Multiculturalism is Dead, Long Live Multiculturalism

The UK’s conservative PM David Cameron has come out and practically declared “state multiculturalism” dead, then went on to extrapolate that we condemn whites for having crazy (i.e. dangerous) views but we tolerate non-whites for having crazy views (link 1). This is a move which sides him with other right-wing parties and governments across Europe which are declaring multiculturalism a failure. The fact that Cameron did this in Germany where a few months ago the German chancellor Angela Merkel stated “this [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed” is likely no coincidence and the governments of Germany and the UK will probably scapegoat immigrants for, at least, the remainder of their political terms (link 2). Sigh, the social climate of economic downturn, so dark, so predictable.

The title I grifted off a Guardian opinion piece by columnist Madeleine Bunting, who aptly summed up the situation  by writing:

It’s not a slogan that slips easily off the tongue, but it’s the only one that seemed to capture the bizarre dissonance of a media abuzz with David Cameron’s speech in Munich on the failed policies of “state multiculturalism” and my Saturday morning shopping in Hackney’s Ridley Road in east London. Dozens of nationalities jostle for the best vegetables, dresses, blankets and cookware. The air is full of the smell of Turkish bread and African salted fish, the stalls are heaped with yams and chilis. The street traders’ banter is littered with the Cockney endearments of love and darling. No one is dewy-eyed about this kind of London – there is too much poverty for that – but for all its many shortcomings, there is something extraordinary about how Britain has accommodated this hyper-diversity, the legacy of its economic boom of the last decade. And a sense that the process of how people become British, what it is to be British, is being subtly negotiated in a myriad of interactions on the street, in schools and hospitals.

(link 3)

The truth is always grayer, blurrier, messier than it’s description. Especially with such large scale phenomenon terms such as “multiculturalism” they always fall short of the truth. The best they achieve (furthermore this is particularly true in the world of social science) is Ian Morris’ comparison chainsaw art, where we know and can learn from the term & it’s definition yet there is not at all complete illumination. Modernisation is a fine example of what these terms should aspire to with a rough consensus that agrees on the whole the term decently approximates with the truth, and we are more aided, we are better off having this provisional term and knowledge then not.

I take great exception with conservatives on the issue of immigration and multiculturalism. The right have the luxury of not needing to understand societal change and immigration as they simply know they don’t want it. This provides them a constant two pronged pressure with business groups demanding lots of immigrating (especially cheap) labour and the fact that you can’t stop people moving (immigration quotas are never going to happen, largely due to the first point and supplemented by the fact that all societies have a large amount of liberals which offset concern over people movement).

Those to the left however, and even scholars, journalists, business etc. (many have a vested interest in at least knowing the truth, the situation on the ground, so to speak) strive to understand how different peoples live and coexist side by side without violence and need to know the comings and goings of people. Being unable to shout “we don’t want it, we don’t want it, we don’t want it” with infantile relations to reality is not an option for us, with the result that those who publicly speak about these issues, the left, and not those who can afford to simply learn about them privately (e.g. business) end up on the defensive. It must be taken on the chin nonetheless. Striving for things worth striving for, truth, justice, freedom, by nature can never be easy.

First there is the above truth that summarising multiculturalism (by the way a term I am not enamored with, like just about all social science terminology) whether it is failing, succeeding, doing okay is always complicated because summarising how numerous different peoples live together in one nation is very complex and near indeterminable. This opaqueness gives the right the ability to say without evidence that it is failing. Also terrorism is always now tied in with the discussion (and to round the circle, like Cameron’s speech illuminated multiculturalism talks now mainly refer to Muslims living in Western countries and those Islamic extremists within Muslim communities), with is unfair as terrorism is always a fringe phenomenon, so the right exploitatively try to caste the many in the light of the few. All these statements are really reverberations from September 11 and the Global Financial Crisis, and sadly they will probably sound for a while longer. The last point I wish to cast on why conservative politicians, and even sadly some liberal politicians, scapegoat immigrants and Muslims is because we are heading to a world where nation-states are more passive actors which inevitably must succumb to globalisation and global forces and cannot more actively project their power, hence they must tend to their own garden. This is why I believe in Australia the left leaning ALP fret and bother about boat arrivals and in the USA even some democrats openly targeted and contested the incredibly unfairly and wrongly dubbed “ground zero mosque”. In the case of the UK Cameron is an old school conservative who believes the previous generation was better and if he had a session on the couch would probably reveal he desperately longs for the womb. He wants people to get pumped up about citizenship, which can only ever be British citizenship with pretty much the Anglo-cultural habits and beliefs with that term suggests. Cameron believes citizens want to play boy scout while the state plays scoutmaster, as his National Citizen Service initiative for 16 year olds to spend two months living and working amongst people with different backgrounds illustrates. Of course they speak of a minimalist state and the people doing all this themselves which will either result in most initiatives never happening or the state, which doesn’t at all have to be “large”, being the puppet-master regarding these initiatives of civil obedience.

Now for some facts. First the idea that terrorism is rife within Muslim communities is false. As Stephen M. Walt on his blog at Foreign Policy points out:

trying to inject reason and evidence into this sort of debate is usually futile, but I do wish to report some good news. Remember the avalanche of Muslim-based terrorism that was about to descend upon the West? Well, according to the EU’s 2010 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report, the total number of terrorist incidents in Europe declined in 2009. Even more important, the overwhelming majority of these incidents had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

The report is produced by Europol, which is the criminal intelligence agency of the European Union. In 2009, there were fewer than 300 terrorist incidents in Europe, a 33 percent decline from the previous year. The vast majority of these incidents (237 out of 294) were conducted by indigenous European separatist groups, with another forty or so attributed to leftists and/or anarchists. According to the report, a grand total of one (1) attack was conducted by Islamists. Put differently, Islamist groups were responsible for a whopping 0.34 percent of all terrorist incidents in Europe in 2009. In addition, the report notes, “the number of arrests relating to Islamist terrorism (110) decreased by 41 percent compared to 2008, which continues the trend of a steady decrease since 2006.”

I know there are lot of people getting rich fueling Islamophobia, but we’d really all be better off if they would focus their attention to anarchists, or maybe separatist groups like ETA. The report isn’t naive or Panglossian about Islamic radicalism, and it emphasizes that there are still extremist groups with worrisome ambitions. But their sifting of the data does put the actual danger in perspective and serves as a valuable corrective to the careless threat inflation that has become all too common over the past decade.

(my emphasis in bold. link 4)

Apart from 9/11, the London bombings, Madrid bombings, Bali bombing: terrorism, incredibly diverse societies coexist peacefully and even prosper. Terrorism is about the marginals, the exceptions, the extremists/radicals and the fact that the few, terrorists, is really the only argument against multiculturalism shows how solid it is in actuality. The burka, mosque minarets and other rival trivialities merely shows the straws grasped at by the right-wing as they complain about multiculturalism and global change (I mean several minarets causing a referendum in Switzerland as to whether there is too many is ridiculous, no one whines about the few dozen, at very least, giant gothic church steeples which populate cities).

Lastly the best argument: only with extraordinary suffering and hardship could diversity in societies actually be slowed down and/or wound back. Like it or lump it.