Over the last 6 months, the epitaphs for the multicultural project have been steadily growing. On Febuary 5th, as 3000 fascists marched through Luton chanting anti-Islam slogans, Prime Minster David Cameron delivered a speech declaring the death of multiculturalism in the U.K. Unsurprisingly, Fox News in the United States took up this motif with approval over the weekend.
Cameron’s speech came on the heels of German chancellor Angela Merkel’s well-publicised declaration in October that multiculturalism had “failed utterly” and that it had been a mistake to think that German and foreign workers could “live next to each other.”
What is at stake with these rightwing critiques of multiculturalism is the idea of “integration.” Cameron argues that immigrants maintain a parallel culture to the “mainstream,” not mixing or integrating with the larger country, stating that:
Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We’ve failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We’ve even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run completely counter to our values.
At the same time, Cameron levied his criticisms in the form of a defense of the liberal country, saying:
“I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things.
Cameron tips his hand in using the word “tolerance,” a term which political scientist Wendy Brown has persuasively argued implies an initial disgust reaction which is then repressed. The idea of “tolerance” suggests the very problem Cameron is trying to solve, the uncomfortable living side-by-side of groups of incommensurable differences.
Here, the incoherencies of the European anti-multiculturalist position become clear–”liberal,” but not too liberal, “tolerant” but not tolerant of difference. The “freedoms” Cameron espouses are conditional on being entirely subordinate to “our” values. Integration is therefore simply another word for assimilation, is another strategy for removing the difference that the Other represents.
For some, “death of multiculturalism” discourse is empty, meaningless rhetoric, unable to be enacted. Merkel suggests that “at the start of the 60s we invited the guest-workers to Germany. We kidded ourselves for a while that they wouldn’t stay, that one day they’d go home. That isn’t what happened.”
The idea that workers who have lived in a country for up to half a century would be leaving–that Germany would not be their home or that of their children, grandchildren and perhaps even great-grandchildren–is truly bizarre. How many millions of people would be required to leave a country if this rhetoric was taken seriously and enacted? How many children of immigrants would be stripped of their citizenship? How would the Germany economy, already short 400 000 skilled workers, and the British economy survive such large-scale political upheaval? And if it doesn’t mean that kind of large-scale action, what does this rhetoric even mean, if anything? Nothing more than the fantasy of immigrants assimilating to the point of invisibility, one suspects, or being strong-armed into leaving altogether.
In the United States, however, it is clear that in some quarters of the right-wing, the rhetoric is decidedly not empty. The right wing has attempted to introduce stringently nativist anti-immigrant policies–notably Arizona’s infamous “papers please” SB 170 and SB 1450, a hospital version of SB 170 that would require immigration checks at hospital emergency care. At the same time, there are attempts in the U.S. Senate and Arizona to prevent so-called “anchor babies” by removing the automatic granting of US citizenship to anyone born in the country.
If truly enacted on a large scale, the fear of immigrants motivating these bills and others would undoubtedly push the United States towards an authoritarian, perhaps even totalitarian system–with permanent divisions between citizens and native-born non-citizens, and an ever-present system of checks terrorising undocumented workers and those who look like them (as with Edward Caraballo, a man detained as an illegal immigrant for three days by immigration officials for “looking Mexican”). “Border checks” already regularly occur within U.S. territory on trains running between Chicago and New York that do not leave the country. Similar hysteria over an Islamic community centre (that is, the “Ground Zero mosque”) and a Muslim cemetery in upstate New York bespeak an inability to see American Muslims as truly citizens with all their attendant rights (such as the right to freedom of religion, free assembly, and so on).
Fueled by the fears produced by economic instability and a waning global significance, these actions against the supposed transgressions of immigrants may result in something even worse: a democratic nation turned police state in the name of “freedom.” Following the United States’ example would be a dangerous move for other affluent countries like Germany and the UK. As Freud long ago pointed out, nothing can be more catastrophic than a fantasy realised. There is nothing good to be gained from the hysterical, violent acting out of the infantile fantasies of complete assimilation or complete removal.
The only plausible solution is instead, as the British writer Paul Gilroy argued in his compelling Postcolonial Melancholia, a renewed commitment towards the cosmopolitan ethos that multiculturalism attempted to achieve. Not merely tolerating each other, but living comfortably with difference. Living side-by-side, as people from disparate backgrounds in fact do, every day. The reports of the death of multiculturalism are in that sense greatly exaggerated.
The immigrant populations of the wealthy countries of the West are not going anywhere, and they shouldn’t. The repeated invocations of the death of multiculturalism signal the beginnings of something rather more chilling, and it is something that all people of good faith should fight strongly against.
Europe will not put up with Islam much longer.
Multiculturalism
I was brought up in a inner city neighbourhood in United kingdom where Jamaicans, Sikhs, Hindus, Jewish, Muslims , Christians, Buddhists and atheists grew up together. I had the best time of my life growing up in this environment. It taught me respect for other nationalities and religions. Isn’t this what Multiculturalism is ?
Is it all about being connected by , equality, justice and rule of law? Multiculturalism
Hasn’t failed but sprouted confident ethnic communities . One of these communities has been more confident than the rest, i.e. the Muslim community. By this I mean more and more younger generation of Muslims want to hold on to their religious practices as well as being good citizens., I don’t see a contradiction as i know the value of any faith in this uncertain world. The problem arises when this community criticises the UK / USA foreign policy or the fact that they are calling for independence of thought in their native countries and not the subservient policies to past colonial masters. See how any discourse on multiculturism only involves Muslims and neglects all other ethnicities.
The situation has risen to boiling point in the Arab nations where equality, justice and rule of law are no where in sight but torture and humiliation are mainstay of the current governments over watched by western nations and institutions.
When People like myself start looking into policies of the Islamic state and advocating it for my native country where my parents emigrated from, then again likes of Cameron have another bugbear! It’s not so much the ban on dancing naked in the street or curb on the adultery aspect or even the homosexual perspective which frightens western politicians but the abolishing of back handed favours like oil, gas, mineral resources, and the true price of coffee or chocolate etc. having to be paid at the point of purchase.
I do not advocate violence and would like to say there is no place in the world today that can be called an Islamic State. I like the policies on immigration of the Islamic state where every ethnicity and religion is respected and given autonomy in their religious affairs. Much like multiculturism but to a higher degree. No body is turned away, hardly any, from making the Islamic State their home. Some rights include very low gas, oil , transport costs as mineral resources are considered property of the people, hospital and education costs will be minimal if not free and another phenomenon non is Muslims will pay much lower taxes than the Muslims. . No this is not a socialist way of doing things as there will be private enterprise in society. One key stabilising factor for wealth generation will be the economy based on the Gold standard with no usury at all. There will be all manner of investment opportunities based on expertise or commodities which will be part of society but non of the virtual or pyramidal structures which led to so many banks folding in.
I see the common good in transporting policies and practice of Britain such as the Medical and employment legislation albeit in a slightly different form to my parent’s native country . There is so much I am grateful for. I do not hate Britain but wish to be the master of my own destiny.
So the current negation on Multiculturalism is the not so subtle message to Muslims is to give up your independent thinking and be like the beer guzzling host counterparts.
This is the saddest apologetic for Islamic colonialism. It seems that the author has a fear for indigenous Europeans asserting their right to sovereignty over their own land! And Mrs Khan has the luxury of praising a state like Iran, while not living with the daily realities of it. Europe has had the ability to self reflect on its history, while other countries still purport narcissistic, mythological whitewashing over their own bloody pasts. People like you like to quote The Crusades, while ignoring the Arab conquest of Spain and decrying Colonialism while the Ottoman Turks did the exact same thing in the Balkans. For example, what did Christopher Columbus and Mahmud of Ghazni have in common? They were gold obsessed megalomaniacs who killed a lot of people and imposed their foreign religions. Except that Columbus is rightfully denounced while Mahmud is still praised as a f***ing hero!
It is completely unrealistic for immigrants to expect that they never need to change or assimilate into their host society. To not do so shows great disrespect to their hosts and downright arrogant. It seems that certain immigrants are the ones who have a problem with cultural diversity, since they refuse to take part in the host nation’s culture and demand that their culture be put on a pedestal. If you do not like a certain place because it’s not home, then go home. Both you and your hosts would be much happier with that arrangement.