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Samizdata quote of the day

The impression given was that to be against multiculturalism is like being against chicken tikka masala, or bhangra, or arts festivals or smiley brown skinned people or fun generally. But multiculturalism isn’t and never was a handy synonym for “multiethnic”. And at last, it seems, the majority of British people have twigged.

James Delingpole

45 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • Johnnydub

    What James is afraid to write but knows quite clearly that Multiculturalism, like Anti-Racism, really means Anti-white…

  • No I do not agree, it is not anti-white, it is anti-Aristotelian, anti-Enlightenment and anti- many of the better things created by people who happened to be white. It is anti-Western World, in so far as how the Western World developed after the defeats of first Nazism and then Communism.

  • CaptDMO

    “twigged”?

  • Mr Ed

    There is no such thing as ‘multiculturalism’, it is not a pick and mix.

    No one can really change their culture. The policy is, rather, even on its own terms, a policy of polyculturalism. Having many cultures, each separate, but interacting, peacefully through commerce, but as individuals interacting with an ever stronger State. A State that is there to ensure that those who do not fit in to the norms required of them in the polycultural society are made to do so or face the consequences.

    The ‘socially-friendly’ elements, as Solzhenitsyn knew, get a better deal from the State than those who aren’t ‘socially friendly’, so long as they aren’t too blatant to ignore.

  • long-lost cousin

    It is anti-Western World, in so far as how the Western World developed after the defeats of first Nazism and then Communism.

    If either movement was defeated. Judging by US politics of the last decade or so, I think that both movements morphed rather than died.

  • Runcie Balspune

    Multiculturalism is a logical impossibility and a pipe dream, if any of the cultures involved are not themselves multicultural then neither is the whole. Unfortunately the culture that most often ends up as the only multicultural one is the native one that started the whole thing, and is abused by the monocultural ones pretending to be part of it.

  • Twigged = cottoned on, got wise to.

  • PeterT

    Multiculturalism is fine as long as everybody agrees to certain norms of behaviour. In particular with respect to how one deals with a person from another culture within the same state. The degree to which such a society is multicultural is then perhaps not very interesting. I can get a curry…so what?

  • Johnnydub

    Here’s a simple example:

    Malky McKay (former football manager) makes some stupid statements via text in private to one of his colleagues, which are subsequently searched through by his former employer during an employment termination dispute – the lefties scream he should never work in Football again..

    The Council, police, CPS, MP’s, do absolutely fuck all about Rotherham… nothing…

    Anti Racism is anti white. I know there are other explanations as have been posited in this thread, but to me its simple – only white people are held to the ridiculous (zero offense) standard. Every other ethnicity etc gets a free pass. How else do you interpret a set of rules that only one group of people have to follow?

  • David Crawford

    How else do you interpret a set of rules that only one group of people have to follow?

    Well, to the self-hating left they consider this a feature not a bug. They want the rules rigged against the predominant culture in western nations. That’s because they see those cultures as evil, and that those cultures got all of its wealth by theft from non-western people.

    I see it in the USA. The left is bound and determined for the southern border states to become North Mexico first, and then part of Mexico proper. The left sees this as justice because those four states ended up in the USA through war and wealth (we paid Mexico in the Gadsen purchase).

  • Tedd

    David has it right. It all comes down to the labour theory of value. If you subscribe to the labour theory of value then the only possible explanation for the wealth of historically white countries, as compared to historically non-white, is exploitation. Therefore historically white culture is evil, anything that prejudices the system against white people is a form of reparation, and hence it is justified. It’s an entirely logical position if you accept the premise.

    This is exactly why debate about premises is so important. It’s impossible to successfully argue against the left-liberal prejudice against whites without first arguing against the labour theory of value. Without that argument, any other argument against anti-white prejudice just looks like illogical pro-white prejudice, to those on the left (or sympathetic to them).

  • Pardone

    Its all about the cheap labour, really, there will be no stop to immigration because the CBI and the upper middle classes say what goes.

    Also, the elephant in the room is Saudi Arabia, the source of most Islamic extremism, the primary source of funding. The Saudi Princes are the heads of the monster; cut them off and you solve the problem.

  • Its all about the cheap labour, really, there will be no stop to immigration because the CBI and the upper middle classes say what goes.

    I for one have no wish whatsoever to see a ‘stop to immigration’. I want to see an end to ‘multiculturalism’. I want to see an end to the welfare state at all levels too. Also I am all for ‘cheap labour’. Poles for example have done wonders for the UK building industry and moreover have assimilated brilliantly. Immigration is not the problem…

    … Muslim immigration + legal prohibitions against the usual social mechanisms that might have assimilated them (legally mandated and subsidised ‘multiculturalism’), THAT is the problem.

  • Regional

    How come the English diaspora in France and Spain aren’t given special consideration, besides any clown claiming to speak on their behalf would be subjected to derision and god forbid, mocking.

  • Pardone

    Are you all for cheap labour when it costs the taxpayer money to subsidize it.

    The government subsidizes this cheap labour, just as it forces the young to pay for the scheming Baby Boomers pensions via the immoral and corrupt state pension and gives fat welfare checques to landlords, all paid for by the taxpayer. Profits are privatized, costs are socialized.

    As for the “diaspora”, the English are notorious for not integrating with local communities in France and Spain. We can hardly lecture other peoples on that subject.
    All of this talk of “culture” is ironic as the English don’t really have any sense of culture, or care for it in the slightest, other than football and X-Factor.

  • Are you all for cheap labour when it costs the taxpayer money to subsidize it.

    I am in favour of it when nothing stops it from just happening due to people looking for jobs. Poles in the UK for example. And I could not care less about the diaspora. Unless they are trying to impose British laws on France and Spain, so what? Just like cannot care less about Jews and Sikhs and Poles and whoever in the UK, provided they adapt to Britain, which they generally do. In truth I do not even care of they ‘assimilate’ just as long as they adapt rather than try and adapt us to them (i.e. not try and bring Sharia with them for example).

    Seems you are conflating many things that are actually separate issues. I am against the welfare state and I am against laws that prevent free association, as that is actually what enforced multiculturalism is: a series of laws against free association. But immigration per se, I have no problem with that as long as society is allowed to works its magic so we don’t end up with the sort of shit we saw in Rotherham.

    All of this talk of “culture” is ironic as the English don’t really have any sense of culture

    Well perhaps in the circles you move in. Chavs exist in every culture. Moreover so what? You do not need to appreciate Beethoven and quote Shakespeare to be a perfectly functional mind-your-own-business human being, which is really all I do care about.

  • Laird

    Wait, Beethoven was British? Who knew?

  • Beethoven is generally felt to be “culture” smart arse. How about Mozart then as he did play in England if you prefer. Or is being “cultured” in England limited to Elgar and Sid Vicious, wise one?

  • Comnenus

    Well it was the Royal Philharmonic Society that commissioned the Choral Symphony and they did arrange for 100 pounds to be sent too Beethoven when he was in financial trouble. “The only entirely creditable incident in English history”: at least according to George Bernard Shaw. Not entirely true but certainly far more creditable than the respect and support given to Shaw himself then and now by the English.

  • Laird

    Actually, Perry, there have been plenty of British composer of note (as it were!) besides Elgar. Byrd, Purcell, Vaughn Williams and Holst, for starters. (Not sure I would include Sid Vicious in that pantheon, though.) And you can take at least partial credit for Handel, too, since he spent a large part of his career in England and, if I remember correctly, actually became a British citizen.

    And don’t forget Freddy Mercury.

  • Nick (Natural Genius) Gray

    The Cult of Multi has its’ worshippers here in Australia. I would point out that the Anglosphere is where Rock+Roll began, and the greatest bands are still English-speakers. Though I am not a fan, the Rolling Stones are still around!

  • “The Council, police, CPS, MP’s, do absolutely fuck all about Rotherham… nothing…”

    The council and the police get a pass on that criteria. They did NOT do nothing.

    What the Council did do was to steal filing cabinet full of data on sexual abuse cases from one of their own offices. Did it get destroyed? Was it used to target the same girls again? Who knows…

    The Police, for their part, managed to lose a bag full of blooded and soiled clothes that one of the rape victims had been hiding. Essential DNA evidence — gone.

    Source: BBC Panorama of last night.

  • Paul Marks

    The doctrine of “multiculturalism” is a weapon – a weapon developed by the Frankfurt School Marxists to attack “capitalism” i.e. civilisation (one of many such weapons).

    No matter how loud the shouts of “paranoia” – what I have just written is historically, and politically, true.

  • Barry Sheridan

    Multiculturalism was employed to divide and rule. It is and always has been a political strategy. Almost entirely successful in undermining the white peoples, though I sense a change in attitudes is dawning.

  • Gareth

    Barry Sheridan said:

    Multiculturalism was employed to divide and rule. It is and always has been a political strategy. Almost entirely successful in undermining the white peoples, though I sense a change in attitudes is dawning.

    This I find the most credible reason so far mentioned to explain multi-culti. Getting communities to compete against each other for the favour of the state. The state as Godfather in the mafia sense of the word.

    I could almost imagine it was not meant to work like that. That communities competing against each other could instead have been aimed at improving standards of governance and democracy akin to workers’ unions competing against each other for better wages and conditions. That would be to credit such social planners with far more compassion and conscience than they have ever demonstrated.

  • Stuck-Record

    It doesn’t matter how outraged we get about MC, it’s not going away. The entire middle-manager parasitic institution classes jobs depend upon it. From teaching assistants to Chief Constables, from the lowliest council employee to the head of the BBC. This is millions of people, including almost everyone with a grubby hand on the tiniest lever of Govt, Academia or the Judiciary. MC, like Climate alarmism, is an essential tool to stifle argument. They’re the blasphemy, shame and damnation of our age.

    MC can’t be removed without a revolution, and we are not going to have a revolution in this country.

    The only way it can be defeated is through money. It has to be starved of money. But we’ve seen where even the tiniest attempt to cut budgets gets us – howls of outrage akin to rape and murder from the parasite class and their enablers.

  • Mr Ed

    Stuck-Record:

    Very well said. Here’s a modest plan for England and Wales:

    1. Withdraw from the EU.
    2. Abolish funding for ‘Arts’ courses in Universities.
    3. Abolish almost all local government functions and sack the staff. Councillors can meet in pubs and debate in public which contracts to award.
    4. Remove Teacher training qualification requirements.
    5. Abolish the House of Lords.
    6. Abolish every quango.
    7. Make juries sovereign over judges.
    8. Remove judicial immunity.
    9. Abolish judicial review and duties to consult over any statutory function.
    10. Put a tax on calls for higher public spending. (1% of the amount called for)
    11. Abolish the Bank of England.
    12. Abolish the High Court of Justice and transfer functions to County Courts.
    13. Scrap all state funding for charities.
    14. Rename every NHS hospital an ‘NHS slaughterhouse’ and start purging bureaucracy.
    15. Abolish the BBC licence fee.
    16. Scrap all State agitprop, whether messages on motorway signs or adverts against obesity.
    17. Abolish the Departments of Culture, Media and Sport; Foreign Office, Business and whatever it’s called, Education; Transport; Communities and Local Government; Energy and Climate Change; International Development and sack all the staff.
    18. Repeal every tyrannical bit of legislation you can find.

  • Stuck-Record

    Mr Ed.

    Ha! Not at all revolutionary!

    We could make a start by passing a single law that prevents the Govt of the UK (for a twenty year period) from spending more than 95% of it’s spending in the previous fiscal year – even accounting for inflation.

    As modest as that sounds it would be the most draconian cut in public spending for decades. And we’d soon find out how the public wanted spending prioritised. Goodbye quangos and diversity coordinators.

  • PeterT

    I think you would find defence cut first

  • Michael Staab

    It’s quite impossible for all cultures to qualify as healthy, or even so difficult a standard as morally superior.

    Cultures aren’t equal, such an idea is a contradiction in terms. It is neither racism, or culturally insensitive to insist on cultivating those values which promote superior values.

    It is even more important to do so when facing the conundrum of the civilized man as opposed to the savage. Savagery and barbarism are in no way indicative of a superior culture.

  • It is neither racism, or culturally insensitive to insist on cultivating those values which promote superior values.

    I agree it is not racism, but I have no problem at all being ‘culturally insensitive’ and calling some cultures ‘inferior’ to others.

  • Regional

    Mister Ed,
    That’s just for a start i.e. get government out of every thing.

  • Well we can dream, Regional, we can dream 😀

  • Pardone

    Why not abolish funding for all college courses? The taxpayer should not be funding any of that.

    Ending all subsidy of public transport would save a fortune and lead to a much more efficient public transport service. Sell of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens.

    Abolishing the state pension (the biggest drain on the taxpayer) would save more money than anything else combined. Immediate abolition of the ridiculously inflated pensions for MPs, Judges, and Police.

    MPs barred from receiving any donations; immediate 10 year jail term for any MP found to be lobbying for or receiving money from individuals or corporate entities. Double sentence for treasonous corruption if said entities are foreign.

  • Nick (Natural Genius) Gray

    Pardone, you will still leave state funding for Aroma-therapy classes, and Feng Shui? How will society stay without these?

  • Rufus

    I have no problem at all being ‘culturally insensitive’ and calling some cultures ‘inferior’ to others.

    Blocking criticism of “other” cultures is just part of the package. Using the “racism” slur to stop criticism is the multicultural disease’s system for blocking the free speech anti-bodies. The functional damage producing part of the package is keeping immigrants from integrating and subsequently forming power blocks which politically open the door for more immigrants to keep the cycle going and growing. Multiculturalism is a virtual virus of the democratic operating system.

  • rosenquist

    Every successful civil society is founded upon a dominant cultural space that the members of other cultures who live in the same space should respect. If there is no respect for the dominant socio-ethical civil order then multiculturalism turns into mutual suspicion and hatred.

    That said I have never met anyone who thinks that “all cultures are equal”, such a person is a pure strawman, furthermore I do not think there is anything wrong with questioning our natural inclination to assume that the particular culture into which we are born is the most superior.

  • such a person is a pure strawman

    If only. Consider yourself lucky, I guess.

    And rosenquist, superiority, like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder – i.e. purely subjective. See, you have just went out of luck 😛

  • Gone. Gone out of luck…more coffee, please…

  • The Sanity Inspector

    Twigged, like twee and chuffed, is one of those gruff, earthy English adjectives that unfortunately never crossed the Pond.

  • The Sanity Inspector

    The great strength of “multiculturalism” is not that it’s an argument against the West but that it short-circuits the possibility of argument. If there’s no difference between English Common Law and native healing circles and Tamil Tiger fundraisers and gay marriage and sharia, then what’s to discuss? Even to want to debate the merits is to find oneself on the wrong side – for, if the core belief of multiculturalism is that there’s nothing to discuss and everything’s equally nice and fluffy, then to favour honest argument puts you, by definition, on the extremist side.
    — Mark Steyn

  • “…the majority of British people have twigged.”

    Too little, too late, I’m afraid.

  • @The Sanity Inspector:
    I just this week received in the mail my (out-of-print) copy of the Alan Coren Omnibus. My wife has been complaining about my explosive, uncontrollable giggling ever since.

  • bloke in spain

    Twigged – To be buggered by the MP for Liverpool West Derby & former Shadow Secretary of State for Education – Twigged

  • Julie near Chicago

    Twigged. Perhaps persons need to brush up their acquaintance with the Wooster Files. :>)