why did the west commit to multiculturalism?

[InsaneApache]

I was watching Newsnight last night and a Norwegian politician was being interviewed. He was a year older than me and stated that immigration into Norway didn't start until the early to mid sixties. He admitted that he didn't physically meet anyone other than a white person until he was 17. (1976)

He then went on to say that multiculturalism was the accepted policy in western Europe.

The question I ask is this.

Why did the west commit to multiculturalism?

Who decided to do this?

What, if any, are the benefits?

[rory_20_uk]

Anti-Imperialism.

We went around the Globe making the "World English", such despicable acts as introducing Democracy to India, eradicating Suttee and the Tugs, and being a more effective warlord than those found in Africa whose countries we then pinched.

To make amends for these henous crimes we now think that everyt culture is equal - if not better than - our own. Initial immigration was from the Carribean who have a very similar cultural background (no not the same, but similar) in both language, code of law and religion. We then thought "what the hell" and to really pay for our crimes have thought it best to allow an anything goes as how else to show how contrite we are?

[InsaneApache]

To make amends for these henous crimes we now think that everyt culture is equal - if not better than - our own. Initial immigration was from the Carribean who have a very similar cultural background (no not the same, but similar *) in both language, code of law and religion. We then thought** "what the hell" and to really pay for our crimes have thought it best to allow an anything goes as how else to show how contrite we are?

* I disagree. All the West Indians I met, when I was younger, regarded England as the Mother Country. They were schooled the English way. They had English laws.

**Who are these mysterious 'we'?

[Adrian II]

Anti-Imperialism.

We went around the Globe making the "World English", such despicable acts as introducing Democracy to India, eradicating Suttee and the Tugs, and being a more effective warlord than those found in Africa whose countries we then pinched.

To make amends for these henous crimes we now think that everyt culture is equal - if not better than - our own. Initial immigration was from the Carribean who have a very similar cultural background (no not the same, but similar) in both language, code of law and religion. We then thought "what the hell" and to really pay for our crimes have thought it best to allow an anything goes as how else to show how contrite we are?

You don't say.

I predict a long and useless thread, full of unproven assumptions, accusations and Websters' definitions. Of course if Insane would ask for well-documented views only, that would considerably narrow the scope and prevent the worst derailments - for a change.

Heck, I might even participate.

AII

[ICantSpellDawg]

I think it had mostly to do with economics. Immigration tends to be heralded by the elite who prefer more people to rule over, cheaper goods and services domestically to compete with wages globally.. Certain nations were seeing major growth levels and most of those levels were from population booms. Most things are desired for financial gains and then sold to the public in ways that they will understand - guilt, new foods, new and better beard designs, etc.It was always funny have the first American states to allow women to vote, did so to fluff up their populations in congress. Other states saw this benefit and sold it to their people. Of course, there are already people who strongly believe in certain things and popular swells, but quite a bit of that is a new thing; things happening because people actually want it on their own.Look at nations who refuse to accept immigration- the ones who are seeing growth are the ones who have an invisible population that are now becoming visible, a simulated rural to urban immigration. The ones who are struggling have hit a wall where the entire population is now visible and dwindling.Mobile typing is a great excuse for poor paragraph form

[Papewaio]

Australia had the White Australia Policy. Aborogines were on the wild life census until a referendum took them off it.

Post WWII Australia started to revert some of the polices. People like the Italians, Greeks and Yugoslavians were allowed in (Snowy Mountain Scheme). Strange thing is the early goldfields had Norwegians and Chinese, then there was a period when it was very hard to come in unless you were from somewhere else in the British Empire.

Post the Vietnam war with all the Vietnamese boat people, more imigrants had to assimilate along with the Italians and Greeks. Since then it's gone from very few to 25% of the population is born overseas. Still a lot are British or European. But in the area I live a quarter of the people are Indian. I'll be able to say with more accuracy soon as we are doing the census very soon.

The we who allowed this was a series of elected officials on the backs of standard elections and referendums. Democracies may take a long time to get it right, but the trend is generally encouraging.

[Adrian II]

I think it had mostly to do with economics. Immigration tends to be heralded by the elite who prefer more people to rule over, cheaper goods and services domestically to compete with wages globally.. Certain nations were seeing major growth levels and most of those levels were from population booms. Most things are desired for financial gains and then sold to the public in ways that they will understand - guilt, new foods, new and better beard designs, etc.It was always funny have the first American states to allow women to vote, did so to fluff up their populations in congress. Other states saw this benefit and sold it to their people. Of course, there are already people who strongly believe in certain things and popular swells, but quite a bit of that is a new thing; things happening because people actually want it on their own.Look at nations who refuse to accept immigration- the ones who are seeing growth are the ones who have an invisible population that are now becoming visible, a simulated rural to urban immigration. The ones who are struggling have hit a wall where the entire population is now visible and dwindling.Mobile typing is a great excuse for poor paragraph form

See, this is what I mean. Whip out your Websters and you'll find that migration -/- multiculturalism.

AII

[ICantSpellDawg]

Multiculturalism is an inseperable byproduct of immigration, for better and worse. Im a fan of immigration. I think that nationalist culture is hollow and I prefer the company of those from outside.What are you getting at? Remember that in this thread you started to hurl rocks first. Im typing off the top of my head at 7am in a non-partisan way about immigration and i'm being called stupid already by a moderator

[Furunculus]

I think that nationalist culture is hollow and I prefer the company of those from outside.

As it happens so do I, but I have enough humility to realise that I am but one man, far removed from the urban poor who do suffer under high immigration conditions, so i remain sympathetic to their demands for an end to uncontrolled immigration.

[rory_20_uk]

* I disagree. All the West Indians I met, when I was younger, regarded England as the Mother Country. They were schooled the English way. They had English laws.

**Who are these mysterious 'we'?

Point one - I married a Trinidadian. Similar, but not the same.
Point two - the "we" is probably a group in government. Probably decisions made over time more than a specific select committee meeting.

Adrian, I eagerly await your requests under the Freedom of Information Act to the government to ask for unspecified documents over an unspecified time period... But thanks for joning in to say you won't.

[ICantSpellDawg]

As it happens so do, but i have enough humility to realise that I am but one man, far removed from the urban poor who do suffer under high immigration conditions, so i remain sympathetic to their demands for an end to uncontrolled immigration.

Aggreed! I am a net beneficiary of immigration as well

[Papewaio]

Cards on the table.
I'm an immigrant.
My mums an immigrant.
My dads an immigrant.
Same for my brothers and sister.

My wife is an immigrant.
Her family are immigrants.

I've benefited directly and indirectly. You can take my cappucino, kebab, rotti, roast beef, belgium beer diet away from me over my corpulent grease encrusted dead body.

[gaelic cowboy]

He then went on to say that multiculturalism was the accepted policy in western Europe.

The question I ask is this.

Why did the west commit to multiculturalism?

Who decided to do this?

What, if any, are the benefits?

multiculturalism has been the norm far longer than monocultural society, surely people from the UK can see that in there own history.

[InsaneApache]

multiculturalism has been the norm far longer than monocultural society, surely people from the UK can see that in there own history.

Oh yes!

The north of England is different to the south. The southwest of England is different than the south-east. As for Scotland, it took me several months to decipher what the locals were saying, the accent was so thick. As for the Welsh.....yaki-da, I love Wales.

Although one country, there are sometimes vast differences. One of the funniest things I've witnessed was a conversation between a Geordie and a Cornishman.

However we do have a common bond. We are British.

[Fragony]

The wall fell, gutmensch needed something new

[Lemur]

The wall fell, gutmensch needed something new

[Rhyfelwyr]

multiculturalism has been the norm far longer than monocultural society, surely people from the UK can see that in there own history.

No, I honestly can't. Certainly not so long as the "UK" has been an entity.

[Fragony]

I have seen that one before. It's still true though, when the cultural revolution in China turned out to be hardly the best thing that ever happened to the Chinese the DDR had to be the answer to everything, if you pointed out to AdrianII in his disco-period that the DDR isn't perfect he would analy rape you with books and put you on a strict diet of quotations. Alas, the wall fell, enter the multicultural utopia. Now that that lost it's shine as well we must save the world from death by CO2

Common theme; down with us

[Papewaio]

No, I honestly can't. Certainly not so long as the "UK" has been an entity.

You do realise that that is a statement tripping into the zone of an oxymoron. The UK is by definition a multicultural society.

The UK = United Kingdom = Many different kingdoms = different cultures (even within the same kingdom). Saxons, Normans, Celts etc

[Tellos Athenaios]

Oh yes!

And you are better off for it. How else would you have learned to wash down curry with lager?

[Adrian II]

The wall fell, gutmensch needed something new

Since we're in verbal rape mode, I can add my two cents.

Migration began to be perceived as a problem for the West only in the 1980's, when globalisation began to uproot our societies and economies and someone convenient had to be blamed..

Then after the Berlin Wall came down Badmensch was in need of a new enemy and decided on Islam.

Islamic terrorists saw a chance to capitalize on this fear, with overwhelming success.

Hence the shitpile we're in today.

I am not going to document this because nobody else bothers.

AII

[Fragony]

'Then after the Berlin Wall came down Badmensch was in need of a new enemy and decided on Islam.'

And when did that happen, thought they were too occupied with blacks

[Cute Wolf]

- removed rant - oops

[Beskar]

Want to sum up some of the successes of "multiculturalism"?
United States of America
British Empire
(others)

America united people from all over Europe and other places around the world. They brought in all their new ideas creating technological leaps and bringing itself from a back-water slave colony of the British Empire to the most powerful nation in the world.

However, what the issue is, is peoples understanding of "multiculturalism". The basic tenets is that people are equal, there is no inferior "races" which was present in the ideology first half of the 20th century. It is bringing equality between people, whether they are asian, black, homosexual, female, male, white, hetereosexual, asexual, disabled, and every other tagline.

If anything, the term "multiculturalism" sends out the entirely wrong message, it implies there is more than one culture. What in reality should be happening is an "Open-Culture", where we are open.

The biggest enemy of this are those who want to discriminate, oppress, force their extreme "conservative" ideals down peoples throats, whether they are Al-quaeda (New York), Fascists (Oslo), Nationalists (Madrid) and Nutjobs (American Republican Media).

[Furunculus]

However, what the issue is, is peoples understanding of "multiculturalism". The basic tenets is that people are equal, there is no inferior "races" which was present in the ideology first half of the 20th century. It is bringing equality between people, whether they are asian, black, homosexual, female, male, white, hetereosexual, asexual, disabled, and every other tagline.

The biggest enemy of this are those who want to discriminate, oppress, force their extreme "conservative" ideals down peoples throats, whether they are Al-quaeda (New York), Fascists (Oslo), Nationalists (Madrid) and Nutjobs (American Republican Media).

Ah, in that case it has been misrepresented in the west as meaning that there is no inferior "cultures", that all cultures are equally valid even when exported en-masse to a council estate near you! I see the mistake, we have merely been misguided in the correct 'implementation' of multi-culturalism.
If you want me to sign up to a creed that says there are no inferior races then i'm all over that like a dose of the clap! there is however a small problem; it's called multi-culturalism and not multi-racialism........................

i rather thought that a significant enemy of mutli-culturalism, when combined with unmanaged immigration, was lots and lots of poor people in urban environments; people who rely on their local community and suddenly find themselves awash in 'others' with whom they have no relationship and no affinity? maybe that's just me.
http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.a...-level-concern
then again, maybe not.

[Beskar]

I define myself as "Open-culturist" because I dislike "multi-culturalism" as a word because it does give out wrong messages.

But un-managed immigration is not a tenet of multi-culturism or open-culturism. It is a symptom of increasing wealth divide in a ever globalizing world. People from other parts of the world come to Europe in search of wealth and it is that powerful, they travel great distances in some of the worst conditions possible to get a glimpse of it.

I remember a figure floating around which said that 80% of the worlds wealth is controlled by 20% of the population, which means 80% of the global population are only sharing 20% between themselves.

There are solutions to this issue, but being honest, they are not "realistic" in the sense I explained in another thread. It isn't that it is not feasible or cannot be done, it is that there are so many people which would oppose it due to their own ideology or other reasons that it wouldn't be done.

What is there to be done?
Many people propose a Iron-Curtain, a sort of "Berlin Wall" to keep people from getting into the country. This is very unrealistic and really impractical. Think about it, many illegals come in on visa's with legitimate reasons then go underground. It would be like me going to America on a holiday visa, then simply not return home, I am now an illegal. Would America really want to stop holiday making Europeans bringing in their wealth and money into their pockets? What about business representatives and high-flyers which do much for Anglo-trade ?

Best solutions would be International Aid and Development. In a ever shrinking world, the best solution is to improve areas so people would want to remain. For example with Polish migration to Britain, there was a big influx with that but as Britain got weaker and Poland got stronger, people ended up returning to Poland!

The problem with our current method is that we can only do these changes through secondary channels, it is not as if we can pull up with big trucks then simply build a city. There are "governments" to contend with, which would cite sovereignty issues, especially as they want to pocket as much as that money as possible for themselves. (Corruption).

[Furunculus]

is it any wonder the two are conflated in public perception?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...r-adviser.html

[Beskar]

I think we can both agree that "Labour" doing such an action was/is utter moronic. On that we agree.

"A nation" must be self-sustaining at the minimum for its population. That doesn't mean we should adopt policies which would bring economic ruin to Britain, it means that Britain is able to produces more wealth in exporting the cost of their imports (Like Germany has) and has surplus balance sheet.

In a nation like Britain, to "min-max" for best results, we should have a far smaller population, as such, we should be exporting more people than we are importing.

Uncontrolled migration and unchecked population control severely weakens and ruins the trade balance. While there are other nations which currency need more people in order to reach a best possible parity, Britain is on the other end where losing people would be in our best interest (In a sense, Brits should be going to Poland, who want/need more workers, not the other way around).


An open-cultural society in particular would make this easier for such fluid movement of people. People find it far easier to move to the next town then they do to a new country, especially with different languages and cultural barriers. So a more global open-cultural dominance would weaken these barriers, thus making it easier for people to move as where they are needed.

However, there is also a downside as I addressed earlier, easier movement of people makes it easier for people to move, as such there should be controlled checks on movement of people and unfortunately with our rag-tag nation set-up, this is incredibly difficult.

[Subotan]

STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

Before even a single post more on the topic is posted, we need a definition of multi-culturalism. Too often, "critics" of it get away with using it to mean whatever they what it to mean, whether it's criticism of services provided by the state in order to make it easier for immigrants to survive, or as a dog-whistle to hate on the foreigners.

So, critics, what do you mean?

[Watchman]

Uh, since when did any "western" state have "unmanaged immigration" going on? I mean, even the illegal kind is sort-of managed by the police and whatnot on account of being, you know, illegal.
After something like the 1700s anyway.

Also, the monoculture thing was sort of tried, round late 1800s to early-mid 1900s or so. It failed quite spectacularly on account of totalt dissociation from factual reality, but not without doing kind of a lot of kind of seriously ugly damage. That kind of didn't leave that many alternatives for civilised people.