Romantic primitivism in all forms is absurd and deserves to be ridiculed. But when it emerges out of multiculturalism as a designer tribalism that incorporates superstition, violence, corruption, and misogyny - when it effectively keeps people locked into poverty and failure by perpetuating the soft racism of low expectations - then it demands serious critical examination.
White liberals with their touchy-feely morality and political correctness are always overly keen to show how sensitive they are to racial and religious difference. They believe it's crucial that immigrants arriving in Europe from Asia and Africa are allowed to keep their own beliefs, traditions, and practices in order to maintain their identities and self-esteem. It follows from this that they should therefore be allowed to have their own schools, places of worship, community centres, shops, newspapers, radio stations, and, perhaps, even their own legal systems.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali ruthlessly tears this well-intentioned but profoundly misguided and ultimately disastrous way of thinking to shreds. She writes: "The idea that immigrants need to maintain group cohesion promotes the perception of them as victim groups requiring ... an industry of special facilities and assistance" and results in the creation of ghettos.
In other words, the ideal of cultural diversity is one that ends in social failure. Rather than producing "a rich mosaic of colourful and proud peoples interacting peacefully ... it translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse."
Immigrants might preserve their arts and crafts, be able to eat the foods they like and wear traditional styles of dress, but this comes at a tremendous cost. For they are effectively complicit in a system which preserves them in the same manner it preserves endangered wild life; they are patronised and encouraged to remain loyal to a way of life which is untenable, inappropriate, and often in direct conflict with the society around them.
If this means their children do badly at school, can't find employment, and drift into crime, well, that's just too bad. Members of the liberal establishment overlook this just as they turn a blind-eye to the those unfortunate cultural practices such as honour killing and female genital mutilation. Their determined celebration of exotic otherness allows them to demonstrate just how tolerant and understanding they can be - and that's what they care about; atoning for the sins of their imperialist forefathers and exorcising their own guilt.
One is grateful to Hirsi Ali for speaking up and speaking out on this topic with her customary intelligence and integrity.
Note: lines quoted from Ayaan Hirsi Ali can be found in Nomad, (Simon and Schuster UK Ltd., 2011), pp. 212 and 213.
