Midtown Blogger/Manhattan Valley Follies: Die Welt- Need to Re-Think Multiculturalism

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Once again multiculturalism has failed. The Chancellor has said that often, and they will repeat it. The right-wing populists are their commitment in the face of this negative real migration figures do not lose weight, and rightly so. It will require the migrant acceptance of German culture, without specifying what would it mean and how the accomplished acceptability determine.

The decreasing number of those who hold on to multiculturalism, is under pressure: Will you everywhere conditions as in Cologne? Standing Enlightenment values such as the equality of women and acceptance of gays up for grabs? Should be practiced in the name of tolerance among the intolerant Islam subjection?

The answers are: No, no and no. But it would be naive to deny that there is a form of multiculturalism that provides Western values into question, in fact. If multiculturalism is not to fail, then his followers must also say what he should not be. But first you should point out that neither the emancipation of women nor the equal rights of minorities to the original values of the Enlightenment, let alone of the West belong.

Christianity came long without them. Many thinkers of the Enlightenment were anti-Semites, and the French revolutionaries persecuted Catholics. The American Declaration of Independence proclaimed the equality of all men, but the Constitution Castle Black from it, and the women had nothing to say. For the enlightened colonialism, the majority of mankind "underdeveloped".

For enlightened scientists of the early 20th century, the mentally ill and "perverts" auszumerzende weaknesses in the social fabric. Anti-Semitism is socially acceptable in parts of Europe today. Being gay was punishable in the Federal Republic until 1971st That we have to talk to Faust Famulus Wagner so wonderfully brought far, is a consequence of the correctly understood multiculturalism. The false multiculturalism may jeopardize all that.

Melting pot as an ideology

Multiculturalism originated in America - where else? - In response to the theory of the "melting pot", as formulated in 1908 Israel Zangwill in his eponymous piece.Zangwill hero David escapes into a pogrom Russia and married in America a Christian whose father had led the pogrom. "Celt and Latin, slave and Teuton, Greeks and Syrians, Jew and Gentile, both East and West, crescent and cross - it all melts together the great alchemist," says David. "Here they come together to build the Republic of man and the kingdom of God!"

Sixty years later, asked women and gays, blacks, "Indians" and others, if not the melting pot would be used as an ideology to force the adaptation to the standards of "dead white men", in which did not occur other experiences, narratives, perspectives , At the same blurred in the cultural struggles of the 60s, the boundaries between high and popular culture, high-level language and dialect, center and periphery.

To the bicentenary of the United States in 1976 is no longer spoke of the "melting pot", but the "salad bowl" in which the various ingredients retain their specificity.This is progressive multiculturalism.

This multiculturalism takes the promise of enlightenment seriously, all men are equal and equivalent - and rejects precisely why the leveling off. There are more things in heaven and earth, as the Euro-centric, male-dominated university wisdom makes you dream. The spotter must come out of their self-imposed immaturity and recognize the consequences of their theory. If you mix all the colors together, you get gray. Or worse, Brown.

Based on the discussion of circumcision was seen most recently as the dogged absolutisation emancipatory thought - can turn into the repression of minorities - in this case the right of under-age children to physical integrity. Yet it remains true that not every religious or cultural practice can be tolerated by a tolerant society.

Multiculturalism as a discussion lock

Some forms of multiculturalism, however, make it impossible to conduct such discussions at all. Because they make any statement under suspicion, which is not "right" of the people. The scholar Edward Said, himself a product of British education, did all the benefits of the Europeans in the field of Cultural Studies of the Middle East as a racist and interest-driven "Orientalism" from.

His epigones in the formerly colonized countries founded the "subaltern" studies that the western narrative not only corrected, but rejected. In the universities of the West, the right to universal education was rejected by the propagandists of "Black Studies" as well as various gender theories.

In its most banal form of running this relativism addition to the old vulgar Marxist thesis that being determines consciousness.In its most insidious forms of deconstructionism explains all knowledge suspicious, all generalizations false, all identities for constructed, all science to ideology.

From the colorful multiculturalism this perverse theory makes a nihilistic night when all the facts are gray. In his denial of any standards, all the canons of any truth except the battle it is the thinking of National Socialism than to the multiculturalism, which arises from the self-criticism of the Enlightenment.

Properly understood, is multiculturalism, however, the main weapon against the intolerance of immigrants. In his novel "submission" allows Michel Houellebecq demonstrate a convert, that Islam is compatible with the statements of the natural sciences and especially Charles Darwin.

This may be. Then it does not matter. But on the fact that Islam is learning to be a view among many. Not more but also not less. This also applies to those who claim to be "the people". As if the people and culture had ever accorded! The fact that the laws of all applicable, even for those who keep them liberal for exaggeration, it is not at issue.