We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Multiculturalism – an interim phase

Mark Steyn’s has something to say about the Kilroy-Silk affair in the Telegraph today. True to his ‘notorious’ style he does not mince words. Enjoy.

Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you’re Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 – none of which is factually in dispute – the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain.

But, if you’re Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers on the West Bank “should be shot dead” because “they are Nazis” and “I feel nothing but hatred for them”, the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London’s cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.

The situation starts looking serious with the concluding paragraph:

And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins – and all the noisy types who run around crying “Censorship!” if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks suddenly fall silent. I don’t know about you, but this “multicultural Britain” business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.

29 comments to Multiculturalism – an interim phase

  • Matthew O'Keeffe

    It seems to me that we have surrendered the term multiculturalism to our enemy (in much the same way as we surrendered the term liberalism). The self-styled mutliculturalists of today are, on the contrary, a dreary monoculturalist lot. University educated, labour-voting, Islington dwelling, civil servants of one sort or another … I think you know the people I mean. Libertarians and, indeed, all those who believe in equality before the law, are the real multculturalists.

  • Alan

    Steyn’s article is one of the best I’ve read. I only hope he’s wrong with his concluding line although deep down inside I’m not so sure.

  • A_t

    Isn’t the essential difference that, however much Kilroy *may* have meant “some arabs” or “arab regimes”, he said “arabs”, characterising a whole swathe of people with his comments. I always thought making negative generalisations about people based on their ethnicity was pretty much textbook racism.

    Tom Paulin selected Jewish settlers in particular, who are people who have *chosen* a particular course of action; one which many people, myself included, think is despiccable. If he was a stupider man & had said “Jews”, all the PC-guardians you so hate would have been all over him & denouncing him just as strongly, & quite rightly too.

    Clearly Kilroy has the right to say whatever he wants though, and I agree with comments on the earlier thread; more outrageous things have been said in his stupid TV show, without such major consequences.

  • The Wobbly Guy

    If they want multi-culturalism, then they better be equally hard on everybody.

    In my country, if anybody, regardless of affiliation, writes anything hateful that touches on religion and/or race, towards anybody, the government comes down like a ton of bricks. That’s also why our brand of multi-culturalism works, because there are no favourites. Step out of line, SMACK!

    Truth to tell, I still think properly enforced multiculturalism is a good idea, because the rabble rousers and racists are still there, just waiting for their chance.

    A few months ago, there was an incident concerning Muslim wear and our public schools, because the tudung was not acceptable wear and was not part of the school uniform. The matter was eventually settled, but most of us thought that the whole affair had been staged by islamic radicals in the background.

    http://www.funkygrad.com/ratedserious/displayarticle.php?artID=256&subcat=shout

    The Wobbly Guy

  • Kelli

    Steyn appears to be reading a bit too much into this incident. At least that is the impression from this side of the Atlantic. Yes, there have been a few distressing instances of PC run amok over hear. I had heard about the theater refusing to run the Palestinian play; there are still worse instances, involving the cancellation of Indian films in an arthouse series because Muslim extremists threatened violence. I think it unlikely that the small Muslim minority in this country will push the envelope too far, however, as it will rebound in unpredictable and probably harsh ways.

    Case in point: a few weeks ago Muslim footballers (American style) made headlines in California for naming their teams “Intifada” and “Jihadis”, etc. This raised considerable ire, especially among local Jewish groups, and the teams were renamed. This sort of thing doesn’t go down well in the States and people will not sit by and watch militancy grow like so many toxic flowers.

  • Michael

    Tom Paulin selected Jewish settlers in particular, who are people who have *chosen* a particular course of action

    So if Kilroy had said Islamic Terrorists should be shot dead, they are Nazis he would have been alright? I don’t think so.

  • limberwulf

    The most close-minded people are the ones who claim to be open, the advocators of “tolerance” tend to be totally intollerant. Whenever you have a set of terms such as “tolerance” and “multiculturalism” put into a society, the terms take on the properties of a weapon. It becomes a way to cry foul and raise accusation. Anyone who wants to get their own way can claim “intollerance” and get their way. The purveyors of such foolishness build in preset ideas of which groups to accuse of violation. Generally, these groups are the ones whose power is trying to be taken away. In the US for instance, white men are assumed racists and therefore are not elligible to cry “racism” when descriminated against. Christians are considered “close minded” and “intollerant”, therefor their ideas are not to be tolerated nor should you open your mind to them. The US, in spite of its many cultures, is accused of not being “multicultural” because it acts on the world scene without bowing to a “democracy of nations”. All such concepts are merely attempts to use what appears to be a good moral principle to gain power for one group and take it form another. To enforce such “moral code” on a nation is a bad idea, because the goal of protecting freedom becomes too fuzzy. To tell me why I can or can not descriminate is wrong, because you can not know what is in my mind. To tell me that I can not take action that would harm someone or take away rights form them is fine, because that is definable and universal.

  • harryj

    Matthew Hopkins, Witch Finder General, found witches. He knew the stigmata, auxillary nipples and suchlike. His authority was complete, and who was going to argue with him when the gibbet might be your reward. Best to say and do nothing. Witches could be conjured up from a phantasma, brought into being by assertion, made out of nothing.

    The people have the right to resist forcible integration, and to move to a congenial location of their own chosing. They have the right to point out characteristics of seperate identifiable groups such as arabs. If the perceived characteristic of arab nations is a unifying religion characterised by cruel and unusual punishments, extraordinary supression of their women contrasting with normal Western civilization, they have the right to point this out and to deplore it. Moreover when there are clear and constant threats from an identifiable group, in the form of recruitment of young people to train to fight the British army and it’s allies in the Middle East, to commit murder with suicide bombers in a friendly country, and to allow it’s immams to preach death to the infidels in mosques throughout Britain, which gives them sanctuary, then they should point this out to the government and the law. This is not racism, or even whichcraft.
    The political appointment of Trevor Phillips, and the designation of the CRE as witch finders general is a reproach to the government and the left-liberal elite with it’s strangle hold on government.
    From old we had the law to protect all citizens white, black, yellow or green. Let everyone live as equals under the law as it has always been.

  • Julian Morrison

    The only way to have a multi-culture is to have a meta-culture. Cultures conflict, meta-culture defines who comes out on top.

    Lefty multiculturalism has one: socialism, entitlement-ism, and anti-western backlash.

    Libertarianism has one: private property, individual liberty, the principle of “non-initiation of force”.

    Don’t throw out multiculture as a concept, focus on the advocated metaculture, which is where the actual problem lies.

  • David Gillies

    “So if Kilroy had said Islamic Terrorists should be shot dead,…he would have been alright?”

    Huh? Of course he would. Islamic terrorists should be (and are being) shot dead by the bushel. What sort of touchy-feely weirdo would think different? The main purpose of the War on Terror is to kill some Muslims so we don’t have to kill all of them.

  • A_t

    Michael, “So if Kilroy had said Islamic Terrorists should be shot dead, they are Nazis he would have been alright?”

    what David said above… of course he would be! I think you’d have to go *very* far into the weirdo peacenik fringes before you got people arguing for the rights of murderers. What’s more, he would’ve been *right*, whereas his statements as they stood were blatantly wrong.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Julian Morrison hit the nail smack on the head. Yes, in my book Kilroy-Silk’s error was to treat Arabs as some sort of undifferentiated mass. Of course, coming from a collectivist metacontext – he used to be a Labour MP – this man was talking about people as members of a group. But Arabs are as different as any other human beings.

    As Mark Steyn himself has pointed out, there is no such thing as the “Arab Street”. The Arab world is intensely complex and should not be reduced to some simple model.

    That said, I think the BBC’s treatment of Kilroy-Silk is daft and shows the kind of double standards at work. After all, Michael Moore, author of a book with the racist title “Stupid White Men”, is treated as some sort of sage by the BBC and Guardianista types.

  • toolkien

    In my country, if anybody, regardless of affiliation, writes anything hateful that touches on religion and/or race, towards anybody, the government comes down like a ton of bricks. That’s also why our brand of multi-culturalism works, because there are no favourites. Step out of line, SMACK!

    Truth to tell, I still think properly enforced multiculturalism is a good idea, because the rabble rousers and racists are still there, just waiting for their chance.

    I guess I’m a little unclear what this is supposed to mean. Does it mean that some speech, not directly inciting anyone to harm a person or property, is curbable by (presumably) the government? One person’s ‘rabble rouser’ is another person’s prophet. Dividing ourselves is human nature, and dividing ourselves irrationally is still the prerogative of the individual, just as associating with each other is human nature, and can be just as rationally or irrationally determined.

    Beliefs and opinions, in a civil society, should not be punishable, it is actions and behaviors that should be punishable. Any attempt at ‘proactively’ eliminating beliefs to control behavior is precisely what gives rise to totalitarianism. I think the ‘multi-culturalism’ as we regard it in this context springs from the minds of people to supposedly counteract racism and its effects and ends up becoming like its enemy in the end.

  • Tuscan Tony

    Gabby, my dear, you’re trying to apply logic and sense to an organisation whose leader allegedly (?used to?) keep a bust of Stalin in his office – without doubt one of the worst genocidal nutters in history.

    Try and imagine the CRE’s reaction if Kilroy-Silk had a painting of Goebbels on his office wall. One rule for the self-serving lapdogs of the loony collectivist left…..

  • The Wobbly Guy

    Beliefs and opinions lead to negative actions and behaviours. Perhaps it’s because of my nation’s particular history, where racism did rear its ugly head(due to aforementioned rabble rousing) and caused quite a bit of trouble before the government stepped in and said ‘never again’.

    Never discount race, religion, or language. You might like to think otherwise, but it takes very little for these factors to arouse strong emotions in otherwise clear thinking people, which may later on lead to undesirable consequences. Punishing anything bad that happens as a result would be a case of shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted.

    It comes down to just how much people think free speech is worth. More often than not, you’ll find the answer is: Not a lot.

    The Wobbly Guy

  • R. C. Dean

    I dunno about the rest of you, but I think inciting the murder of even a self-selected group is far worse than the sloppy use of generalization in describing the demonstrated societal/cultural proclivities of contemporary Arab states.

    This isn’t apples and oranges because the Jews that Paulin wants to kill are self-selected and the Arabs that Kilroy-Silk attempts to describe are not self-selected. This is apples and oranges because Paulin is advocating mass murder, and Kilroy-Silk is not.

  • Harry Payne

    I noted with some interest that today’s Guardian editorial seemed to infer that Tom Paulin was entitled to say that “Brooklyn-born” Jewish settlers on the West Bank “should be shot dead” because, as a critic, he is paid to say such things.

    Gleep.

  • toolkien

    Never discount race, religion, or language. You might like to think otherwise, but it takes very little for these factors to arouse strong emotions in otherwise clear thinking people, which may later on lead to undesirable consequences. Punishing anything bad that happens as a result would be a case of shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted.

    It comes down to just how much people think free speech is worth. More often than not, you’ll find the answer is: Not a lot.

    It’s funny how fast people care about free speech when it is their speech that is limited. It is merely a subsection of notion how an individual who wants freedom for themselves and control for everyone else. I suppose that trying to eliminate (through persuasion) this notion in people is ultimately trying to operantly define ‘tolerance’. It’s taken a bit of time for me in forming my own opinions, but I truly believe that people are entitled to their opinions without intervention of force on my, or my agent’s, part. That is true even if it gives me a sense of foreboding of possible outcomes’ that they are held or could spread.

    Once opinion is a State matter to be dealt with, every totalitarian regime ever founded is justified. The spreading of obique ‘hate’, while disconcerting, is not itself a crime, just as hating someone is not a crime. I guess the world is filled with irrationalities with banners under which legions of people flock. Religions, eco-fascism, Statism, or Nationalism all require exploitation of irrational fears, so some punk spewing faulty opinions in a newsletter, blog, or an auditorium is free to go on as they please (at least it is protected here in the US). I operate under the assumption that 95% of everything is garbage including other people’s opinions and I’d be very busy trying to use the State to change them all.

    In the end, too many laws are already on the books trying to ‘shut the barn doors beforehand’ and I find the cure is worse than the disease (to mix metaphors). That is precisely the problem in most public policy in general. To some extent, predicting of the future, and driving public policy based in those predictions, is really the foundation any theocracy. I get bashed when I accuse eco-fascists as merely brandishing a form of theocracy, as many times they are atheists and resent the comparison. But in my book, anyone who presumes to know what beliefs need to be stamped out, and feels the need to co-opt the State to do it, to avoid some possible outcome, is on the road the theocracy. All we can do is punish behavior that has happened (can be difficult) or is being planned (almost impossible) and to set up pre-emptory roadblocks tends to limit the freedom of the vast majority while doing little to counteract the malfeasant minority.

    I reserve the right to hate whom I choose, and to persuade others to my point of view if I so choose. If I plan a specific raid or action on another’s property, or cajole others to do so, or actually engage in such activities, I should be bound by laws preventing such. If think all Arabs are scum, I’m entitled to think it, I’m entitled to say it, and I’m entitled to have every other people think it. We have no right to harm anothers property.

  • Guy Herbert

    RCD is correct. (As usual.) It is one thing to be accurately or inaccurately offensive about a group of people, quite another to applaud violence against them in general.

    Had Paulin taken the Kilroy route and merely characterised all Jewish residents of the west bank as American fundamentalist maniacs with no business being in Palestine at all, then I hope we’d support him too. It wouldn’t be true. There are certainly some who fit that description. But it need not be even partially true to be defensible as speech.

    Wrong opinions and downright lies must be permitted and open to criticism in public discourse because no one knows the whole truth–and because someone somewhere thinks everything you say, and everything I say, is a damnable lie.

    Michael —

    What makes the settlers’ position so morally perilous is not that they have *chosen* to live where they do, but that many of them think they have been *chosen* by an unquestionable authority to do so and that anyone else who happens to be there already doesn’t count. That doesn’t in itself give anyone the right to kill them, or to call for them to be killed. But it does lead them to conflict with the reasonable expectations and rights of others.

    The terrorist is automatically in the wrong (and I think he may be pre-emptively killable in certain circumstances) because he uses violence (and the fear of violence) against unconnected individuals who pose him no threat in order to compel others. Paulin was actually siding with that intent and advocating arbitrary killing of people because of who they are.

    But shooting the Jewish settlers (Brooklyn-born or otherwise) is not necessarily wrong because of who they are either. I can envisage a Palestinian equivalent of Tony Martin seeking to keep trespassers off his farm, to whom I’d be fairly sympathetic were he to shoot someone who aggressively invaded his property. (He’d be marked down as a terrorist by the IDF and the settlers, of course, because for them who you are strongly influences how your actions are evaluated and their consequences. Just as it does in Britain, if rather less fiercely.)

  • Re: “self-selected” cow excrement.

    The settlers are self-selected, so they (and their children, and Romanian or Chinese labourers working with them, obviously) deserve to die. Advocating their mass murder (without differentiating whether they merely sympathize with a cause, or would be willing to kill for a cause, or HAVE committed a crime, or are looking for a cheap place to live and would be just as happy living elsewhere) is just dandy. Right? Right. This is how I read A_t and David Gillies.

    Obviously, the apples/apples equivalent is “member of Hamas”. They are obviously self-selected. Some of them are criminals by any definition that accepts the fact that “Israeli civilian” is not an oxymoron. Some of them support murderous philosophy without engaging in criminal acts themselves. Others may be even further removed from violence and engage only in charitable activities. How far and how fast would the BBC distance itself from any commentator who suggests that killing ALL Hamas members and any children or bystanders is perfectly justifiable under the circumstances?

  • Shawn

    “What makes the settlers’ position so morally perilous is not that they have *chosen* to live where they do, but that many of them think they have been *chosen* by an unquestionable authority to do so and that anyone else who happens to be there already doesn’t count.”

    The problem with that theory is that it applies equally to Arabs, if not more so. The Jewish people are the only people to have excercised national soveriegnty over the area, including the West Bank and Gaza. The Arabs are the descendents of invaders, and many of the Arabs now there are actual invaders who were deliberately moved there in massive numbers after 1948 from surrounding Arab countries in order to boost the claim about a “Palestinian” people and country, a claim which is a complete fabrication. Most of the Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza are also convinced that they have been chosen by Allah to live there as it is the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

    Most Arabs also believe that it was Allah that chose them to invade and destroy an entire Christian civilisation that once existed throughout Northern Africa and much of the Middle East. From Spain to Iraq there was a thriving Christian culture and polity. Alexandria was once one of the greatest of Christian cities and cultural centers. All of that was wiped out when Arab Muslims swept out from the Arabia, under Allah’s orders as far as they were concerned, and destroyed it. Egypt was once a Christian nation. Now Egyptian Christians are reduced to a tiny second class minority subject to constant and horrific persecution.

    This is the problem with those who get weak at the knees and start whining about how politically incorrect Kilroy-Silk’s perfectly accurate article is. People are sweeping under the rug the fact that most Arabs, and certainly most Arab Muslims, consider themselves God’s chosen, consider every inch of North Africa and the Middle East as theirs to rule alone, and hold the messianic belief that eventually Allah will lead them to finish what they started in the eigth century and conquer the rest of the world for their god.

    In the face of this, the Jewish settlers cannot be said to be in a morally perilous position. In fact I would argue that they are a legitimate resistence movement against Arab/Islamic imperialism.

  • Shawn

    By the way, if anyone thought Kilroy-Silk was spot on, I highly recommend Srdja Trifkovic’s book ‘The Sword Of The Prophet’, which takes a historical look at Islamic violence and imperialism in practice with out any politically correct blinders. You can of course get it through Amazon.

  • Guy Herbert

    Gosh! I thought I was one of the more statist, collectivist, commentators here, yet here are arguments based on “the Jewish people” (not even any collection of individuals, voluntary movements or political parties) exercising national sovereignty and thereby creating rights for some which aren’t available to others who live in the same area.

    States may be a necessary evil. Nation-states, on the other hand, we could well do without.

    (If anyone seriously thinks that the surrounding Arab states–after having been so thoroughly trounced in the 1948 war by the relatively tiny, weak, and unsupported Israel of those days, and themselves mostly newly invented–were capable of organising a gigantic secret plantation of the West Bank and Gaza, while simultaneously going through all their coups, counter-coups, and internal and fraternal squabbles, then there’s not a lot I can say to change their mind.

    Even today, the vast resources of oil wealth and the application of modern telecommunications barely stretch to cover propaganda, the secret police and the lifestyles of the ruling caste. Concerted action would be out of the question. To judge by the casualty rates, the voluntary and entirely predictable mass movements of the Hadj are seemingly beyond the organisational ability of the richest Arab state by far.)

  • Shawn

    “Gosh! I thought I was one of the more statist, collectivist, commentators here, yet here are arguments based on “the Jewish people”

    National identity does not contradict individualism. Americans are some of the most individualist people in the world, yet still retain a strong sence of themselves as a nation.

    “States may be a necessary evil. Nation-states, on the other hand, we could well do without.”

    On the contrary, national freedom and individual freedom are closely related. As much as we need to reclaim the individual from an over-wheening nanny state, so we need to reclaim the nation and national soveriegnty from the ideology of global government and tans-national socialism.

    The deliberate influx of Arabs into land west of the Jordan river required no great organisation or resources.

    Libertarian commentator Ilana Mercer has written a good article defending the property rights of Jewish people in Israel against the false claims of the so-called Palestinians (Arabs)

    http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=28162

  • Shawn

    Sorry, should have posted this above. Another article by Mercer defending national freedom, ethnic states and immigration restrictionism.

    By the way, I’m ordering Ilana’s book ‘Broadsides’ so I’ll let people here know what its like. While I don’t always agree with her she seems to be one of the few libertarians who has not surrendered to touchy feely political correctness.

    http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=34396

  • Shawn

    The late Balint Vazsonyi was a concert pianist and director of the Center for the American Founding. Vazsonyi was an immigrant to the U.S, and I have no hesitation in saying that he was a true patriot who loved his country far more genuinely than any of the liberal-left elites who are working for its destruction under the guise of multiculturalism. He was a voice of sanity who is sadly missed. Vazsonyi enunciated what he concerdered to be the four founding principles of America:

    # Rule of Law, not Social Justice;

    # Individual Rights, not Group Rights;

    # Security of Property, not Redistribution of Wealth;

    # Common American Identity based on our Judeo-Christian heritage, not Multiculturalism.

    These principles are valid and consistent with a conservative libertarian philosophy.

    Amongst many articles that he wrote is this one on his experiences of multicultural intolerence:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/596679/posts

  • A_t

    ” Common American Identity based on our Judeo-Christian heritage, not Multiculturalism.”

    …so where does a Hindu american fit in then? I’d say the principles of democracy, rule of law etc.; all the worthwhile things about america & most other democracies, are not Judeo-Christian. They may have emerged from Judeo-Christian society, but they’re universally applicable. If not, you’re talking yourself into a cultural dead end, & denying the ideas their true power.

    Why not just say “these important ideas must be respected”, & leave all this tribalistic “my religion’s better than yours” crap out? I completely agree that christmas should not be hidden in order not to offend, but equally, I don’t think Christianity should be favoured over any other religion.

  • Shawn

    “Why not just say “these important ideas must be respected”, & leave all this tribalistic “my religion’s better than yours” crap out?”

    I don’t think thats a valid interpretation of what he was saying, and I think your reading too much into it. He was talking about culture and cultural identity. Western culture is a mix of Classical- Judeo-Christian- Enlightenment sources, though this normally gets shortened to Judeo-Christian. Also I did not see at any point him saying that Christianity should be favoured over any other religion. Judeo-Christian obviously includes Judaism at least, and apart from that, a clear national and cultural identity rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition does not preclude other faiths or traditions existing within that national and cultural sphere. But again, he was talking primarily about culture, and not advocating political theocracy. What he was saying is that, regardless of the presence of Hindus or any other religious culture, America is an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian culture, and this gives us important roots and an identity that should not be rejected out of hand.

    Having said that, within the bounds of a free society, libertarian Jews and Christians have the right to advocate for what they believe in the cultural and social spheres, subject only to the principle of the non-initiation of force. There are those of us who believe in a fully libertarian political system, but also that such a system will work best if the culture and its people are grounded in the virtues and traditions of Judaism and Christianity, and that those traditions provide an important bulwark against trans-national socialism. This is what Vazsonyi was saying, not that we should impose our beliefs on people, but that our history is vital to our identity, and that we should be free to advocate for our religious and cultural traditions within a free society.