During the panel discussion at ‘The Collapse of Europe?’ conference, Mark Steyn spoken on multiculturalism and its impact on the West. The following excerpts are taken from that speech.
Multiculturalism is the slipperiest ‘ism’ because it doesn’t invite an argument, it says, there’s no point to having an argument. It says basically, if everything is of equal value what the hell is the point of talking about any of it? And that is what makes it such an elusive enemy to get a hold on…
Almost every Western country has signed up to full-blown multiculturalism. And I say just every Western country because the interesting thing about multiculturalism is it’s a uni-cultural phenomenon. You can’t be multicultural in Saudi Arabia, it’s impossible.
So, if the purpose of your culture is to celebrate multi culture, you’re in effect saying that our bedrock belief is that we believe in everything, which is the same thing as saying we believe in nothing. Our core value is that we have no core values. And that is what they teach in schools these days…
Multiculturalism is a cult of ignorance… I’m old enough to have been taught by old teachers who… were very clear, they were tremendously multicultural, in the sense that they knew tons and tons about other cultures. They knew phenomenal things about obscure tribes that nobody else was ever going to hear about. They could speak all kinds of obscure languages that nobody is ever going to speak. And the fact of the matter is, they knew all about these other cultures, but they knew which culture was objectively superior to that. Now you don’t need to know anything about other cultures.
The great thing about multiculturalism is it absolves you of knowing anything. You go to people who believe in multiculturalism and say, well what are the principal exports of Nepal? They can’t tell you… Multiculturalism is not about knowing anything about other cultures, it’s just about feeling warm and fluffy about them…
So, you start reeling off objective statistics about literacy, about GDP per capita, about women’s rights, about votes and democracy, these are—what we used to call before the multicultural age—facts. But you reel off five facts, and they go, ‘Oh yeah, well that’s just your opinion…’ Discussing cultural relativism with cultural relativists is like playing tennis with some guy who says, your ace is just a social construct. That is why it is really the most elusive thing that we have to deal with in our society. It’s all but impossible, simply because it’s a denial of reality.
