Multiculturalism as Sacred Idea

An intriguing suggestion from Ed West in The Spectator:

I’d go as far as to say it that immigration has become a sacred idea, and that many believe multiculturalism to be a moral good in itself, whatever the end result. This is why, uniquely among any subject discussed in the news, its downsides come with a caveat that ‘this subject will be used by right-wing extremists’. The outrageous behaviour of bankers, for example, is never reported alongside fears that the news will be ‘exploited by left-wing extremists’….

Perhaps the most telling comments came from Ralf Jaeger, interior minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, who said: ‘What happens on right-wing platforms & chat rooms is at least as awful as the acts of those assaulting the women. This is poisoning the climate of our society.’ One might suggest that importing 1.2m or so people from vastly different cultures – rather than the reaction – was more likely to affect the climate of the society. One might add that internet chatter, however extreme or poisonous, was not comparable to actual sexual assault, and that such a comparison was morally bankrupt.

But the point of sacred ideas is that they drive us towards irrational positions that we might otherwise find absurd. They also push people into making poor choices: if your obsession with the right-wing causes you to downplay or ignore major social problems that result from multiculturalism, then surely you are more likely to cause nationalist extremism to flourish? As I have said before, Europe is like Oedipus – by trying to avoid a disastrous future, it is doing everything to make it happen.

… The problem with taboos is that they can be broken by big events….

…The mass sexual assaults of New Year’s Eve are an example of a big taboo-breaker, and once the taboo about mentioning them is out, they tend to become enormous, and dangerous, subjects. It has almost not been noticed this week, because 69-year-olds keep dying, but in both Germany and the Netherlands, the radical right-wing parties have unprecedented levels of support. Meanwhile foreign-owned shops in Leipzig have been smashed up and Jews have been attacked both by asylum seekers and by right-wing extremists – who mistook them for Arabs. History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme, as Mark Twain probably didn’t say. It’s just not a very good rhyme in this case.