Thursday, September 08, 2011

The state of delusion

In Australia the different states put slogans on car number plates. Often the slogans say something distinctive about the state, e.g. "Queensland - the sunshine state" or "South Australia - the festival state" or "Victoria - the garden state".

A minister in the Baillieu Liberal Government here in Victoria, Nick Kotsiras, wants a new number plate slogan for Victoria. His suggestion? "Victoria - The Multicultural Capital".

Is multiculturalism really something distinctive to Victoria? Nick Kotsiras believes it to be so:

"That's who we are, I don't think we should step back," he told the Herald Sun.

"If we are supportive of it, then we should yell it out nice and loud to the rest of the world that we are the multicultural capital.

"We are different to other states and more importantly we are different to other countries," he said.

That sounds delusional. Multiculturalism has been adopted just about everywhere throughout the Western world. If Mr Kotsiras got out and travelled to New York or Sydney or London he'd find that multiculturalism existed in those places too.

So why would Mr Kotsiras assert something so dubious? I think it's because there are moderns who want things both ways. They want to support multiculturalism but they also want a meaningful communal identity. They "solve" the problem with the pretence that their own society is somehow uniquely multicultural. The emotional or psychological need of wanting it to be so overrides common sense.

16 comments:

  1. When I was young I was quite happy to be a generic white stripped of my ethnicity in my proposition nation. Just a happy little consumer. But then they ranted, they raved and they boasted. How fabulous were their own ethny, their own cultures. How sad it was that I had no 'culture'. Hmmmmm. Them's fighting words I thought, and thus I found a brand of my own, and it was good. We're great.

    Mark Steyn said multicultural countries are like a covers band. They're always playing everyone else's songs but rarely coming up with their own. There's a truth in there.

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  2. While every day we lament and resist the march of diversity and liberalism all over Australia, the flipside is ethnic minorities excitedly pushing the colonisation further and further. They can no longer contain their excitement nor resist the temptation to plant symbolic flags of diversity and claim victory. Just like the Chinese want to build a statue of Bruce Lee in Hurstville in Sydney, to mark their territory.

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  3. Yes, that's silly. Multiculturalism isn't something unique to any one place. But neither is sunshine, gardens, or festivals. The culture wouldn't be "Multiculturism" but "Victorianism", and I don't know if Victoria has been ethnically diverse for long enough to have developed such a distinct culture.

    Mark Steyn said multicultural countries are like a covers band. They're always playing everyone else's songs but rarely coming up with their own.

    That's rather silly too, actually. Multicultural places tend to be culturally distinct from the ethnic-homelands of the constituents. People change as they interact with those from other cultures, and if you leave them alone for long enough, they come up with their own unique culture. I don't think that's in dispute. White Americans aren't Brits and Germans, after all. They have their own distinct, but related, culture that emerged from their new environment and their interaction and intermarriage with others in their surroundings. German-Americans aren't Germans. They're their own thing.

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  4. ""They want to support multiculturalism but they also want a meaningful communal identity. They "solve" the problem with the pretence that their own society is somehow uniquely multicultural""

    I feel this way whenever I hear one of our idiot pollies spouting about how multiculturalism might have failed overseas, but here we have "made it work".

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  5. and I don't know if Victoria has been ethnically diverse for long enough to have developed such a distinct culture.

    Alte, I'm not quite sure how to read this comment.

    Australia developed a distinct culture as an Anglo-Celtic nation in the 1800s. The regional variations were not as pronounced as in the US, though regional loyalties were strong.

    Australians are no longer supposed to support this older culture and identity. There's an extraordinary level of effort in the schools, in particular, aimed at delegitimising it.

    Instead, we're supposed to be a civic nation bound together by a commitment to liberal political institutions and values. A common culture isn't thought to mean as much anymore. People are supposed to want to go to work and go shopping and participate in various entertainments - shopping being a key one, but also TV and travel.

    I can't see much prospect for a truly distinct culture to emerge out of this, certainly not in the short term. Right now we are in a phase of "deculturation" - in the sense that there is a continuing effort to deconstruct the older tradition.

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  6. Instead, we're supposed to be a civic nation bound together by a commitment to liberal political institutions and values.

    In other words the propostion nation.

    People are supposed to want to go to work and go shopping and participate in various entertainments - shopping being a key one, but also TV and travel.

    Consumerism and other distractions may be used as weapons to bring away the attention of human beings to the malaise eating up inside and to instead focus on other things (while at the same time to be programmed by liberal slogans in entertainment).

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  7. Mr Richardson, your comments above in response to Alte are, so to speak, right on the button. Very accurate.

    Australia was - and to a large extent still remains an Anglo-Celtic/Christian country. This (official) identity is what the cultural marxists/globalists wish to deconstruct, and eliminate.

    How to do so? Mass immigration, multiculturalism and secular materialism. Oh, and also make sure Aussie voters have no say on the matter.

    This modus operandi is repeated throughout other Anglosphere countries.

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  8. Funny how you took my comments off, maybe because it fairly obvious went I pointed out your hypocrisy of judging another human being. What would Jesus Do? I don't think he would have a blog attacking people like this. Not exactly very Christian of you. And wow you have 7 comments? I have something like 1300 on mine. You must have a HUGE audience.

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  9. Right now we are in a phase of "deculturation" - in the sense that there is a continuing effort to deconstruct the older tradition.

    Yes, I see what you mean. The creation of a new "hybrid culture" assume assimilation, which rarely happens anymore.

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  10. Anonymous said,

    "Mark Steyn said multicultural countries are like a covers band. They're always playing everyone else's songs but rarely coming up with their own. There's a truth in there."

    That's a good line. However, blokes like Steyn don't come out against large scale immigration. How can you have large scale immigration without some form of multiculturalism? Go figure.

    Ooh we just got the comments to 8.

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  11. Juliet I think Jesus would tell people to stop sinning and prepare themselves for the Kingdom of God.

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  12. 'White Americans aren't Brits and Germans, after all.'

    You didn't have brainwashing multi-culturalism back then, you had assimilation.

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  13. Pardon me, they've already built a statue of Bruce Lee in Kogarah, Sydney, donated by the Chinese government city of Shunde. See here.

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  14. Stop feeding the jeske troll. that account was created just to respond here, but the actual writer has her own blog separate from HP. Fail troll.

    Whats the Tasmanian licence slogan? "We give more head"?
    ;)

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  15. Is it any wonder? The Minister's name is "Kotsiras"... reminds me of that idiot "Savvas" who use to troll this blog. When you import a population that has no affinity to the historic nation on which a state is formed, these collective pathologies are a natural consequence. It's common sense really...

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