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Multiculturalism:­ Tribalism Recycled

Oct 3, 2005 8:40 am By Robert Spencer

A new essay by the European writer Wolfgang Bruno:

The bombings in London have finally put the multicultural idea under closer scrutiny. As Mark Steyn points out, you can’t assimilate with a nullity.

Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor, asserted that multiculturalism can only work under authoritarian regimes, not in democratic ones. At its deepest level, multiculturalism represents a denial of all Western claims to truth.

The purpose of multiculturalism is to extirpate the truly free cultures by asserting that they are equivalent to primitive, Islamic cultures. The idea is kept alive by repeating myths about the “tolerant” Islamic rule in Spain. If all cultures and religions are equally worthy of respect, why didn’t the West remain in the age when we burned witches and held slaves?

We progressed and left Islam behind because we possessed the ability to criticize ourselves and move on. The only cultures worthy of respect are those who can withstand scrutiny. If yours is too weak to survive this treatment, then you do not belong in a Western society.

The West is a revolutionary civilization in our emphasis on the individual. As former Bosnian President Izetbegovic wrote, –¦a Muslim generally does not exist as an individual.” This is one of the reasons why Muslims hate and fear the West more than traditional civilizations such as China. However, even though the West gave birth to the idea of the individual, it also gave rise to its anti-thesis, collectivist ideologies such as Communism and Fascism.

Europe thrived and remained dynamic as long as it stuck to individualism. It has slowly declined ever since Utopian; collectivist ideologies poisoned its bloodstream. In multiculturalism, the individual is reduced to being a member of a “tribe”, be that of the black tribe vs. the white tribe, the Catholic tribe vs. the Protestant tribe, or the Muslim tribe vs. all the other tribes.

Islam, with its Muslim community or “Ummah” roughly being an enlarged Arab tribe of old, is well suited for this line of thinking. Some claim that multiculturalism works just fine as long as you keep Islam out of the equation. That’s not the case. One of the reasons why the insanity of using sharia law has been seriously considered in Canada is that Canada was from the outset a weak nation. Canadians have for so long pandered to their French-speaking community that appeasing ethnic minorities has become something of a national habit.

This proves the maxim that although being bilingual can be a great advantage for an individual, it is a tragedy for a country. Kenan Malik has demonstrated how multiculturalism and racism share similar traits – both ideologies separate and define groups of people in terms of skin color. The motto of the multicultural crowd could thus be “separate, but equal.” As every American school kid knows, there is no such thing. Multiculturalism is apartheid with lip gloss, tribalism recycled. It is the bastard child of the other collectivist ideologies of the 20th century: Fascism and communism. Which helps explain why Western groups on both the extreme left and the extreme right frequently have a cozy relationship with Islam: It is a marriage of convenience between a pre-modern culture and modern totalitarian ideologies based on mutual disdain for Western individualism.

The entire leftist worldview is based upon the idea that certain groups of people oppress other groups of people. Leftists need oppressed groups, and Muslims need to explain away their own failures by claiming to be oppressed. It’s a perfect match. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has stated that “the left is exactly like the Muslims,” disappointed her Socialist party by insisting on being an individual, rather than a mere representative of the oppressed group.

This is one of the reasons why quotas for different ethnic groups are dangerous. They cement the notion of belonging to a specific “tribe” opposed to other “tribes.” This could prove lethal for a country as diverse as the United States: In the tribal culture, the emphasis is on the tribe or on a collective entity. Individuals exist only in relation to the tribe or to a subset of the tribe. In a modern culture the emphasis is on the individual – as in the US Constitution, “…each is endowed…” “Honor killings” are an outgrowth of a tribal culture, in that a woman’s life is of secondary importance in comparison with her family’s “honor.” “Romantic love” is a very early symptom of modern culture, in that a person would act on a feeling of emotional attraction for another person, regardless of the impact on his/her family’s status. Because of this change in emphasis, many tribal cultures cannot survive – there is not enough benefit to the individual (newly aware of his/her individuality) to call him/her back into the fold.

Maybe some of the high regard for the concept stems from mixing up the word “multicultural” with “multiracial”. If you want to run a successful business in the 21st century, it could mean hiring an Indian IT manager, a Chinese engineer, an American accountant, an Italian designer and a South African salesman. Refusing to hire people because of their skin color maybe makes you a bad person, but first of all, it makes you a bad capitalist.

The USA can remain a powerful, multiracial country of dynamic individuals, or it can disintegrate into a multicultural chaos of clashing tribes. Western civilization is sometimes presented, both by people attacking it and by people claiming to defend it, as something “white”. It is true that many of its greatest thinkers were of European origin. They should be honored, not reviled as “dead, white males.” But the West has long since moved beyond this. One of the greatest defenders of Western values in Europe today is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an African woman. One of the toughest intellectuals defending Western liberal democracy is Ibn Warraq, a Pakistani man.

Contrast this with the actions of London Mayor Ken Livingstone or the books of Karen Armstrong. On one hand, this should make people of European stock proud: There are people who risk their lives and choose our culture over that of their ancestors simply because they think it is worth defending. Perhaps we should treat it less carelessly, then? On the other hand, it should put us to shame: Are we really so decadent that we need to import people to defend our own civilization? Maybe we deserve some of the contempt Muslims heap upon us?

Diana West points out that renouncing the multicultural creed –¦in the West, that’s the greatest apostasy. And while the penalty is not death, the existential crisis is to be avoided at all costs.” She’s wrong. Pim Fortuyn was killed by a Left-wing activist who claimed to be defending Dutch Muslims. Fortuyn was essentially executed for being a multicultural heretic. Which is another trait Islam and multiculturalism have in common: Their apostates risk losing their jobs, their reputations and, yes, sometimes even their lives.

Multiculturalism is a medieval concept. Unless defeated, it may well generate medieval results. We cannot win the fight against Islam unless we dismantle the ideology that rolls out the red carpet for it. It is no exaggeration to state that this is the most important battle of our age.

Wolfgang Bruno is a European author. He is writing a book about the Internet movement of ex-Muslims. All of Bruno’s essays can be republished and reproduced for free by anybody who wants to, as long as credit is given to the author.

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