October 20, 2007

Britain's top rabbi warns against multiculturalism

Interesting story from the AP:

Sacks: Multiculturalism threatens democracy

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Multiculturalism promotes segregation, stifles free speech and threatens liberal democracy, Britain's top Jewish official warned in extracts from his book published Saturday.

Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, defined multiculturalism as an attempt to affirm Britain's diverse communities and make ethnic and religious minorities more appreciated and respected. But in his book, "The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society," he said the movement had run its course.

"Multiculturalism has led not to integration but to segregation," Sacks wrote in his book, an extract of which was published in the Times of London.

"Liberal democracy is in danger," Sacks said, adding later: "The politics of freedom risks descending into the politics of fear."

Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment.

The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."

"A culture of victimhood sets group against group, each claiming that its pain, injury, oppression, humiliation is greater than that of others," he said.

In an interview with the Times, Sacks said he wanted his book to be "politically incorrect in the highest order."

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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43 comments:

  1. Anonymous10/20/07, 5:54 PM

    The process, [the Rabbi] said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."

    Uhhh...WOW. How does one respond to that stunning admission?

    The question from here, though, becomes what culture becomes dominant. Does Britain revert to the classic concept of Britishness which served it so well, or does it adapt to a post-modern form of mass media imposed uniculture - a culture shaped not by British values but by globalism?

    It seems to me there are two alternatives: uniculturalism, where those who refuse to adapt to at least most of the dominant culture are shunned, or multiculturalism, where society dissolves into a multitude of warring factions all looking after their own good.

    Neither is really a great option for Jews. Multiculturalism has lead to the situation he finds dangerous. But uniculturalism is unacceptable to many Jews, too, since what they really want, in some form, is to remain separate from the rest of society.

    So is he really, deliberately or not, advocating biculturalism, where everyone but the Jews assimilate?

    I don't think multiculturalism is just a government program that can be eliminated at will by a vote of Parliament. Multiculturalism is something which exists in any multiracial society, de facto, whether the government wants it to or not. So long as Britain has large numbers of immigrants coming from societies that are racially and relgiously different from itself, the hazards caused by "multiculturalism" will exist. In fact, even if immigration is ended completely it will continue to exist, thanks to the immigrants who are already there.

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  2. Anonymous10/20/07, 6:09 PM

    This is a very welcome sign and Sacks is to be commended for speaking out. Unfortunately, I don't imagine we will see many repeat performances here in America where Jews aren't threatened so much by Jew-hating Muslim immigrants.

    The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."

    In a similar manner, I think the first great wave of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe and elsewhere has been detrimental to the United States. Even while most of them assimilated linguistically and economically by getting with the WASP program their descendants have been able to call into question the idea that America is fundamentally an Anglo-Saxon nation and paved the way for modern identity politics - at least of the ethnic sort.

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  3. miles10/20/07, 7:40 PM

    I wish/hope that this British Rabbi can speak with American observant groups and relay some of his observations.

    I for one, see people really getting into their "ethnic identity" more and more, leading to more separation--not melding. The blog, Inductivist, had a poll presented in which Jews and Mexicans by far wanted more immigration than anyone else, but suprisingly Jews wanted even more than Mexicans did. Native Americans wanted the most restriction of all, which was interesting at first glance, but makes perfect sense if one thinks about it.

    A country that is composed of 10 different ethnic and religous groups is always going to have something averse going on between at least two of them at any given time. Perhaps Im a cynic, but thats what I think.

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  4. Anonymous10/20/07, 7:44 PM

    First question that came to my mind mind was 'Is he writing about the UK or the US?'
    Hopefully this book and its message reaches the US and soon.

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  5. Anonymous10/20/07, 8:33 PM

    The Chief Rabbi of Britain now says that the Multicult is a worthless POS. What better endorsement of failure do you need?

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  6. Anonymous10/20/07, 9:16 PM

    Related to this, another op/ed about the immigration situation in Britain, by Christopher Caldwell of the Financial Times: No easy answers on immigration.

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  7. Anonymous10/20/07, 9:34 PM

    There have been a number of proudly jewish people who have denounced multiculturalism (the neoconservatives in particular) but I haven't heard of many that included their own community as part of the problem, which in a certain sense seems reasonable as they arguably assimilated better than any other group.

    I once sat in a talk with Tim Wise (I didn't reveal he was speaking to someone "not in the choir", so to speak, until he was leaving) where he attacked those whites who consider themselves to be honorary minorities (white ethnics) for ignoring the white privilege they had, and he included his own jewish kin there. Has Noel "How the Irish Became White" Ignatiev ever discussed them in his academic writings?

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  8. Anonymous10/20/07, 10:39 PM

    "Britain's top Rabbi"?!?

    As far as I know, Judaism is not a unitary religion. There's no equivalent to a Pope or an archbishop.

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  9. Anonymous10/20/07, 11:17 PM

    Mark -- my sense is that Jews are still dealing with how to adapt to a world where industrialized pogroms are a reality. Nationalism's downside led to the extermination of 6 million Jews. Europe's collective lobotomy if you like. However multiculturalism leaves them vulnerable to unending assault and eventual extermination by Muslims. Since the heart of multiculturalism is abrogation of law -- some communities and people are more equal than others.

    The "traditional American" solution has been to embrace American nationalism, which is seen as more inclusive, i.e. you can still be Jew or Catholic or whatever as long as you embrace the symbols of American identity, speak English, and adhere to various "American" values. Think those WWII films with the Jew, Catholic, Cowboy out West, and Southerner coming together. Or the explicit creation of "patriotic" comic book characters like Superman, Captain America, etc. by assimilated US Jews.

    More broadly, Multiculturalism is likely sustainable ONLY when the good times are rolling. When they stop, it's a raw struggle for power. Germany ran out of money and stopped welfare payments. Now long-unemployed machinists and the like are hungry and going homeless. The young men won't even have a chance at success. Meanwhile Muslims extract lots of goodies from the governments.

    Britain is probably not much different. What happens when non-Muslim men are out of work and competing with Muslim men who are NOT British (and getting all the handouts)? Why they band together in various groups and start to extract money by force. Freikorps in Weimar all over again.

    Multiculturalism is dead because Europe ran out of money too quick to pay people off -- and most people are "stuck" and will have to fight to extract resources. Money that goes to Muslims, or gays, or whoever is money NOT going to out of work natives. Who are not likely to be too happy about it. Particularly if they have nothing to lose.

    Revolutions have been started for less.

    -- Evil Neocon

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  10. Jack H10/20/07, 11:53 PM

    The chief rabbi of GB comes out against the lefty multi-cult. The patriarch of the Armenians has condemned Pelosi's ploy as just that. I'll be holding my breath, awaiting the Grand Mufti or the Hidden Imam or the Old Man of the Mountain to make a similar reasonable-sounding generalization.

    We rule! They drool!

    J

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  11. Anonymous10/21/07, 12:18 AM

    Mark, you make interesting points.

    A frequent curiosity in American blogs is coupling the concept of "multiculturalism" with the qualifier "Marxist." Sorry if I come out as a jerk but technically that is flat out wrong. No part of Marxism (the official ideology) has ever propounded multiculturalism. Marxism is "monoculturalism" driven to its extremes.

    Marx and diehard Marxists always saw non-Western cultures as the expression of ignorant and backward "forces of history," versions of "false consciousness" invented by feudal oppressors to keep those huddled masses in subjugation, poverty, etc.

    Ironically, today's neoconservatism, which at times allies itself with the push to reform the education system to end the oppression from political correctness on campus, views the non-Western parts of the world with the same perspective: so many peoples waiting to be liberated from their backward cultures.

    The idea of "multiculturalism" is a recent invention, a product of the EU enterprise. It emerged as this: "Europeans have fought the bloodiest wars on earth due to their national/cultural differences. If we want an integrated Europe (e pluribus unum), let's accept that we're all Europeans -- British, Belgian or Bolognese -- and live all the cultures of Europe simultaneously." Then, it was extended by the New Left to include non-European immigrants, etc.

    Another minor technical point. The world is a multicultural place, and that by itself is no anomaly. In fact, paleoconservatives do not necessarily object to keeping every culture in its sphere of natural influence. What is imposed by the left elites on the Western society should have been labelled "poly-culturalism" -- co-existence of multiple cultures in the same habitat. The trouble with it is, since cultures have their specific ways of defining the fundamentals of human existence, they don't particularly mesh well if they don't share fundamentals. European cultures may be mixed and matched since they do, but Bantu and Bolognese cultures don't. The result is "hetero-culturalism," a mixed bag of discordant views creating racing conditions on the fundamentals.

    The trouble is not really multiculturalism per se. The trouble is "poly-racialism" -- i.e. two or more races co-existing in the same habitat. OK, I know you can't go out and say this in today's MSM, but isn't that part of the problem? This is the same way the word "diversity" is now used to signify race-mixing. (Although even that is confused since the first country people point to to demonstrate the disasterous consequences of that is Brazil but that place is mostly different varieties of Euro-Hispanic white, Black, and some Amerindian; you'd think every group from the Eskimo to the Chuchi, from the Yemeni to the Maya is represented equally there but it isn't. There is probably no place on earth where more than 2 races have mixed at a large scale. It just doesn't happen because it doesn't work.)


    JD

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  12. Anonymous10/21/07, 1:46 AM

    JD mentions the fact that there's probably no place on earth where two races have mixes on a large scale. The Rwandan Genocide occurred between two tribes.

    "The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutu sympathizers in Rwanda and was the largest atrocity during the Rwandan Civil War. This genocide was mostly carried out by two extremist Hutu militia groups, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi, during about 100 days from April 6 through mid-July, 1994. At least 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of moderate Hutus died in the genocide.[1] Some estimates put the death toll between 800,000 and 1,000,000."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

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  13. Anonymous10/21/07, 5:09 AM

    Given that Jews are the ethnic group most culpable in agitating for mass immigration and minority special pleading, my message to Sir Jonathan, minus expletives, is 'too little, too late.'

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  14. Anonymous10/21/07, 5:49 AM

    JD, how many Latin and Greek words for 'many' are there? ;)

    Seriously, the rabbi's right. You can have multiracial countries if the races assimilate. The problem is that multiculturalism prevents that.

    Actually, the neocons are usually pretty conservative on domestic issues, I've found. I used to read Commentary back in the day and they basically came off as Republicans who liked Israel. To my immature high-school mind, anyway. (Yes, I should have been out chasing girls.) They just really blew it on foreign policy.

    They lost me with the war, anyway. There aren't many things that are wrong and stupid, but the war qualifies.

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  15. Anonymous10/21/07, 6:33 AM

    The Chief Rabbi is a recognised post in Britain. Recent holders have been (Wikipedia)
    Nathan Marcus Adler — (1845-1891)
    Hermann Adler — (1891-1911)
    Joseph Herman Hertz — (1913-1946)
    Sir Israel Brodie — (1948-1965)
    Lord Jakobovits — (1966-1991)
    Sir Jonathan Sacks — (1991–present)

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  16. Anonymous10/21/07, 8:04 AM

    The Rwandan genocide is a weird case, though, because the Hutu and Tutsi by and large share the same language, culture, and religion-- the usual fault lines that drive genocide. There's even disagreement over whether they truly represent different ethnicities (tall, skinny, long-nosed Nilotic Tutsi and stocky, broad-nosed Bantu Hutu) or more represent two different castes of Rwandans (pastoralists and farmers).

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  17. Anonymous10/21/07, 8:46 AM

    Sacks said Britain's politics had been poisoned by the rise of identity politics, as minorities and aggrieved groups jockeyed first for rights, then for special treatment. The process, he said, began with Jews, before being taken up by blacks, women and gays. He said the effect had been "inexorably divisive."

    He could be paraphrasing Kevin MacDonald. And if David Duke agrees, will that prove Sacks is an antisemite?

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  18. Anonymous10/21/07, 9:53 AM

    What about the tipping point when white Americans buy into "Identity politics" and become their own voting block.

    With their sheer numbers and voting rates won't this be the cure.

    Hasn't this already happened in the American southeast?

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  19. J10/21/07, 10:00 AM

    People is a generation behind regarding what they think we Jews maintain or are. Liberal, leftist Jews a generation ago have been dissolved, assimilated, they are no more. Take celeb leftist Jews of the fifties: no one of them has Jewish grandchildren, and most has no grandchildren at all. Liberalism and reform has made America very friendly towards Jews, Jews became eveything but Presidents and very wealthy, but it is a disaster for the Jewish nation. If Judaism has a constant, it is its capacity of learning and changing. Dont be surprised.

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  20. Anonymous10/21/07, 10:16 AM

    Mark -- my sense is that Jews are still dealing with how to adapt to a world where industrialized pogroms are a reality. Nationalism's downside led to the extermination of 6 million Jews.

    It would probably be beneficial to start thinking about other wars, other peoples and other periods.

    Total focus on Jews and WWII (which really can't be understood without a including WWI at all times) will lead one to a lot of bad conclusions - like invading Iraq.

    It also makes you look completely self-absorbed.

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  21. Anonymous10/21/07, 10:17 AM

    This is a surprising statement of the painfully obvious. Isn't that illegal in Britain? When can we expect prosecution of the good rabbi? Maybe he and Watson can share a cell.

    JD, multiculturalism, feminism, and the other 'isms' that advocate cultural revolution and the destruction of the prevailing social order are more accurately termed "cultural Marxism." The basic structure of Marx's sick ideology has generally been maintained, but instead of class struggle, it's gender, or race, or sexuality, or (fill in the blank). Radical feminist harangues against men clearly show Marxist roots, as do multicultist harangues against Europeans and their descendants. The very term "politically correct" is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist term.

    I think of modern cultural Marxist movements like multiculturalism and feminism as perversions of what was already a perverted ideology. Not all multicultists are Marxists, however. I would venture to guess that whites who are rabid supporters of the multicult are more likely to be inspired (either directly or indirectly) by Marxist ideology, while blacks, Muslim Asians, etc. are more likely to be motivated by tribalism and raw hatred of whites.

    More on the link between multiculturalism and Marxism can be found at this link.

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  22. Anonymous10/21/07, 10:55 AM

    It seems to me there are two alternatives: uniculturalism, where those who refuse to adapt to at least most of the dominant culture are shunned, or multiculturalism, where society dissolves into a multitude of warring factions all looking after their own good.

    Well put, Mark, and I choose option 1, except that I would change "shunned" to "marginalized." (A better word, if only it really were a word and not so historically ominous, would be "ghettoized.")

    That is, you are welcome to come to America as long you want to be American, which specifically means accepting the majority culture as such and adapting to it. This applies to people who are already American but claim that they are marginalized. Ethnic, racial and sexual minorities are welcome to sit at the big table as long as they mind their table manners. In the course of doing so, these groups will inevitably but gradually change the majority culture from the inside, but that is the natural evolution of an open and growth-oriented society.

    Mind you, groups can also choose to stay overtly different and thus remain marginalized. They should not be persecuted and may succeed in their own limited sphere, but they will never be part of mainstream culture or enjoy mainstream success. A perfect example of this would be the Hasidim in New York. They choose to stay apart and enjoy a considerable success in their own corner of the world, including local political influence ... but there will never be a Hasidic President or a Hasidic star on network television, and I think they're probably OK with that.

    I know this view is a bit simplistic and that defining the "table manners" mentioned above is difficult, but this is the only way for an open society to accept immigrants or welcome formerly marginalized groups to the mainstream without degenerating into a collection of warring tribes.

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  23. Anonymous10/21/07, 10:59 AM

    There is a difference between "multiculturalism" and "biculturalism". I discuss it here.

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  24. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:14 AM

    Sorry to post again, but it occurs to me that Mark's assertion that uniculturalism is "not a great option for Jews" is contradicted by history. Jewish immigrants flourished brilliantly in the unicultural environment of early and mid-20th century America. The key phrase is "adapt to at least most of the dominant culture" [emphasis mine].

    Jews succeeded - indeed, often came to sit not just at the table but at the head of it - because they enthusiastically adopted most aspects of the dominant culture except those that were explicitly religious. In doing so, they changed the culture, as I said earlier, from the inside. That is a good and welcome thing, as opposed to groups who insist on sitting outside the door but still want to be served the same meal as those in the dining room. Or, worse, want to redefine "dining room" to include the house, yard and street.

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  25. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:15 AM

    JD, Very good points. As another JD - the Great John Derbyshire - has written:

    The Diversity Theorem: Groups of people from anywhere in the world, mixed together in any numbers and proportions whatsoever, will eventually settle down as a harmonious society, appreciating — nay, celebrating! — their differences... which will of course soon disappear entirely.

    FWIW, while the multicultis and open border loons are on their high horse telling us all the great things about the Multicult, maybe they can start producing a list of all the great societies that have existed as multiracial and multilingual. Before any lefty here starts compiling a (very short) list, I would add two restrictions: that society can't just have been economically well-off or historially important. It must also have been a) free, and b) freely chosen (the groups must have wanted to live together.

    So, multicultists, start writing your lists...now.

    Here's mine:

    1) Rwanda - different ethnic groups of the same race slaughtered each other.

    2) Soviet Union - forced together against their will. Broke up as soon as the govt collapsed.

    3) Colonial India - Muslims and Hindus hated each other

    4) America - 143 years after slavery and blacks still can't forgive whites, are culturally totally different than whites, and still hate them, which is provn by...

    (a) Zimbabwe, and
    (b) SOuth Africa, which is moving towards (a).

    5) Pretty much every European country with more Jews

    6) Northern Ireland

    Very soon, I think, we will be able to add Belgium, Scotland, and perhaps the Basque region of Spain.

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  26. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:21 AM

    Anonymous 10:39: You are technically correct, but it seems that some European countries do have so-called "chief rabbis." For example, I've often heard it said that the Chief Rabbi of Italy during World War II praised Pius XII and eventually became a Catholic himself. Israel itself also has a Chief Rabbi, I believe. I have no idea how these leaders are chosen or what their powers and duties are. There is a Wikipedia article on the subject, but it is brief and unhelpful.

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  27. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:30 AM

    While we're on the subject of multiculturalism I would, however, like to pause to congratulate Bobby Jindal on his victory in the Louisiana governor's race yesterday. Mr. Jindal is the first ethnic Indian to be elected governor of a US state, and one of the few major Indians elected ever. I am genuinely happy for him and for Louisiana.

    I'm sure Indians the world over are happy, too. I'll bet if you go to Google News you'll find stories onno fewer than 800 Indian newspapers. I can't blame them.

    And I'd also like to point out that this electoral feat happened not in New York or California or any of those lefty paradises, but in religious, conservative Louisiana. Which reminds me of another tidbit of history: Does anyone here know which state elected the first Jewish governor? It was Idaho; and the second one was Utah. And the first Jewish senator ever elected, way back in the 1850s, was elected from Florida.

    It's always nice to rub that in. The headline of the New York Times reads: "An Improbable FAvorite Emerges in Cajun Country."

    Yes, of course, because we know that New Yorkers are so much more enlightened than Southerners. That's why blacks in New York have Harlem. And that's why New York Jews give tens of millions in political contributions to their own, and why pretty much every district with a substantial Jewish population is represented by Jews - because they're so enlightened.

    While I have little doubt that Mr. Jindal's position on immigration is completely different from mine (and ours), I'll say that we can argue about that later.

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  28. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:30 AM

    JD mentions the fact that there's probably no place on earth where two races have mixes on a large scale.
    That's actually not true. Latinamerican is essentially mestizo, a mixture betweeb white Spaniards and Indians. And whites are a mixture of Germans and Romans. (Although I agree that latins were probably a celtic tribe).

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  29. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:46 AM

    Oh, and I'd also add that it was (then) conservative Virginia that elected the first black governor (Douglas Wilder) since Reconstruction...

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  30. LemmusLemmus10/21/07, 1:25 PM

    "Germany ran out of money and stopped welfare payments. Now long-unemployed machinists and the like are hungry and going homeless. The young men won't even have a chance at success. Meanwhile Muslims extract lots of goodies from the governments."

    Surely, you are not writing about the Germany I live in but rather some fantasy land you made up in your head and dubbed "Germany"?

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  31. Darayvus10/21/07, 1:54 PM

    If the ethnic groups in question share the same attitudes toward the matters which matter most, multiculturalism becomes academic.

    It shouldn't be surprising that nonOrthodox Jews and Episcopalians get along, especially now when facing a common existential threat; memories about getting kicked off of golf links aside. (Golf is a boring and stupid sport anyway, and Jews should get over it. :^) Jews and Christians pretty much agree on hard work, chastity, respect for others, charity for the poor, and so forth. Jesus's social teachings were identical to those of Second Isaiah and several other prophets. Doctrine is for schmucks and rabbi / theologians.

    As an example, we need to revisit that "Latin America the melting pot" meme...

    In what I consider "true Mexico" - Mexico City on north - and in bits of Brasil, the melting pot has applied. Everywhere else the natives and blacks stayed apart from the elite. I posit that this is because Aztecs and mediaeval Spaniards shared the same attitude on the important issues to them - namely, that the rest of Mesoamerica was there to shovel wealth into Mexico City.

    (e.g. Those fellows lurking around your Home Depot are not Aztecs; they're Maya, Guats, and Nicaraguans.)

    South of Mexico City the elites can always crack open their Greek textbooks to the bit about Sparta - but nowadays that's politically incorrect. So we now have Chavez and Morales. Neither of these clowns would get any traction in, say, Monterrey or Saltillo any more than they would in a Boston suburb.

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  32. Anonymous10/21/07, 1:58 PM

    A frequent curiosity in American blogs is coupling the concept of "multiculturalism" with the qualifier "Marxist." Sorry if I come out as a jerk but technically that is flat out wrong. No part of Marxism (the official ideology) has ever propounded multiculturalism. Marxism is "monoculturalism" driven to its extremes.

    Marx actually said his theory had nothing to say about the matter of cultural differences. On the other hand, I think claiming Marxism has nothing to do with multiculturalism is a little like arguing that Maoism had nothing to do with Marxism because Marx never supported a revolution by the rural peasantry. Multiculturalism isn't merely the promotion of racial diversity but also an attack upon traditional western norms and values; many of the negative cultural critiques of the West originated with the Marxists.

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  33. Anonymous10/21/07, 1:58 PM

    Jews succeeded - indeed, often came to sit not just at the table but at the head of it - because they enthusiastically adopted most aspects of the dominant culture except those that were explicitly religious.

    But even then there was a degree of separatism. Jews have always pushed politically for their own. Historically they have opposed intermarriage, and they have been by far the biggest supporters of far left groups like the ACLU and People for the American Way. It is Jews who have fought hardest to move any trace of Christian religious practice from public schools, including the singing of Christmas carols.

    But Jews are intermarrying alot these days, and the reality is that the children of those intermarriages don't seem to be becoming Jews. Gwyneth Paltrow, Mia Rudolph, and Jennifer Connelly are the three half-Jewish Hollywood stars that come immediately to mind, and none have married Jews. These intermarriages are almost uniformally an exit from Jewish culture and religion, not a temporary detour.

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  34. Anonymous10/21/07, 2:57 PM

    "That's actually not true. Latinamerican is essentially mestizo, a mixture between white Spaniards and Indians. And whites are a mixture of Germans and Romans. (Although I agree that latins were probably a celtic tribe)."

    From what I have read, the Native populations of South America are pretty resentful towards the more European residents.

    Is anyone else familiar with this."


    It's an excellent question. The majority population of hispanic Latinamerica (excluding Brazil)is mestizo. Then you also have (depending on the country) something like 20 % white population and 30% Indian. The upper classes are made of whites and mestizos, and relatively few few Indians. However, these groups are so mixed it's essentially impossible to estblish limits to which you belong, which makes racism pretty useless. It's impossible to tell if somebody is mestizo or white, or mestizo or Indian, because all kind of shades exist. Having said that, the whiter you are the more likely it is to be upper class, and the more native you are the more likely it is to be poor. However,it's so mixed that you can't really make such strong distinctions.

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  35. Anonymous10/21/07, 6:43 PM

    Gideon Aronoff and John Derbyshire had a debate on immigration at jewcy.com with Aronoff taking the position of pro and Derb taking the position of con. Aronoff quoted Sacks in one of his posts and positioned the quote to suggest Sacks is in favor of immigration. Or, more precisely, that we should be kind and welcoming to immigrants. That quote reads a bit more interesting in light of this book that Sacks has written.

    I suppose one could be in favor of more immigration and against multiculturalism, but it seems to me that one is related to the other. In other words, I wonder what Sacks thinks about immigration? This snippet of the book gives no indication, but the conclusion would seem obvious.

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  36. Anonymous10/21/07, 9:23 PM

    claiming Marxism has nothing to do with multiculturalism is a little like arguing that Maoism had nothing to do with Marxism because Marx never supported a revolution by the rural peasantry. Multiculturalism isn't merely the promotion of racial diversity but also an attack upon traditional western norms and values; many of the negative cultural critiques of the West originated with the Marxists.
    Marx was up to his neck in Eurocentric and racist prejudices. Just read what he wrote about India. He basically said the British, for all their crimes and barbarity in "Hindostan," were agents of human progress and were bringing about a social revolution that would bring humanity forward.
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/06/25.htm
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/07/22.htm

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  37. Anonymous10/21/07, 9:52 PM

    "It's an excellent question. The majority population of hispanic Latinamerica (excluding Brazil)is mestizo."

    The majority populations in Uruguay and Argentina are white; in fact, both countries are whiter than ours.

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  38. Anonymous10/21/07, 11:44 PM

    He basically said the British, for all their crimes and barbarity in "Hindostan," were agents of human progress and were bringing about a social revolution that would bring humanity forward.

    IS this a bad thing or a good thing? Because the Romans pretty did the same thing, and we always look on them as a social good, whereas when the British do the same exact thing in India they're evil colonialists.


    The real problem in the UK, and every other Western country, is not multi-culturalism, it's race replacment.

    Indeed. And congrats to the people of Switzerland. One can only hope for a domino effect throughout Europe.

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  39. Anonymous10/22/07, 12:12 AM

    He basically said the British, for all their crimes and barbarity in "Hindostan," were agents of human progress and were bringing about a social revolution that would bring humanity forward.

    The British might have been brutal at times but I wouldn't hesitate to call the abolition of sati and the extermination of the Thuggee progress.

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  40. Anonymous10/22/07, 7:40 AM

    And whites are a mixture of Germans and Romans. (Although I agree that latins were probably a celtic tribe).

    Tell that to the Russsians! Or the Poles. Or the Irish. Or the....

    As to the origins of the Latini, ancient Italy was a very ethnically diverse place -- as the continued cultural diversity of the place suggests. Certainly the tribes of Central Italy considered themselves to be quite different from the Celts of "Cisalpine Gaul" (the north of modern Italy) and archaeological evidence tends to support this. DNA testing might contradict this, though I should tell you that you could count on your fingers and toes the number of Roman corpses found even remotely intact. I tend to believe that there hasn't been much change to the ethnic composition of (at least) central Italy (if not the whole peninsula) since Roman times (in marked contrast to the Sicilians or the Greeks), so you could, I suppose, use live specimens for testing. Certainly many Italians don't look extremely different from the Celt-Iberian or "black" Welsh Celtic phenotype, though no one is going to mistake them for Irish. Linguistically, most Indo-Europeanists beleive that the Italic and Celtic languages form a common subgrouping of IE, and many recent models of IE dispersement assume that the ancestors of Italic and Celtic speakers migrated into Europe alongside one another. But the entire question of Celtishness is pretty much up in the air at the moment: see S. Oppenheimer, The Origins of the British, e.g.

    Sorry to go off topic....

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  41. Anonymous10/22/07, 7:56 AM

    Here on the incorrigible fundamentality of race...in the mixed "paradise" of Brazil.

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  42. Anonymous10/23/07, 6:41 AM

    JD:

    I don't think it's a problem with mixing races in the old anthropological sense. Serbs and Croats, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Overseas Chinese and various host peoples, Hutus and Tutsis, Germans/Slavs and European Jews, all are the same "race," but have found occasion to kill one another pretty often. (Well, the Overseas Chinese and Jews were outnumbered, so they mostly were on the receiving end of the killing, though I gather they weren't any nicer when they had the upper hand.)

    I think the issue has a lot more to do with identity. To the extent that most of us think of ourselves as "Americans" more than "Latinos" or "Italian-Americans" or "Jews" or "blacks" or whatever, we can function as a society. To the extent that we see our political and personal interests mainly in terms of some other identity, especially an ethnic one, we can't function as a society.

    This is the wisdom behing Steve's "citizenism," which he seldom discusses anymore. Modern politics is all about chopping us up into little identifiable groups linked to our identity as people, and then buying us off piecemeal. This leads to terrible policy--we support Israel to win support of Jews and evangelical Christians, we maintain sanctions on Cuba to keep Cuban exiles happy, we allow massive immigration from Mexico to keep Mexican-Americans and industrialists happy, etc.

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  43. Anonymous10/23/07, 3:05 PM

    I don't think it's a problem with mixing races in the old anthropological sense. Serbs and Croats, Irish Catholics and Protestants, Overseas Chinese and various host peoples, Hutus and Tutsis, Germans/Slavs and European Jews, all are the same "race," but have found occasion to kill one another pretty often.
    Exactly. I mean, Stormfront has a Russian section, but Hitler wanted to kill the Russians. There are differing degrees of relationships, but the lines get drawn in different places depending on history.

    That's why we're going to have a hell of a time assimilating Hispanics: they're brown, and we've decided (thanks to the South's desire for cheap labor in the 18th century) that the key racial line is skin color. I'm still curious to see how Asians will adapt: certainly white men have no problem picking up Asian women, but what their progeny will consider themselves remains to be seen, and may be uncomfortably important as China grows as a world power. I hate to call 'double loyalty' on a group of immigrants who have played by all the rules, but if you were an American of Chinese descent with access to nuclear secrets, and Beijing sent you a threatening letter about your grandparents and cousins back in Shanghai if you didn't hand over the launch codes, well, what would you do?

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