Multiculturalism Is Madness

“The fact is that, historically, Great Britain has had a remarkably stable demographic makeup for at least a thousand years, if not much longer. The idea that what we have experienced since 1997…is in any way comparable or equivalent to the past is nonsense, at best, and disingenuous, at worst.”

Arguments about immigration and multiculturalism are so fraught because they get right to the heart of the existential things: Who are we, where do we come from, and where are we going? These existential questions are deep and complex enough at the individual level, but scaled up to the societal level, they can become dangerously destabilizing. Western countries have been experimenting with increasing the levels of ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity in their populations since the end of World War II. These increases sped up hugely from the beginning of this century, were turbocharged by the 2015 migrant crisis in Europe, and are set to continue as populations in the Global South continue to grow at the same time as climate change and environmental degradation increase in precisely those areas least able to bear these burdens.

The way these challenges are spoken of in places like the United Kingdom and United States points to the problem: Those in the liberal Clerisy who control the media and cultural megaphone not only do not raise these challenges but also claim that the very fact that these challenges are sometimes raised is itself a sign of bigotry and prejudice, depending upon who does this. So much of the debate around immigration and multiculturalism can best be described by the phrase “It’s not happening, and it’s good that it is.” This is an ideologically blinkered view, as these things are happening, and it is not entirely clear that it is good that they are.

Mass Immigration

The fact of mass immigration into the United Kingdom was given new urgency by the publication of data from the latest census, taken in 2021, along with migration figures for that year. In 2021, net migration (people who arrive minus those who leave) was 504,000. In total, over a million people arrived in the United Kingdom during 2021. This follows the year 2020-2021 when the Office for National Statistics reports that 680,000 foreign-born residents arrived. Meanwhile, on the illegal front, from 2018 to 2022, the number of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who have arrived unlawfully in the United Kingdom across the English Channel in small boats has gone from 299 to 44,000, with around 47,000 expected to have made the crossing by the end of 2022. As Matt Goodwin writes, “the number of people crossing the Channel each month [in 2022] has surged from 1,000 back in January to more than 7,000 in September.” At the end of October, “nearly 1,000 people in twenty-four boats crossed the Channel in a single day.”