Multiculturalism: what is it and why do some politicians turn a blind eye to its effects?

In countries with high percentages of immigrants from cultures different from the host culture, integration problems often arise.

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Faced with these problems, two responses are possible. The first involves being demanding of those who come from elsewhere and firm with those who refuse to integrate, especially those involved in criminal activities. The second is to be accommodating and deny that integration is necessary, because some believe that our culture is no better than others, and that we should treat other cultures as equals and accept their customs—even the most controversial ones—as normal. This second option is multiculturalism.

It should be noted that we are not talking about a racial problem, as some claim. People of different races can coexist in the same society while sharing the same culture. We are facing a cultural problem, one that affects the very roots of our civilization. And it is no wonder that these integration problems are occurring, incidentally, in a West immersed in a wave of moral relativism and which denies its own cultural identity, often viewing its Judeo-Christian roots as something that should be uprooted in the name of a very misguided tolerance.

Multiculturalism, immigration and crime

The term multiculturalism is often mentioned when discussing crime problems. We already looked here at crime statistics in Spain based on country of origin. I pointed out then that this data does not mean, in any way, that all people from certain backgrounds are criminals. Not at all. In fact, I am convinced that the vast majority are honest people. What I also noted then is that this data indicates serious flaws in immigration and integration policies, and these must be taken into account when regulating migration flows.

'Ghettoization': entire neighborhoods where the rule of law disappears

Beyond crime, multiculturalism generates another problem: the so-called ghettoization, that is, the formation of ghettos dominated by immigrants from other cultures in which the rule of law often no longer prevails, reproducing problems of poverty and crime, but also Islamic radicalism and the establishment of Islamic law as a substitute for an absent state. In Europe, there are dramatic examples such as the Molenbeek neighborhood in Brussels and Barbès in Paris, which we have already reviewed here.

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These integration problems especially affect the native population of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods, who see how these people from other cultures are turning these neighborhoods into ghettos. But among the main victims of this ghettoization are the immigrants themselves who are fleeing Islamic radicalism, especially women and girls. In the name of multiculturalism, several European countries have already allowed Muslim refugees to marry and rape girls (because that is the only way to describe consenting to an adult having a marital relationship with a child).

The consequences for women and children

Women and girls (and boys too) in the countries receiving this mass immigration are also severely affected. In January 2016, in Germany, 150 women reported sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, mostly at the hands of Arabs and North Africans. There were protests in the country because of these attacks, but the left's reaction was to demonize the criticism and label the protests xenophobic. A German Social Democratic minister even went so far as to equate criticism of these abuses with the abuses themselves. Women's rights and dignity are relegated to a secondary position in the name of multiculturalism.

Germany was not an isolated case. In the UK, a scandal erupted over the cover-up of sexual abuse of 1,400 children in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013. Officials and police officers admitted their reluctance to identify the ethnic origins of the perpetrators (mostly Muslim immigrants) for fear of being labeled racist. Multiculturalism is also being prioritized over the rights and dignity of children.

Some politicians see an electoral goldmine in this mass immigration

Why is a considerable part of the political landscape so closed-minded about the problems generated by multiculturalism? Beyond sheer ideological stubbornness and the refusal to acknowledge a grave mistake, it must be said that part of the political class has seen mass immigration as an opportunity to gain new voter bases. This was the case with Belgian socialism, which pinned its hopes on the massive influx of Muslim immigrants to recover lost electoral support. Something similar happened in Catalonia, whose authorities favored Muslim immigration for linguistic reasons (they don't speak Spanish and are more likely to have Catalan imposed on them than immigrants of Hispanic American origin), turning that Spanish region into one of the biggest centers of Islamic radicalism in Europe.

The anti-Western sentiment of the left and the blindness of centrism

To the above, we must add the anti-Western phobia of the left. As I explained last year, so-called progressivism considers that Western culture is no better than any other, and that we should even apologize to others, believing that being European, white, and Christian makes us oppressors and guilty of all the world's ills.

The so-called centrism or center-right has adopted part of that discourse, just like other ideological dogmas of the left, and that is why, for example, yesterday the leader of the Popular Party, Isabel Díaz Ayuso was outraged when a conservative party like Vox denounced the criminal actions of Latin gangs in Spain, with machete fights in several cities that have already resulted in several deaths. Vox denounced "the imposition of multiculturalism that brings crime and insecurity," and Ayuso's response was that "Latin America is not multiculturalism: it is us."

The progressive consensus parties, both left-wing and so-called centrist, suffer from an ideological blindness that prevents them from accepting the consequences of their ideological dogmas, however serious they may be. They have repeated the mantra that questioning multiculturalism is the act of xenophobes and racists so often that they have come to believe it and are incapable of recognizing reality. How many more machete fights and how many more deaths will we have to witness before they admit their mistake? Many, many.

Demographic reasons: immigration as a solution to abortion

Let us bear in mind that Europe is experiencing a serious demographic problem caused, in part, by the pro-abortion and anti-natalist policies of the proponents of the progressive consensus, who have even gone so far as to consider having children a threat to the environment. For the problem they themselves have created, they only admit one solution, which is not to encourage native birth rates and protect unborn children—as Poland and Hungary do—but to bring in many more immigrants. It is unrealistic to expect that these politicians who defend this absurd solution will be sincere enough—as they have not been so far—to acknowledge the consequences of this mass immigration inspired by multiculturalism.

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Photo: Neustockimages.