Method, Madness and Multiculturalism

In yesterday's Guardian (Cif), a black actor complained of the wide-spread discrimination against ethnic minority actors, like himself, in British TV, with lead roles being given overwhelmingly to white actors and black and Asian actors being excluded completely from most period dramas (Television’s whites-only shows reach well beyond Midsomer).

I sympathise with how this black actor feels, because obviously he and his fellow ethnic minority actors ARE being discriminated against. But for good reason: until very recent times “people of colour” were virtually absent from Europe and would thus be out of place in most period dramas. The more than 2500 years of recorded history of western, i.e. European, civilisation is “hideously white”, as former director general of the BBC, Greg Dyke, might put it.

This exposes a paradox and dilemma: race and ethnic origins aren't supposed to matter in the “post-racial” society we are all supposed to want. But, of course they DO matter, and besides which, we don't ALL want to live in a “post-racial”, i.e. “post-European” society; only we can't say so – at least, not publicly – without being accused of “racism”.

This is the MADNESS of multicultural society, which becomes even more apparent when we use the more correct terms of “multi-ethnic” and “multi-racial” to describe it. “Ethnic” being derived from Greek, ETHNOS, meaning a PEOPLE or a NATION.

The root cause of the paradox the dilemma and the madness is the STATE, which insists on posing as our NATION.

None of this madness would arise if it weren't for the STATE imposing the oxymoronic absurdity of “multi-ethnic nationhood” on us.

Being human, we ALL tend to identity with people like ourselves, certainly until we get to know them personally, when, of course, we may find that someone of our own race, we don't like, while someone of a different race we do. But we can only know a very limited number of people personally; the vast majority will always remain strangers, and thus our inclination to judge and classify them by appearances, i.e. by race and ethnicity, will remain important. The ideal of a “post-racial” society, in which ethnic differences cease to be of any social, political or even personal significance, is just that, an ideal, and a misconceived, power-politically exploited ideal at that. Which brings me to the METHOD in the madness of multiculturalism.

The STATE, the original and still primary purpose of which (evident from a Darwinian perspective of human nature and the social power structures it has given rise to) is to facilitate “society's” self-exploitation to the advantage of power, wealth, privilege and now, of course, “talent”, while posing as our NATION, needs those under its jurisdiction, i.e. its citizens, to identity with it as such, in order to lay claim to, manipulate and exploit the powerful tribal loyalty and commitment we evolved to feel towards our original tribe.

Thus, the state's self-interested embrace of the misconceived ideal of a “post-racial” society, a society in which all citizens identity with it as representing them as a PEOPLE and a NATION. Anyone refusing to do so is demonised as a “racist”, much as anyone refusing to accept church (effectively, state) doctrine (ideology) in the Middle Ages was demonised as a non-believer, Jew, heathen, or heretic.

What caused the British state, which was essentially mono-ethnic prior to WW2, to undermine its - thus far, uncontested - claim to nationhood by inviting mass immigration of peoples of completely different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds?

Obviously there were economic reasons, with both state and capital having an interest in cheap foreign labour, but also and far more importantly, yet largely overlooked, there were ideological and power-political reasons, especially on the Left, which opportunistically exploited general public revulsion at the horrors of Nazism (as well as to the injustice and inhumanity of Apartheid and Jim Crow) by embracing an ideology which was the exact, but equally extreme, opposite of Nazi racial ideology, the ideology of “one-human-racism”, of “colour-blindness”, of indifference to ethnic difference, which insisted that race and ethnic origins are of no social or political importance at all, except to evil “racists”, like the Nazis. When, in fact, they are of fundamental importance for a deep and meaningful sense of personal and group (i.e. national) identity.

Thus, was Left, by denying, demonising and suppressing the natural ethnic basis of nationhood, able to equate all stirrings of genuine national sentiment (positive as well as negative, at least, amongst ethnic Europeans), with Nazi nationalism and the horrors, especially racism, associated with it. Leaving us with STATISM pure, on the one hand, and CONSUMER-CAPITALISM, on the other.

How do we get ourselves out of this mess? First, by recognising and developing an understanding of its causes in the perverted Darwinian nature of our civilisation.