Will Multiculturalism End Europe?

[Danno 1,228]

February 14, 2011

Will Multiculturalism End Europe?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Multiculturalism has "totally failed," says German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

"State multiculturalism has had disastrous results," says Britain's David Cameron.

Is multiculturalism a failure in France? "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," says President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Ex-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has declared multiculturalism a failure in Spain, saying it divides and debilitates Western societies.

Only in Canada and the U.S., it seems, is the issue still in dispute.

Yet these European leaders are not leading anyone. They are far behind the people, and their belated appreciation of the idea of national identity is but a product of political panic. Take Merkel in Germany.

Last summer, Thilo Sarrazin published a book the title of which may be translated as "Germany Abolishes Itself."

Sarrazin argued that Germany's gastarbeiters, guest workers—Turks, Kurds, Arabs—are dumbing down the nation. While Germany's birth rate fell below replacement levels decades ago, these foreigners with less intelligence and much higher dropout, welfare and crime rates are rapidly replacing the declining German population.

"It is a matter of culture," said Sarrazin, and "Islam is the culture." This is why Muslim immigrants are "socially, culturally and intellectually inferior to most everyone else." Yet Sarrazin did use the phrase a "genetic minus" to describe migrants from the Middle East.

Were these the ravings of a neo-fascist intellectual and closet admirer of the late Fuhrer? Not at all. Sarrazin was a proud member of the Social Democratic Party of Willy Brandt and a board member of the Bundesbank.

With Merkel and the German establishment howling for his head, Thilo resigned, unrepentant. Two-thirds of Germans said he had a right to speak his mind, a third said they agreed with him, and "Germany Abolishes Itself" has sold over a million copies.

It was in response to the firestorm of the Sarrazin affair that Merkel discovered that multiculturalism was a failure. Her EU colleagues have since been falling all over one another to agree.

Another factor has contributed to the sudden awakening of the EU's elite—an explosion of anti-immigrant parties that are siphoning off working-class voters from socialist parties and nationalist voters from conservative parties.

Among these are Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front in France, the British National Party, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Geert Wilders' Freedom Party in Holland, the Swiss People's Party of Christoph Blocher, which won the battle to ban the burka, the Austrian Freedom Party and Alliance for Austria's Future, the Jobbik Party of Hungary, the Lega Nord in Italy, which favors secession, the Danish People's Party, and the Sweden Democrats, who just won a toehold in parliament.

What these parties share is that all are anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and ethnonational. They want to retain, or restore, a nation of, by and for their own kind, with its own history, holidays, heroes, language, literature, music and art. They are fiercely resistant to any dilution of the ethnic composition or cultural character of their countries.

What is the menace of multiculturalism these people see?

From Moscow to Marseilles, from Stockholm to Sicily, they see the Muslims pouring in and creating tiny nations within the nation, and being unwilling to embrace a new identity as Englishmen, French or German.

And their fears are not unjustified.

For just as the populist parties are deeply ethnonational, proud of their identity as Swiss, Austrian, German, English, Dutch or Flemish, the newcomers, too, are deeply ethnonational: Turkish, Arab and African.

And Islam is a faith that is itself anti-multicultural.

Devout Muslims do not believe all religions are equal. They believe there is one God, Allah, and submission to his law is the path to paradise. They do not believe in freedom of speech and the press if it means mocking the Prophet. They do not believe in Western dress codes or mixing men and women in schools and sports. They do not believe all lifestyles are equal. Some think adulterers should be stoned and honor killings are justified for girls who disgrace the family.

They wish to live their faith and their culture in our countries, to live alongside us but to dwell apart.

"If you come to France," said Sarkozy last week, "you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France."

A little late for that. Some 5 million to 8 million Arabs and Muslims are in France, their birth rate is higher, and more are on the way.

The real questions: Whose idea was it to bring these people in? And what do France, Britain and Germany do if they say: This is a democracy, we will live as we wish to live, according to our beliefs, not yours.

How does a liberal, permissive society that celebrates diversity impose its values on a militant immigrant minority that rejects them?

Answer: It doesn't. All the rest is chatter.

This is what James Burnham meant when he wrote that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.

http://vdare.com/buchanan/110214_multiculturalism.htm

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Also, multiculturalism has failed in Canada, as stated by a Liberal foreign-born MP in that country nine months ago. Basically, it is a success nowhere!

Edited February 15, 2011 by Saddle Bronc

[tmma 467]

I didn't read the article, but I say YES.

After growing up in the UK and my husband being from Holland ( both countries could most certainly be described as participants in the multicultural experiment) - it's a disaster!

An expensive disaster.

[Darnell 8,478]

multi-culturalism works well in Malaysia -

maybe it's time for the Germans to migrate ?

[sandinista! 1,816]

until they stop barking up the wrong tree (islam), the nations of europe that are all in a tither over multiculturalism aren't going to be successful in finding solutions to their ills. (hello, social class)

the united states does not pass ridiculous burka bans, or instigate false culture wars by banning completely benign headscarves in public schools. anyone here's free to dress in whatever religious garb they deem fit, no matter how ridiculous. yet muslim americans, especially of the immigrant persuasion constitute a fair percentage of the professionals in this country, be it in science, medicine, engineering, etc. contrasted with europe, muslims in the us, in far greater numbers, obtain the best educations this country has to offer, work in prestigious, high paying fields, and are generally pretty darn happy. their tummies are full, their kids go to nice suburban private schools, and the majority of the american public doesn't treat them like shite. yet overall, they're largely more practicing in their religious beliefs than european muslims.

[Sofiyya 1,687]

Sounds to me like Europe is what they claim to fear: intolerant, ethnocentric, bigoted, segregationist, dumb and myopic. Not much of a change from who they were before, the folks that started two world wars based on their self-appointed superiority to every place else.

[웃 910]

Sounds to me like Europe is what they claim to fear: intolerant, ethnocentric, bigoted, segregationist, dumb and myopic. Not much of a change from who they were before, the folks that started two world wars based on their self-appointed superiority to every place else.

If only every country was Iran. There would be world peace.

[Bad_Daddy 2,209]

Europe's finally making progress. Geert Wilders is pretty much calling the shots in Holland, and the BNP is starting to gain strength in the UK...so there's still hope imo.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41444364/ns/world_news-europe/

British PM: Multiculturalism has failed

Edited February 16, 2011 by Why_Me

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

Do you even know anything about the BNP? Do you know anything about their economic policies (rather hands on and interventionist), that they are still considered by ALL the mainstream parties to be at the very least neo-fascist, that even the Daily Mail find them foul and disgusting? They object to miscegenation -- surely half of the VJers on here are in mixed race relationships. They call for the repatriation of ALL immigrants -- that includes nice white girls like your wife, by the way. She would most certainly not be welcome in a UK governed by the BNP. Time and again they have been investigated as a party for dirty tricks, underhanded accounting, and pure fraud. The police and prison service -- hardly known for being lily-livered LWNs -- ban membership. Furthermore, it's utter twaddle to say they are making gains. They have yet to elect an MP to Parliament after years and years of trying. And indeed they actually LOST overall council seats in last years election, nearly halving the number they had at the last election.

If you're going to make statements like these, you should know what you're talking about.

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Post containing racist epithets has been removed. Any further comments of this nature will result in either a thread-ban or a suspension.

[Brother Hesekiel 2,235]

I believe multiculturalism does not work for Europe. Even my wife who is even more liberal than I wants to experience typical British culture in England, with tea time and castles and all, and typical French culture when going to France, and typical Italian culture when going to Italy. These small countries lose their identity when people from everywhere immigrate to them and water down what makes them so different from the neighboring country.

This is not an issue with the US, however, as the US is a country full of immigrants who came from the most diverse places and cultures on Earth. The US does not have one characteristic culture, the US has many, all of which can coexist as this is one honking big country.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Just Bob

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Context be damned I guess. This is partly why people complain about the moderation - the mere prescence of certain words in a sentence, rather than the construction of the sentence is enough to cause threats of "administrative punishment".

This is the forum equivalent of Wacky Races.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Ron Burgundy

[elmcitymaven 9,711]

Look, I'll be 100% honest with you. As a former immigrant to the UK, I can tell you that they do a TERRIBLE job of making immigrants feel part of British life. I was told repeatedly by acquaintances and even friends that if I got my citizenship, I would never really be British. Contrast that with how we do it here -- you're naturalised and you become American, and people actually respect you for choosing to be part of the country. There's little wonder that there is the level of balkanisation in the UK given their inability to promote the idea of being British (without coming across all nationalist, which is a very sore point).

We do it a hell of a lot better here, and we should rightly be proud of how we do it.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Yeah its a weird state of affairs for world leaders to bemoan multi-culturalism when the prevailing culture that people are supposed to assimilate into is exclusory.