The Wall Street Journal completed an editorial on June 19th, 2015 with “…the reality that evil still stalks the land.”
The notion that racism can be overcome by moralistic arguments is grotesque and misguided. What ever happened to clashes of economic interest, for instance, labor competition? Oh, I forgot, we don’t do materialism any longer. That would be too “modern.”
Instead the event has been interpreted through a medieval religious framework: Human nature is evil; this world belongs to the Devil. “Reality” is too mysterious or deceptive to penetrate—again the (lying) Devil’s work, and he is out to get us.
Entirely missing from this discourse is the assumption that “multiculturalism” (MC) is an effective remedy against “racism.” (I will use the abbreviation MC for multiculturalism in the rest of the blog.)
This entire website has been devoted to the insight that MC was a product of German Romanticism, aka German Idealism in the late eighteenth century (Loren Goldner, a leftist, warned me about it years ago, then I read the intellectual history of the concept in English translations for years, noting how the liberal establishment institutionalized MC as a weapon against “racism.” For links to prior blogs on the subject see https://clarespark.com/2013/07/02/groupiness-group-think-and-race/).
H. Strickland Constable, Harper’s Weekly 1899
Briefly, the collectivist notion that racially or ethnically defined groups can peacefully co-exist is an evasion of all the material considerations that actually divide groups. 19th C. “scientific racism,” supposedly transcended in the new dispensation, persists when we imagine that all whites, all Jews, all blacks, all Latinos, etc. each share a common, indivisible rootedness and world-view, incomprehensible to other groups. Nostrums such as “tolerance” or “diversity” supposedly avert conflicts that are only understood (by enlightened persons) through analyses of clashing material interests within the “collective” entity. Marxists and advocates of free market societies disagree about how to resolve such clashes, but no materialist would deny that they exist..
The better historians understand that ideology attempts to create consensus through scapegoating. Dylann Storm Roof, perhaps egged on by deteriorating “race” relations, blames blacks for “taking over the world.” This is racist ideology, pure and simple. Although family relationships should never be discounted, we don’t have to look only for mental illness specific to his family history as psychiatrist Keith Ablow declared on Hannity (March 18, 2015, the day that Fox News Channel mostly focused on the massacre made even more somber by its taking place in an historic black church). Ideologies provide the representations that feed into specific cases of mental illness.
There is blatant racism, acted out by the shooter, but there is the more subtle racism inherent in MC. We are one species, and MC, the moderate (Wilsonian) solution to war and conflict, has joined other völkisch movements, in confusing well-meaning progressives with a bogus solution to hateful aggression. When the arguably racist but “internationalist” Woodrow Wilson called for “self-determination” he didn’t refer to individuals, but to the group-think/collectivism inherent in cultural nationalism (http://www.e-ir.info/2014/04/17/what-is-self-determination-using-history-to-understand-international-relations/).
MC is a mental illness (i.e., it distorts reality), and it is hegemonic in America and in the United Nations too.
photo Keith Bacongco
The Clare Spark Blog 
Bravo Clare and thank you for this particularly enlightening blog. So tired of this institutional MC, it’s such a fluffy, broad concept that can and is interpreted in a myriad of ways, all of which are void of any intellectual or spiritual (metaphysical) substance. They are a bit humorous with their shallow intent in that their words border on meaningless drivel. Your thoughts are deep, intense and refreshing.
Comment by Tim Richardson — June 24, 2015 @ 4:23 pm |
I hope you will write more about this.
Comment by tinatrent — June 22, 2015 @ 2:23 pm |
Follow the links. The entire website is devoted to MC. But I will write more about the last sentence, which was an idea that occurred to me as I was writing and realized that mental illness was inextricably bound up with the symbols provided by ideologies.
Comment by clarelspark — June 22, 2015 @ 2:41 pm |
MP ≠ MC
Institutional (government driven) MC means that eventually, every day of the calendar year becomes a national holiday and that school canteens will have to close down in order to accommodate all dietary laws and restrictions. Europe is at this point bending over backwards to appease it’s muslim community and seeing very little results in terms of integration….The whole thing is a fiasco. Many European politicians are declaring that MC is bankrupt. A melting pot however, allows for different communities to uphold their observances without weighing society with universal demands. It’s just math guys!! I don’t need government to enforce Kosher dietary laws or to observe Shabbat. If I was persecuted because of my practices or ethnicity, then yes, I would expect government to protect my freedom. Thanks Clare for elucidating the origins of the actual term.
Comment by Maimon Chocron — June 19, 2015 @ 10:34 pm |