviors that undermine strong family structure, such as casual sex, which as far as they are practiced in a society, interfere with the permanent bond between man and woman which is the basis of stable and numerically strong families . The claim that “traditional” moral values are artificial constructs to prevent our fulfillment is another leftist delusions, the “traditional” moral values are in fact likely evolutionary in origin because societies that hold to them can reproduce well above replacement rates, produce a large self-sacrificing warrior class, as well as political leaders that actually IDENTIFY with their own people on a patriotic level, and as such can resist challenges from other cultures..
Well, the non-western peoples have acquired western-invented technology and now natural selection is back. If the west wants to survive, it has to rediscover the values that work evolutionarily, i.e. “traditional” moral values that leftists believed were holding us back from realizing out true potential. Such values are for example strong cultural/ethnic self-identification and pride, and the view of men as protectors and providers (warriors), view of women as nurturers, child-rearers. Because there is no indication, at least to this observer, that the other people that are moving into the western countries are truly buying into the current western cultural delusions. They are using them to guilt trip the caucasians into giving them free resources (which by the way have to come from somewhere, as there isn’t an infinite amount of resources in the west, so basically the “underprivileged” caucasians get screwed), but my experience has been that Indians or blacks in America, for example, while quick to claim discrimination, have absolute no moral qualms about, or hesitation in, discriminating against caucasians or members of other racial groups in favor of individuals from their own ethnic group when they have the chance. Further, does anyone know of a non-caucasian country, where a caucasian can move illegally, get free money from the government, rape the local women, demand and complain he is being discriminated against, and if the locals complain about the behavior of this illegal new arrival, the government cracks down on the LOCALS doing the complaining while looking for a way to give the interloper citizenship?
I, as an individual, am a product of my genetic material and culture, if my politicians don’t mind their culture and ethnicity going extinct as long as that can get them more Mexican votes, that is their problem, but unfortunately, also now my problem. Essentially the leftist argument, largely co-opted by the American “mainstream” right, is “who are you to want individuals related to you and of your culture to prosper more then you want individuals unrelated to you and not of your culture to prosper”. But those of us among westerners that haven’t become deranged are still genetically programmed to want to pass their genetic material on, i.e. to want to see individuals related to them prosper. In fact, from a biologically perspective, that is the whole POINT of LIFE, and individuals/societies/species that lose that desire, DIE. Now, if the western political and propaganda class have a collective death wish, they should do us a favor and go and act on it by THEMSELVES, and not insist on trying to bring down all the sane and normal individuals remaining in the west with them as well. And the irony is, if the government immigration “policy” is not checked, it will have the end result of making USA majority Latino, and those caucasian politicians that sought to win elections by bringing illegal Latinos in and giving them citizenship, will get voted out by the Latinos precisely because they are not Latino, because anyone who lives in the real world USA, (as opposed to the gated community USA), knows Latinos don’t much like “Anglos.” The Latinos, along with blacks, are already instrumental in voting in the Democrats, who have been very destructive of this country, largely simply in return for free handouts – affirmative action, amnesty for illegals, so I don’t see how more Latinos means good things for this country. So essentially, multiculturalism is a morally and evolutionarily degenerate idea that will not survive. The only question is will it take down the western peoples and their cultures along with it.
One more point….
Sure there is room for a limited degree of gene/cultural flow between peoples that is beneficial, but the keyword is LIMITED…
Now, basically our government and the media in the US and in Europe projects out their “immigration policy” and comes out with a country that is ethnically majority muslim in the case of Europe, and Latino in the case of US, in a relatively short amount of years. Of course, those groups will be culturally muslim and culturally Latino as well, with help from government “multicultural” policies.
So basically, the government policy is to ethnically and culturally replace the current majority ethnicity/ culture with a different majority ethnicity/culture. Sound familiar? It should because that is defacto GENOCIDE – albeit soft genocide by stealth. I imagine in Europe the muslims would then wipe out the remaining westerners by traditional genocide which they are quite good at.
So “my” supposedly democratic government and media has the nerve to simply inform me it will continue with policies that will replace my ethnical/cultural group as the major ethnical/cultural group in my own country in relatively very small number of years, and if I don’t like that, I am racist? PC multiculturalists = genocidal fascists. Multiculturalism = the “soft, gentle, stealthy” genocide.
Diabolically clever. Hitler failed in his genocide of European jews. The political US and EU elites are much closer to a succesful genocide of a much more numerous ethnic group.
Ahh, how happy my Anthropologist partner would be to see this article and these comments! His complaints for years that “multiculturalism” is a contradictory term, yet another twisting of ideas that long ago meant something in his field of study (such as also “cultural relativism”). No, there is no sense to it other than people of Western European descent running around telling people who are “brown” that they wished they had a culture of their own to identify with. “You’re so lucky! I’m just white. English/German mix”. How many times I have heard this! How many times I’ve been singled out for such bizarre ceremonies of self-abasement!
I utterly despise this “celebrate diversity” crowd, along with their pathetic self-abasement, which I think is as much at the root of this, “the Age of Deconstruction” described by Fjordman. Hearing such comments as the one above make me rip into a tirade instantly against anyone who speaks as such to me. Honestly! After all, despite my “celebrated ‘brown'” appearance, I am also of British ancestry, and love Germanic-almost-anything to the point of now being a Linguist studying main;y Comparative Germanic Linguistics. I’m no genius, but to hear someone practically grovel at my feet just because I finally honestly answer their ever-prying questions about my “ethnicity” instead of keeping them going with nonsense answers.
Celebrate diversity by not treating those who aren’t Germano-Celtic in heritage as PEOPLE, not as specimens from some sort of zoo. If I weren’t a patriotic girl and one who is also D.A.R., but rather the child of recent immigrants, I’d simply regard these self-abasers as beyond help. Obsessing over them “keeping their culture” is equally absurd. No one need toss out their own family history to become part of the larger culture. In some cases, enforcement of this keeping together is creating new ghettos and threatening to keep many less prosperous trapped as a permanent underclass. How is this kindness to these “diverse” new Americans (or in any Western nation)? Assimilation is the key. Without it in the past, people like myself wouldn’t even exist, but would still be marrying off daughters to “other Greeks” (in my case). I love the pride I have in my family and their accomplishments, but it has nothing to do with their Ionian Greekness. They’re just amazing to me, the pack of oddities that we are! But please don’t ask me to recommend any Greek foods or even invite me to a restaurant….this assimlated girl has a few “ethnic foods” that she doesn’t like, and one of them is Greek. And if you want a translation, it’d better be in Ancient Greek, which is all I have studied….HAHAHA!
John Fonte has looked at the overall construction of this, particularly on the Leftist side, and describes it as Transnational Progressivism, with first article here and a second and longer view of it here. He has since added a third category which he places on the Right and I refer to as Transnational Capitalism. Together these form three corresponding world views with high degrees of similarity to Progressivism, with the third being something I refer to as Transnational Terrorism. As the Progressivist is best defined for overall goals and objectives, I will borrow them from Fonte, but do realize that the other two utilize this outlook with their own viewpoint and end points: “Groups are what matter, not people. You are “Black” or “Christian” or “Mexican” or “Afghan” or “Sunni”, you are not yourself. You also don’t get to choose your group; it’s inherent in what you were when you were born. Someone else will categorize you into your group, and you will become a number, a body to count to decide how important that group is. And your group won’t change during your lifetime.
The goal of fairness is equality of result, not equality of opportunity. It isn’t important to let individuals fulfill their potential and express their dreams, what’s important is to make groups have power and representation in all things proportional to their numbers in the population. Fairness is for groups, not for individuals. The ideally fair system is based on quotas, not on merit, because that permits proper precise allocation of results.
Being a victim is politically significant. It’s not merely a plea for help or something to be pitied; it’s actually a status that grants extra political power. “Victimhood” isn’t a cult, it’s a valid political evaluation. Groups which are victims should be granted disproportionately more influence and representation, at the expense of the historic “dominant” culture.
Assimilation is evil. Immigrants must remain what they were before they arrived here, and should be treated that way. Our system must adapt to them, rather than expecting them to adapt to us (even if they want to). The migration of people across national borders is a way to ultimately erase the significance of those borders by diluting national identity in the destination country.
An ideal democracy is a coalition where political power is allocated among groups in proportion to their numbers. It has nothing to do with voting or with individual citizens expressing opinions, and in fact it doesn’t require elections at all. A “winner take all” system, or one ruled by a majority, is profoundly repugnant because it disenfranchise minority groups of all kinds and deprives them of their proper share of power.
National identity is evil. We should try to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, not as citizens of the nations in which we live, and we should try to minimize the effects of national interests, especially our own if we live in powerful nations.”
That is the ethos that has been generated not only as a descendant of International Socialism/Communism, but it has had much blander concepts added to it so as to make the thing seem inoffensive, until you realize what it takes to get them. These are all anti-Individualism and put forth that peoples have *no* differences and require over-arching and unaccountable government ruled by an Elite that passes out Rights as it sees fit. That is Transnationalism at its basis. Europe has had that eroding at it heavily for long decades and there is now a price and toll to it. Being a Citizen is becoming meaningless in many Nations while the rights of ‘people’ are asserted over those of mere Citizens. Breaking laws is just a ‘arbitrary construct that is biased’ and thusly those who are ‘oppressed’ may freely break any law while those that are ‘oppressors’ are to have no recourse and no legitimacy to their rights and freedoms.
A world run by an Elite and that apportions rights as it sees fit in an unaccountable manner is something called: Empire. And it does not matter what the foundation of the ethos *is* as no set-up like that has ever given much if any freedom to those under it.
Another great essay by Fjordman. Many thanks for helping to firm up and expand my thoughts on this topic.
One aspect that strikes me here is that the misguided “movement” of which we speak is outstanding in one special regard: multiculturalism promotes virtually nothing moving or stirring to the heart, only cold and neutral declarations, proclamations and legislation of how our societies should be. Nothing inspiring, no means or method to greater ideas or betterment at the personal or community levels. What an ideology brings out in people, or does not bring out, is very telling about it and its opposition.
Dr Morris (above) comments in a related vein on the fact that this encrypted marxism provides nothing by way of a philosophy that enjoins people to *contribute* anything to society. [Really there is no philosophy– only ideology]. No need to fuss over contributions, or even thinking, as the government will provide all means of sustenance. Note that ALL systems of societal organization require government in some form. Those who run these apparatuses today will make sure their grip is not lost in any transition, violent or otherwise.
So are we, the general public, a bunch of saps, defenseless against this malevolent tide? Or does multiculturalism offer us something that is so essential, on casual examination, that we are blind to the price tag and the actual nature of the merchandise? Apparently many of us are all too willing to believe the absurd notion that we can arrange ourselves (and each other) demographically, and treat each other with such unfailing respect and humanism (or else), that we can avoid war and conflict and discomfort altogether. Somehow “forever” seems to always be implicit here. Unfortunately, when the forces of the hand-holding, global uniculture– none lacking in armaments– turn out to be the overt cause of the next genocidal disaster, it will be too late for the majority to raise their voice.
Politically correct and multicultural motivations derive, I belive, mainly from fear: fear of conflict of any kind, fear of guilt (racism etc), fear of responsibility (which involves jugement- oh my!) and fear of having (no) control over one’s life. All of this devolves into an even darker malaise about the future of one’s children and country and the supposed fate of Man. Wouldn’t it be neat if we could make everything even-steven and we didn’t have to worry about all that stuff?
Those who think they know best for us will get their way unless we are outspoken and active. This is nothing new.
I like the discussion about the Communism and how it deals in our society today. But going back to World War II does it really contributes to the society?