‘Diversity is Our Strength’, The Perils of Multiculturalism

Pluralist and multicultural societies contain within them the seeds of their own destruction

In recent years, a most peculiar doctrine has been devised, and sedulously propagated, in the West, which is to the effect that ethnic, religious and cultural diversity are all good, healthy and desirable things to see in a society. This has been summed up in the neat little soundbite; diversity is our strength. Not since George Orwell coined the slogans, ‘War is peace’ and ‘Slavery is freedom’, in Nineteen Eighty-four, can there have been a less truthful and more misleading rallying cry than ‘Diversity is our strength’! Diversity has never been a strength in any nation, since the beginning of recorded history. It has often been endured, and sometimes made the best of, but, by and large, diversity in a society has been a warning sign that conflict and bloodshed are probably just around the corner. Looking at one or two examples will perhaps make this clearer.

     The Middle East is currently dominating the news headlines and is probably as good a place as any to start, if we wish to see the effects of ‘diversity’ in action. The most obvious instance of the problems faced by a ‘diverse’ society is Israel, with Arab Muslims and Christians sharing a territory with Jews. The Jews of Israel themselves are of course also deeply divided along ethnic and cultural lines between the Mizrachi and Ashkenazi; those whose origins lie in Europe and the others whose ancestry is in North Africa and the Middle East. Then too, there are the black Falasha from Ethiopia.  Given the friction and tensions in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, it is to be doubted that many readers will regard this as an outstandingly successful instance of a multicultural society with plenty of diversity. North of Israel lies Lebanon, which contains many Muslims and also a substantial population of Christians. Remind me again how that worked out? Do any readers still remember the Lebanese Civil War? Does Lebanon currently look as though it is strengthened by its diversity? To the east lies Syria and Iraq. Remember the Syrian Civil War, which was largely along religious lines, between Sunni and Shiite Muslims? What about the Kurds in Arab dominated Iraq? To the south is Yemen, where a civil war is currently being waged along religious fault lines.

     Still, it may be argued, that’s just the Middle East. Perhaps elsewhere in the world these things are handled in a more pleasant way. The ghastly wars which were fought in the former country of Yugoslavia between Muslims and Christians, Serbs and Croats, and a dozen other divisions of nationality, language and religion, became a byword for savagery and barbarism. It will be remembered that Yugoslavia was once famed for its diversity. In the British province of Northern Ireland, a bitter, low-level, civil war was fought for decades between communities divided by adherence to either Catholicism or Protestantism. In fact, everywhere one looks since the end of the Second World War, from India, with its violence between Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs, to Cyprus, with Turkish Muslims and Greek Orthodox Christians, to Nigeria, in which a fierce civil war was fought in the 1960s between the Yorubas and Igbos, diversity seems to be more of a curse than a blessing.

     The truth is historically, that it is the most homogenous societies which tend to be the most stable and whose citizens are most likely to live in peace and harmony. Communities where everybody shares a common ethnicity, follows the same religion, speaks the same language and have a common culture. It was such a society which gave birth to the Industrial Revolution in Britain and laid the foundations of the modern world. It is amusing to note that in 2020, Britain’s Royal Mint issued a 50p coin which had emblazoned on it the dubious statement, “Diversity Built Britain.” This is of course wholly untrue. It was a white, Christian, and English-speaking nation which built Britain, long before the experiment of a multi-ethnic and multicultural society was launched in the years following the end of the Second World War.

     Since all this has been known for many years, readers might perhaps be scratching their heads at this point and asking themselves whatever possessed the leaders of nations such as Britain and the United States to come up with the manifestly false idea that diversity is a good thing and likely to lead to a happy and stable society. Some people believe that this is part of a sinister conspiracy, such as the Kalergi Plan or the Great Replacement. There is though, almost certainly a simpler and more satisfactory explanation and it began, as did so many of the evils which we now observe in the West, in the 1960s.

     The key concept in both America and the United Kingdom, when considering immigration, used to be ‘integration’. In America, this was neatly encapsulated by both the metaphor known as the melting pot and also the de facto motto of the United States until 1956, which was E pluribus unum; out of many, one. The idea was that as foreigners from Russia, Ireland and Italy arrived as immigrants to America, they would abandon their previous nationalities and join each other in the melting pot, becoming indistinguishable from each other; all would be first and foremost, Americans. So it was that Jews and Catholics might retain differences in their private lives, but all would adopt the culture of America and give it their allegiance.  A similar doctrine held sway in Britain, with those arriving from other countries being tacitly expected to conform to the ways of the country in which they had come to live.

     In both Britain and America, the 1960s brought great change. Old certainties were abandoned, and new ideas embraced. Together with such varied and disparate ideas as the acceptance of homosexuality, abortion and pre-marital sex, new concepts also arose relating to nationality, race and religion. Why, for instance, should it be assumed that Western ways of arranging society and regulating politics are any better than those adopted in Central Africa, South America or the Far East? Why should people from other parts of the world coming to our countries to live, be expected to give up their own culture and replace it with ours? Perhaps we could learn from them, instead of their being obliged to drop their own customs and way of life in order to follow our way? It was thinking of this kind which led to America abandoning the old idea of the melting pot and coming up instead with the notion of the ‘salad bowl’. In this new model, immigrants would all live in our society, but also preserve their own traditions and identity. We would all live in the same country, but it would be a mosaic of varying cultures, bound together by mutual respect for each other’s values and differing ways of life. In this way, the multicultural society was born.

     It is sometimes said that when America catches a cold, it won’t be long before Britain sneezes and so it proved in the case of the weird concept of the multicultural society. Out went the old fashioned, and perhaps imperialist, assumption that people arriving in Britain from other countries would try to integrate and fit in with our culture, and in came the up-to-date and modern way of doing things. From now on, immigrants would be allowed, encouraged even, to follow their own customs and preserve their own way of life when they came to live in our country. Multiculturalism was in, and integration was consigned to the scrapheap of history.

     It was in this way, and with the very best of intentions, that the ground was laid for the growth of parallel societies and separate communities. In Britain, this process has been described by critics as the ‘Balkanisation’ of the country, as some areas of cities become distinctly Pakistani Muslim in character, while others have a Caribbean or Romanian air about them. Friction between these various districts and cultures is sadly inevitable, and increasingly violent.

      One traditional custom to which some followers of Islam adhere is of course amputating the hands of thieves. The spirit of multiculturalism has allowed this practice to make an appearance in Britain’s capital city. On Sunday, September 12^th 2021, a group of young black men of Caribbean heritage followed a cultural practice which their own families had brought to Britain, that of visiting another part of the city in which they lived, in order to carry out robberies from lone, vulnerable people whom they encountered in the streets. They were foolish enough to target the district of Tower Hamlets, in East London, a stronghold of Muslims whose origins lie in south Asia. Some of these people operate vigilante groups, who patrol the streets. After a clash between the two bodies of men, summary justice was executed upon one of the muggers and his hand was chopped off (1); a perfect illustration of multiculturalism in practice! The partition of India took place in 1947, because both Hindus and Muslims seemed unable to live side by side without conflict, up to and including massacres. In September 2022, there was trouble in India between Hindus and some Muslims still living in the country. This resulted in sectarian conflict in the English city of Leicester, where large communities of followers of both religions live. The fighting lasted for weeks and entailed attacks on places of worship, together with beatings and stabbings (2). Another small illustration of the difficulties which diversity sometimes brings to a country.

     Immigration to Britain is now running at unprecedented levels and communities of Muslims and Hindus, Africans and Caribbeans, eastern Europeans and Chinese people are growing rapidly. Each group brings with it its own customs and way of life and these, in keeping with the dictates of multiculturalism, there is no requirement to alter or modify. That those responsible for such policies as multiculturalism could not have foreseen how it would create an environment conducive to ghettoes and likely to promote confrontation and violence, seems to many people incredible. The effrontery of those who now talk of this diversity as a strength, is little short of breathtaking.1. 1.   https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/tower-hamlets-man-hand-cut-off-whitechapel-london-b955204.html

2.   https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/hindu-muslim-civil-unrest-in-leicester-hindutva-and-the-creation-of-a-false-narrative/#:~:text=FOR%20MORE%20INFORMATION-,Hindu%2DMuslim%20civil%20unrest%20in%20Leicester%3A%20%E2%80%9CHindutva%E2%80%9D%20and,creation%20of%20a%20false%20narrative&text=From%204th%2D20th%20September%202022,attacks%20on%20places%20of%20worship.