Multiculturalism in the UK
Multiculturalism has failed. Or so the media would lead us to believe (BBC News website Saturday 5th Feb 2011). Is this a real attempt to root out the causes of domestic terrorism or is it just bigoted bollocks?
BBC News Website
Whilst a closer reading reveals that the British Prime Minister was actually referring specifically to the project of ‘State Multiculturalism’, state multiculturalism is a project underpinned by the philosophy of multiculturalism. I do not agree that the philosophy of multiculturalism is unsound and that its antidote is a stronger sense of national identity.
Let’s look at the charges. Broadly, it seems that the Prime Minister of Great Britain is suggesting that multiculturalism and a strong sense of national identity are mutually exclusive and that it is a weak sense of national identity that gives rise to extremism and its associated undesirable behaviour.
Surely the roots of extremism are a bit more complicated than this. It seems clear to me that the fertile grounds for the growth of extremism, whether cohering around idiosyncratic readings of Islam or the outdated and disgusting theories of racial supremacy, for example, are among groups whose recent histories have left them politically disenfranchised and economically marginalised.
Bradford Odeon
I was born and brought up in Bradford. Whenever I return there, it saddens me to see that this once beautiful city is now a forgotten, deprived, derelict dump. It also saddens me to see the rise of extremist behaviour there, not least in the often racist views of my very white family, who increasingly blame the brown people for ruining their town.
Whilst critics of the Head of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom have said that he is seeing certain marginalised groups as part of the problem rather than the solution, they are wrong to say that national identity and multiculturalism along with extremism are not connected. National identity has proved time and again to be the root cause of extremism, terrorism and war. And as such I’m unconvinced as to the evidence that a strong sense of national identity will promote the happy clappy value sharing society that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland envisages.
Serbian Chetniks in early 20th Century
It’s not so long ago that much of Central and Southern Europe was torn apart by wars that were based in large part on the resurgence of the bitter collective memories that underpinned the particular national identities of the region.
Whilst it might be argued that there are different kinds of national identity and nationalisms, in the end the ideals and core values around which they cohere have to be defined by someone or some group. Begging the questions – Which group? For what reason? In whose interests? National ideals and values don’t just spring up from nowhere, they are historically and politically contingent.
The previous government attempted to instill its ‘core values’ into distant countries by invading and reshaping them. The current government, no doubt under the influence of its own economic austerity measures, has been forced to downsize and refocus such bigotry closer to home.
