Urgently Reconsidering the Doctrine of Multiculturalism

In 2013, when I was just beginning my work in journalism, I wrote critically of the efforts in Sweden and in other parts of Europe to either encourage or tolerate significant immigration from the Middle East, North Africa, and other places outside of the European Union, the fulfillment of the ideology of multiculturalism that had been percolating for decades in many circles, academic and otherwise. (1) It seemed obvious—at least to me—that policies inspired by the doctrine of multiculturalism were unlikely to turn out as their rosy-eyed proponents expected. I was skeptical of the assumption that the West had indeed reached a post-historical era in which ethnicity, religion, and cultural customs would melt away in favor of a utopian, global community where a common set of values were to be agreed upon and then maintained. And, perhaps most fundamentally, I doubted if the objectives of multiculturalism were even, in any way, desirable, given that their fulfillment would entail, among other things, the erosion of particularism throughout the world, the loss of the characteristics that made England England, Sweden Sweden, or Italy Italy.

I wrote this piece prior to co-founding Merion West or serving as a recurring contributor at any publication, and, as those of us who started as freelancers know, cold pitches often remain unanswered, but that piece on multiculturalism does have the distinction of being the only op-ed I can recall ever having written that could never find an outlet willing to run it. (2) For years, as the rather radical experimentation of multiculturalism was being carried out, particularly throughout and after the 2015 European migrant crisis during the Libyan Civil War, which was of course marked also by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention, multiculturalism’s critics were seldom given the opportunity to criticize it. Typically, anyone even daring to notice the dramatic demographic changes underway or the unprecedented degree of immigration was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist, accused of racial prejudice or Islamophobia, relieved of his post, including as a media commentator, or simply not engaged with whatsoever by policymakers or members of the press. Even to argue for assimilation for said large quantities of immigrants, a position distinct from outright opposing their entrance into Western nations, was considered taboo and culturally insensitive, and political figures who have tried to protect their populations from endless immigration, often from the Middle East, have been labeled as tyrants or fascists and been accused constantly of “democratic backsliding.”

Israel, as we all sadly now know, fell victim to a brutal terrorist attack, the likes of which the nation had never known in its 75-year history, a history already marked time and again by violence and strident opposition to its very existence from much of the Islamic world. Writers at Merion West such as Henry George, Catherine Perez-Shakdam, Tony D. Senatore, and Gerfried Ambrosch have strongly condemned these attacks, and I share their outrage and horror at the extent of the barbarism. As some of these writers have also pointed out, it is an event such as this that must finally require the West, particularly the Democratic Party in the United States, much of the British political establishment, and Brussels, to reckon honestly with whether their zeal for significant immigration from non-Western countries was misguided. (3) Now, even former United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has joined the rest of us long concerned about how this dramatic clash of cultures would unfold within our respective homelands, calling Germany’s decision in recent years to welcome in so many immigrants, particularly “so many people of totally different culture and religion and concepts,” “a grave mistake.” (Now, 24.3% of the German population is comprised either of migrants or of children born to two people born outside of Germany, and, in Sweden, that share is also north of 20%.) As is sadly often the case, it is only when an issue becomes overwhelmingly acute or when it is too late to correct course, that those once derided as alarmists are dutifully acknowledged to have been correct all along.