Friday, December 09, 2005

'Celebrating diversity' makes a virtue out of a vacuum, says Brendan O'Neill

(Review of The Poverty of Multiculturalism, by Patrick West, Civitas, 2005).

There was only one thing more shocking during the recent French riots than the sight of masked youths bashing up their own banlieues. It was even more shocking than Chirac and his cronies' swift vacation of the political stage, stupefied by the rage of the rioters and reduced to praying for the rain in the hope that it might dampen the spirits of les jeunes.

The most shocking thing was the crowing of liberal commentators in Britain. Almost in unison they attacked the French policy of assimilation. They didn't say the French had made a dog's dinner of assimilating immigrants and their offspring - an argument I would sympathise with - but rather attacked the idea of assimilation itself: that apparently quaint Gallic notion that all men should be citizens in the eyes of the state, regardless of what religious or cultural practices they pursue in private.

Such an ideal is nonsense, the liberals cried. Far better to be like us Brits and positively celebrate difference, and allow the state to measure people not only by their allegiance but by their beliefs, identity, skin tone and, what the hell, sexual preferences, shoe size and number of piercings. Sections of British society seem so in thrall to multiculturalism that they can publicly, and without shame, ridicule the progressive ideal of separating our public life from our private lives - which surely is one of the most basic gains of Enlightenment thought.

Clearly, these multiculturalists have not read The Poverty of Multiculturalism, Patrick West's trenchant new book. Or perhaps, as David Twiston Davies suggested in these pages last week, they have read it but are choosing to keep schtum about it (a bit like Chirac's eerie silence when the banlieues burst into flames.

West shows that multiculturalism has not given rise to a happy-clappy society, but to a starkly divided one. The authorities' insistence that we "celebrate difference" has caused communities to fragment along sectarian and racial lines. "State-sponsored multiculturalism has set different British communities against each other," writes West, witheringly describing multiculturalism as "apartheid by stealth".

One of the most valuable things about West's work is that he traces the historic origins of multiculturalism. Too often critiques of the M-word blame it all on those barmy, corduroy-clad social workers of the 70s and 80s who neglected the needs of the wider community in favour of trumpeting the achievements of black lesbians in wheelchairs, etc.

West shows that multiculturalism has its seed in a cultural relativism going back 200 years, to those Romantics who countered the Enlightened views of Voltaire and Diderot by championing uniqueness, emotional introspection and difference. "The Romantics believed that human beings were principally constituted by culture, and even caged by it," says West, and "from their seed has sprouted the weed of Hard Multiculturalism".

He argues that such relativism has moved to centre stage as Western society has lost faith "in its capacity to use reason and science to make our world a better place". In its wake comes a celebration of intuition and superstition (witness Cherie Blair's penchant for wearing crystals to ward off the evils of computers and telephones) and a renewed focus on what makes us different rather than what makes us the same.

Multiculturalism has filled the gap left by the demise of Western self-confidence. Indeed, it can be seen as making a virtue out of a vacuum in contemporary Britain. Having lost faith in the old values of the Enlightenment, society now celebrates the very fact that it has no values and is unable to judge what is good and proper and just. So, a profound uncertainty about values is renamed "respect for diversity"; and our doubt about universalism is sexed-up and repackaged as multiculturalism.

This is no mere academic crisis. According to West, the elevation of multiculturalism to state policy - the defining state policy, indeed - has a real impact on the ground. The wonders of difference are preached in virtually every school and are name-checked in every government policy proposal; local authorities allocate resources on the basis of community identity.

This top-down sectarianism has resulted in "different ethnic groups now living isolated, parallel lives, in a climate of mutual suspicion and antagonism", says West - and, as we saw in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in 2001, such antagonism can occasionally turn violent.

The liberal crowers should bear this in mind: where the riots in France demonstrated the failure of assimilation, those in northern England showed the success of multicultural policies in instilling a sense of "difference".

Source



THE DELUSION THAT WARFARE IS MASCULINE AGGRESSION

(By Richard Koenigsberg -- Article emailed from Ideologies of War)

The delusion of "masculine aggression" lies at the heart of our inability to comprehend the truth of warfare. In the speech made by Hitler when he declared war on September 1, 1939, he asked every German to be prepared to do what he was prepared to do: to be ready to "lay down his life for his people and for his country."

I asked members of the IDEOLOGIES OF WAR LISTSERV to tell me what they thought Hitler meant by this statement. Sue McPherson replied by saying that Hitler was saying that--in order to be a man--citizens must "fight the battle and lay down their lives." In the next sentence, however, she wrote about "masculine domination." Laying down one's life is the opposite of masculine domination. Laying down one's life is the ultimate act of abject submission.

Whenever one approaches the truth of warfare--an activity revolving around masochism, self-destruction and sacrifice--talk about masculinity emerges. We know what has happened in the Twentieth Century: tens-of-million of men were killed and mutilated as a result of the activity or institution of warfare. Yet we continue to pretend that war is the result of masculinity or aggressiveness; as if an expression of exuberance or vitality.

Were the soldiers who landed on the beach at Normandy there because they wanted to express their aggressive instinct? How about Americans who attacked Iwo Jima; or Japanese Kamikaze pilots? Do American soldiers go off to Iraq because they see an opportunity to express their aggressive drive? The more reasonable hypothesis in each case is that soldiers fight because they are compelled to do so, or feel that it is their patriotic duty.

PJB introduced an evolutionary psychological approach to warfare on the listserv, stating that to be aggressive was "highly adaptive in our history" (the history of the human species). However, having articulated an abstract theory, the truth slipped out. He observed that "we send to butchery the best element of our societies, i. e. our young men and women." The idea that war represents an occasion when we butcher the best elements of our society contradicts the hypothesis that war reflects adaptive aggression.

Eduardo Marquis also jumped on the masculinity bandwagon when he declared that "Testosterone increases both sex activity and aggressiveness, so there's a biological connection in both." However, again the truth slipped out when he noted that young males in war become "meat for cannons." The fantasy of war Eduardo put forth--that war represents a vigorous activity expressing male testosterone--cannot overcome his knowledge of what he knows: the reality that young men in war are used as cannon-fodder.

Hitler possessed a deep understanding of the Western ideology of warfare; did not shy away from looking at what it is. Hitler understood that in waging war he was asking his own people to lay down their lives. He felt justified in doing so because he believed that any man who loves his people "proves it solely by the sacrifices which he is prepared to make for it." National Socialist ideology was based on the proposition that everyone should act with a "boundless and all embracing love for the people" and if necessary "die for it."

Hitler glorified the death of the German soldier in battle. In MEIN KAMPF, Hitler wrote that in 1914 his young volunteer regiment received its baptism of fire. With "Fatherland love in our heart and songs on our lips," Hitler said, "Our young regiment had gone into the battle as to a dance. The most precious blood there sacrificed itself joyfully."

Hitler tells us that in July 1917, his regiment set foot for the second time on the "ground that was sacred to all of us." The ground was sacred because in it the "best comrades slumbered still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland." Hitler and his fellow soldiers stood in respectful emotion at this shrine of "loyalty and obedience to the death."

Hitler fought in the First World War and personally witnessed the death of thousands of soldiers. He understood that war revolved around the slaughter of young men. However, by virtue of his fanatic patriotism, he did not condemn the slaughter. Hitler conceived of war as the occasion upon which soldiers could sacrifice their lives for Germany. By so doing, they expressed their love for and loyalty to their nation. The soldier in war was required to practice "obedience unto death."

The battle of Verdun in 1916 is a good example of warfare as a form of mass slaughter, with more than 650,000 French and German soldiers killed in a series of encounters that changed nothing. For their initial attack, the Germans brought up 2.5 million shells. By June, the artillery had grown to about 2000 guns and it was calculated that in just over four months of battle 24 million shells had been pumped into this dedicated stretch of ground, an average of 100 shells per minute.

Imagine the pathetic plight of the soldier in the face of this massive barrage, confined within a narrow space that glowed like an oven for miles because of the constant artillery bombing. "Fighting" consisted, essentially, of trying to shield one's body in order to survive the incessant shelling. A French Lieutenant noted that before attacking his men were either "drunk, howling out patriotic airs, or weeping with emotion or despair." One had the temerity to remark within earshot of the company commander: "Baa, baa, I am the sheep on the way to the slaughterhouse."

Indeed, the posture of the soldier in the First World War was that of a sheep going to slaughter--a posture of abject passivity, the very opposite of masculine aggression--as he struggled to survive in the face of an overwhelming barrage of murderous technology. Soldiers were expected to obey their officers and do their duty without shirking--to offer no resistance when they were ordered to put their bodies onto the battlefield to face mutilation and death. "Masculinity" amounted to the soldier's willingness to offer himself to his nation as a sacrificial victim.



LIVING LARGE

Judging from today's headlines, you'd think most of America is pudgy, couch-ridden, and on the verge of some catastrophic illness. Our poor eating habits and slothful lifestyle have served as grist for many an in-depth report, multi-part series, and conference like the Time-ABC News "Obesity Summit" held last summer. For years, the government and media have told us we're in the midst of an "obesity crisis," and that our excess weight unnecessarily kills some 400,000 of us every year.

Here's the good news you don't often hear: Last year, life expectancy in America reached an all-time high. Death rates among all age groups have been in decline for decades. That's true across all races and both sexes. In fact, the life expectancy gap between black and white is narrowing, even though African-Americans are fattening at a greater clip than white Americans. The two diseases most linked to obesity -- heart disease and cancer -- are in rapid decline. Deaths from each have been steadily dropping since the early 1990s. In fact, deaths from nine of the ten types of cancer most associated with obesity are down over the last 15 years, not up. Deaths from heart disease have declined in every state in the nation. Deaths from stroke are down, too. The biggest increases in mortality are coming from diseases that inevitably set in at old age, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

In short, we are healthier than we've ever been. Granted, much of this good news is attributable to advances in medical technology. But so what? If the fattening of America is really the health threat it's made out to be -- Surgeon General Richard Carmona recently said it's a bigger threat than terrorism -- after thirty years of putting on weight, we should at least be seeing the front end of this coming calamity. It simply isn't happening.

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