The reason why the obviously stupid policies of multi-culturalism exist is that they serve capital and facilitate the triumph of neo-liberalism.
Take any developed society. When discontent begins to brew, immigrants are brought into the country in massive numbers. These immigrants come from the kind of poverty that citizens of this developed society cannot even begin to imagine. For them, the status quo that the locals want to change is paradise. Immigrants see the protesting locals as spoiled, ungrateful brats.
Of course, the locals and the immigrants could start communicating, collaborating, explaining their respective positions to each other. But this is where multi-culturalism comes in.
The policies of multi-culturalism create ghettoized societies where locals and immigrants hate and fear each other. Multi-culturalism makes immigrants so unacceptable and repellent to the locals that any form of peaceful contact between them is impossible. It also precludes immigrants from integrating into the host society in a way that would be even minimally comfortable.
The result: a deeply fragmented society that envisions no possibility of uniting to oppose neo-liberalism.
Clarissa's Blog 
“For them, the status quo that the locals want to change is paradise. Immigrants see the protesting locals as spoiled, ungrateful brats”
In Europe it’s worse since immigrants are largely recruited from muslim societies that regard almost every facet of the culture of the host country not only as strange but actually immoral.
– frequent consumption of pork – immoral,
– casual consumption of alcohol – immoral,
– casual mixing of the sexes – immoral,
– western bathing suits – plus immoral,
– not slicing up little girls’ genitalia with razor blades – double plus immoral,
– casual sex – OMG SUPER IMMORAL!!!!
How can you expect people to even integrate when they can’t eat or socialize with the locals unless it is 100% on their own terms?
Yes, many individual muslims are not religious freaks and develop an attitude toward following strange rules that’s not so different from the european norm – but those aren’t the ones chosen to immigrate.
The people who engineered this were either unspeakably stupid, unspeakably evil or both.
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“Yes, many individual muslims are not religious freaks and develop an attitude toward following strange rules that’s not so different from the european norm – but those aren’t the ones chosen to immigrate.”
– EXACTLY!!! And it’s the same with immigrants from other countries. It might not be as visible, but the same policies are used. Take my compatriots, for instance.
Also: these policies make people hate the welfare state. The idea of those alien, unacceptable immigrants getting welfare checks is so upsetting that Western Europeans are more open to the idea that the welfare state should be destroyed.
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I’ll also add that multi-culturalism de facto encourages parents to pass their culture shock trauma onto their children which quickly turns them into an underclass.
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“I’ll also add that multi-culturalism de facto encourages parents to pass their culture shock trauma onto their children which quickly turns them into an underclass.”
– This is very important! A family becomes a small ghetto within a ghetto. Parents who feel lost and terrified in an alien culture try to hold on to what they have, create a little enclave where everything will remain familiar.
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An example of this happening.
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The ending is really sad. “Thank you Mommy for making me a pawn of your neuroses”?
This isn’t really about immigration. Mommy would have crippled this poor person in any country. And she has Americanized better than I ever will. I wish I could write in this very recognizable American voice. But I can’t. I think I emigrated too late for that.
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This is very true. Multiculturalism is a big problem here in the UK, as I know you are aware. I lecture on diaspora and poetry in the UK every year and include a section on the problems with multiculturalism. It’s amazing to see two hundred students stare back at me, in shock that someone, much less an immigrant woman, might say such things.
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In London, I saw how space was rapidly ghettoizing. And I hear that things are even worse in terms of the formation of ghettos in France, and really bad in Belgium. As a result, people in Western and central Europe begin to vote conservative and even proto-fascist.
But all we keep hearing is how multiculturalism is an invention of progressives.
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Because progressives were stupid enough to let themselves be turned into the policy’s enforcers.
If a person says they don’t think that women covering their faces in public is appropriate and it’s the progressives that rush in to accuse the complainer about having imperialistic or racist attitudes (and encouraging immigrants to keep their ‘traditions’ the more backward the better).
It’s also the progressives who are responsible for PC renaming that confuses and tongue ties people. Renaming Gypsies as Roma or Romany/Romani confuses them with Romanians which is maybe good for Gypsies but it’s not good for Romanians and it makes it hard to form policy when you cannot clearly say who it is causing problems…..
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I don’t know why this is being linked specifically to progressives. Right-wing parties have been in power in most Western European countries for a few years. What have they done to reverse or oppose these policies? What have they done to change immigration laws? In the UK, Cameron barely managed to squeeze two words out on the subject of gender segregation. Has anybody been deported? Have any extradition orders been granted?
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Most people can’t explain their positions to each other as it takes a very high degree of education and capacity to be articulate. The fundamental aspects of our positions are usually held too deeply to be conscious. Becoming more aware can take a few decades of concerted effort.
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Still, there are people who are culturally more pre-disposed towards establishing contact with each other and people who are so alien to each other that no contact is possible. Western Europeans stubbornly and consistently keep inviting the latter to their countries and excluding the former.
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So true.
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Seems depressingly plausible, from a UK viewpoint, especially coupled with cliff’s first comment… Never mind the big things he lists, even the little stuff like ‘married women wearing their hair loose and uncovered, and baring their arms in T-shirts and lower legs in skirts’ or ‘woman in front of classroom’ creates culture shock for some of the students we meet in classrooms (and really, a STEM classroom is not a space where some of these issues can be usefully brought out and explored to enrich all sides, they’re a constant source of disciplinary problems and a distraction for the students).
Also, multiculturalism makes any of the indigenes who actually think about these things and want to help the newcomers integrate or assert their right to do things which are entirely appropriate according to the culture of their own country in a public space (pig roasts are SORT of cultural…) feel like they’re being cultural imperialists
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“even the little stuff like ‘married women wearing their hair loose and uncovered, and baring their arms in T-shirts and lower legs in skirts’ or ‘woman in front of classroom’ creates culture shock for some of the students we meet in classrooms”
– Horrible. This is an intolerable environment, and I can’t avoid thinking that this situation – which keeps reoccurring in Western European countries – is not accidental.
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And professors say it is traumatic for them to speak with women in head scarves. When in southern Europe when I was a child, Catholic women wore head scarves, too.
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Forget head scarves, what about faces that are fully covered and there is a mesh over the eyes?
In Rusia profunda, it is traditional for rural women to cover their heads so that no hair is seen, too. This always shocked Ukrainians who had a much greater degree of sexual and gender freedom.
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Part of the problem with this is the ever increasing idea that all cultures have something positive to add to the existing one. And god forbid you point out the ones that are probably going to add more negative than positive. If you do that its best to be prepared to be called a racist, bigot, or better yet the new moniker Islamophobe.
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The problem with this idea is that it is based on the assumption that everybody who comes from the same country/region and/pr speaks the same language is a carrier of this monolithic culture that this person can contribute to another monolithic culture. But such monolithic cultures don’t even exist.
Take you and me. You have been coming to this blog for years, so obviously I have things to say that you find interesting and valuable and I see your comments as interesting and valuable. And we disagree but that is the kind of disagreement that comes from a shared frame of reference, a shared system of value. So what if you celebrate Christmas while I celebrate New Year’s and you pour maple syrup on your eggs while I find that exotic? We still have a lot to say to each other than I and some bandit who grew up on the same street I did but who is so alien to me that he is like from a different planet? There are people in my country who speak the kind of Russian I barely even understand because of the enormous amount of jargon they use. So who is from the same culture? Me and you? Or me and him?
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I personally think culture is what we decide to share in a fairly equal kind of way. In other words, we agree upon things that will benefit us all. This is why the term multiculturalism is a misnomer. There either is a dominant culture that everyone, for the most part, agrees upon or you have division. This is definitely the reason why religion needs to be totally excluded from governmental issues, like, laws, schooling, medical treatment etc………..
So, if you do perogies for dinner, I will bring some poutine from Quebec. 🙂
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“I personally think culture is what we decide to share in a fairly equal kind of way. In other words, we agree upon things that will benefit us all. This is why the term multiculturalism is a misnomer. There either is a dominant culture that everyone, for the most part, agrees upon or you have division. This is definitely the reason why religion needs to be totally excluded from governmental issues, like, laws, schooling, medical treatment etc………..
So, if you do perogies for dinner, I will bring some poutine from Quebec.”
– Don’t mention poutine because I love it and miss it a lot. 🙂 But yes, this is exactly what I’m talking about. The basic shared frame of reference without which an immigrant will be profoundly miserable and the host society will repel this immigrant. There are so many people like that in my immigrant community – and I don’t mean bandits, I just mean people who do not comprehend the basic framework of the society they have joined. They live in ghettos, they suffer, it’s a bad situation for everybody.
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Love him or hate him, this guy hits the nail on the head.
http://www.patcondell.net/theres-no-racist-like-a-liberal-racist/
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It’s true although I am not sure I would say it of the multicultural movements in Latin America, which seem to be different/more serious (and about which I am soon to learn more than I know now).
I’d also say Europe could really use some anti-racist training, they are lightyears behind US on this, which is shocking since US is not very good on it.
But yes, mainstream multiculturalism isn’t about antiracism, it’s about greasing the wheels for neoliberalism basically, and there is much analysis and documentation of this from a Left/antiracist point of view.
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I have recently heard about an economic theory on a similar topic from a person with a PhD in economics. There is a “natural” degree of unemployment in every capitalist economy, and the unemployed usually don’t vote for the existing government. That’s why it would be nice for politicians to have the unemployed without the right to vote. If you bring immigrants and give them welfare, so that they consume too, the demand for products goes up and companies begin to hire. Naturally, they hire the natives before immigrants, so both the capitalists’ the natives’ positions are improved. The now employed natives begin buying more too, and, of course, some immigrants also find work. However, to create the positive effect one must bring neither too many nor too few immigrants. The person said that Scandinavian countries successfully used this model, and, despite the increase in taxes to finance it, the position of natives improved. Despite that all, the moment there is unrelated to immigrants crisis, people tend to blame the newcomers.
Just another aspect of the goings on, which doesn’t have to be against your theory, but enrich the analysis.
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“The person said that Scandinavian countries successfully used this model, and, despite the increase in taxes to finance it, the position of natives improved.”
– Yes, exactly. But the problem is that – irrespective of what Marx and his followers say – economic considerations are never strong enough to trump culture and emotion. Let’s say somebody starts to import crowds of Russian bandits into St. Louis. And let’s say our economy flourishes as a result. Will that make me seethe any less than I do now every time I see them? Of course, not. This is stronger than money, and you literally can’t pay me enough to feel at peace with them.
I’m going on and on about these bandits because they are my sore point. But everybody else can substitute the immigrant group they secretly detest for bandits in my text and see how it makes them feel.
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“Great” news from Russia:
Власть начала усиленно нагнетать антисемитские настроения через сайты своих партий-сателлитов, а также с помощью интернет-ресурсов “Беркута”: “На сайтах некоторых партий, близких к власти, например, на сайте Виктора Медведчука, Наталии Витренко, на сайте “Беркута”, в последние две-три недели появилось много антисемитских материалов, которые говорят, что именно евреи организовали Майдан. Это такой абсурд, но ему верят те, кто сейчас стоит с дубинками и щитами против активистов. Им внушают: мол, Майдан – дело рук евреев, так что нечего никого жалеть, бейте всех”.
Глава Ассоциации еврейской общины Украины считает, что идейным вдохновителем пропаганды против евреев мог стать секретарь СНБО Андрей Клюев, а антисемитская пропаганда в Украине создана по российским лекалам.
“Я допускаю, что пропаганду может координировать Клюев. Власть многое копирует с России, но еще Кучма написал, что Украина – не Россия и российские методы у нас не сработают”, – заключил Зисельс.
http://gordonua.com/news/maidan/Zisels-Silovikam-vnushayut-chto-Maydan-organizovali-evrei-a-potomu-nado-bit-vseh-6359.html
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“Multi-culturalism makes immigrants so unacceptable and repellent to the locals that any form of peaceful contact between them is impossible.”
Could you explain this point further when you have time? Thanks!
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Sure! Take the kind of immigrants – the ONLY, I might add, kind – that is accepted and welcomed in Europe and the US (Canada is somewhat different in this regard) from my country and other FSU countries: bandits and their paid companions. These people will never learn the language, will never pay taxes, will never establish any friendships with locals. All they will do is throw around garbage (because the word “environment” disgusts them), fill the public spaces with their loud, showy, vulgar presence, and will mistreat anybody who is a little darker than they are.
The excuse for welcoming them in huge numbers to the UK, for example, is that they bring in money. But that is a fiction. They transfer money to UK accounts for just long enough to get their papers. Then they put that money in off-shore accounts and never pay a dime of taxes on it in the UK or invest it in any business. Yes, Abramovich bought stuff. But all the rest of them don’t.
Now a question: can I blame people in the UK for hating these bandits and not wanting them around? I really can’t because I don’t want them around either.
Yet the UK’s governments keep welcoming them. My husband, in the meanwhile, will never be able to enter the country, even as a tourist because he overstayed his travel visa 15 years ago.
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Absolutely agreed on all points. Thanks!
How about the US, though? Do you think multi-culturalism is prevalent here? It would seem so, if one consumed right-wing media rants about war on christmas, university departments being forced to abandon Shakespeare in favor of black/brown/feminist/gay/lesbian authors, the fabled PC police, etc. etc.
I think the US is a multi-cultural society (willing to change my mind here) but none of the things you mentioned about the UK apply here. An american visa is very the hard to obtain and most immigrants who do come over here do so to get advanced degrees and high paying jobs. You have the good things of multiculturalism here (anti-discrimination laws for instance) without the attendant baggage like you see in the UK.
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“You have the good things of multiculturalism here (anti-discrimination laws for instance) without the attendant baggage like you see in the UK.”
– Yes, what you say is true. However, I think it is important to look at the EU and learn from its mistakes. Because the immigration laws in the US do favor all kinds of dishonest people over honest, good people. This, for instance, was a very dangerous initiative, in my opinion:
The plan to can the lottery immigration (which in some corrupt countries, khm, khm turns into a travesty) in favor of granting permanent resident status to PhD graduates of US schools was brilliant. Now the next step would be to stop accepting the gangsters or their children into the US PhD programs in return for cash gifts to schools. (Like the daughter of a Russian gangster who was hiding from justice in Greece in my PhD program.)
” It would seem so, if one consumed right-wing media rants about war on christmas, university departments being forced to abandon Shakespeare in favor of black/brown/feminist/gay/lesbian authors, the fabled PC police, etc. etc.”
– I feel a disgusted sort of pity for those people.
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Also – now that I started ranting and I can’t stop: why aren’t the EU countries granting extradition orders from Russia on Russian criminals? These are real crimes that are not even remotely politically tinged. Why did Germany welcome Khodorkovsky a couple of weeks ago? Is Germany so poor that it needs him and his blood money? Or he is a valuable representative of some culture of which I’m not aware?
And here is my question: might it be that there are people in those countries who are disturbed by the idea that corrupt bankers and criminal billionaires might be brought to justice? And might those people be corrupt bankers themselves? Is this a case of gangsters protecting other gangsters out of class solidarity?
And another aspect. I sometimes read blogs by these “Russian Londoners.” They absolutely hate the welfare state, they hate people of other races, they hate feminism, human rights, environmentalism. Might there be certain political forces who want to bring them over to dilute the more progressive clusters of political thought in the country?
OK, rant is over. For now. 🙂
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“Take the kind of immigrants – the ONLY, I might add, kind – that is accepted and welcomed in Europe and the US”
Disagree with the US part. I would say the ONLY kind of immigrant that is accepted and welcomed in the US is a highly educated (or coming here for higher education) one.
The number of rich people getting easy green cards pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of indian/chinese students coming here for higher education every year.
I don’t agree with the premise that multiculturalism makes immigrants unacceptable the locals are disgusted by the few ‘rich bandit’ immigrants. It’s far more likely that an average american encounters middle class immigrants who actually ‘earned’ their way through education and hard work. How often do any of us get to interact with russian billionaires?
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“And professors say it is traumatic for them to speak with women in head scarves”
It depends. I don’t mind hair/neck covering (I think it’s an ugly look but I guess that’s the point – modesty through unattraciveness) but face covering is freaky and profoundly anti-social and I’ve known muslim women who are as freaked out by it as any westerner.
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I get as unnerved by the large wooden crosses many of my students wear around their necks.
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Wooden crosses? Man, I’m really glad I didn’t accept that campus visit to Louisiana. . .
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I think the main problem why immigration related problems like multi-culturalism is that you can’t publically critize it. Every time someone says something remotely critical about the ghettoization or mandatory language-skills, You can always find some well-meaning progressive liberal* that will accuse you of pretty much every bad ism in the dictionary***.
Starting with racism, classism, culturalism, imperialism** and facism. And calling someone a Nazi is and probably always will be a really quick way to shut someone up here in Germany.
And you know what the worst of all is? The ones that charge in head-first without thinking twice actually believe that they are acting in the name of Justice, Peace and Equality.
* I used to call myself progressive and liberal, but frankly I often don’t want to stand in line with some others that do this too.
** There is one particular immigrated blogger who yells IMPERIALIST PIGS at the top of her voice every time someone if send away from the EU’s border. She goes as far as to claim that the EU is responsible for what traffickers from foreign countries do to people who want to illegally immigrate, because if the EU just have an open door policy, all that would not happen. It annoys me greatly.
*** This is related to a phenomenon I have observed in quite a few types of social justice movements. There is an established consent of what is right and what is the correct opinion on an issue and everyone who disagrees is assumed as either incapable of completely grasping the situation (because they are too stupid or lack education) or having sinister intention. Thus there is no use in actually engaging that person and it is much more effective to just yell them down.
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Yes. As Mike Ballard (husband creature) keeps pointing out, if the leftists want to stab themselves in the foot, they should keep demaning that more people from very conservative societies come into Australia. Welcome the Muslims with their veils and forbid them not. But these people push the political discourse to the right. They’re not your allies. They want women to have certain very limited roles. Open hearts and crying eyes will not change that.
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Today in my critical race theory class, we talked about multiculturalism in a Canadian context, and how it serves the interest of the state by reducing diversity down to palatable tidbits of cultures, such as cultural regalia, dances, and food, but doesn’t challenge the status quo of who has political/economic power. Our professor, the daughter of immigrants, rocked the perspectives of a room full of Canadian students who had previously presumed multiculturalism to be a benign force of good.
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I’d hate to live in the kind of culturally monolithic settings so many do. What a bore.
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This is interesting given that among all of my readers you are the only person I associate with strong anti-immigrant sentiments. 🙂 🙂
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“I don’t know why this is being linked specifically to progressives”
They’re the scapegoats. They somehow got maneuvered into becoming the public face of third world cultural preservation (anti-colonial romanticism?) so that those who are responsible or and benefit from the poicies are not held accountable.
And there was this guy too
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/6418456/Labour-wanted-mass-immigration-to-make-UK-more-multicultural-says-former-adviser.html
using phrases like “rub the Right’s nose in diversity” is going to make people associate the policy with progressives.
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“They’re the scapegoats. They somehow got maneuvered into becoming the public face of third world cultural preservation (anti-colonial romanticism?) so that those who are responsible or and benefit from the poicies are not held accountable.”
– Exactly! And I really like the expressions “third world cultural preservation” and “anti-colonial romanticism.”
“I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date.”
– Surely, they were not hoping to get more voters by bringing in people from ultra-conservative countries? Because that’s too stupid even for the UK’s Labour Party.
“In his column, Mr Neather said that as well as bringing in hundreds of thousands more migrants to plug labour market gaps, there was also a “driving political purpose” behind immigration policy.”
– But what was that political purpose? “Making the country more diverse” is not a political purpose. It’s empty verbiage.
In every article on this issue I sense a deep fear at its core, a fear of saying something that everybody knows and alludes to but can’t verbalize. Until it is verbalized, however, until the fear of saying, “Not all cultures are equal, and some a definitely inferior to others” (or whatever it is they want to say) goes away, none of this will be resolved.
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