Simon O'Connor: Muddled multiculturalism

After travelling through Morocco and Portugal, and attending conferences in London, I found myself asking a simple question: can a nation remain coherent if it no longer believes in its own culture?

Multiculturalism has failed. In fact, multiculturalism will – by definition – always fail. A society cannot indefinitely sustain competing cultural norms on fundamental questions of law, rights, and social order.

This is not a new observation. Leaders and commentators as diverse as David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Tony Abbott, Suella Braverman, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali have all raised concerns about multiculturalism’s limitations.

We can happily live in multi-ethnic societies. We can also enjoy, learn, and be challenged by other cultures. But a nation cannot successfully operate with competing cultural norms on its most fundamental questions.

We cannot be a nation that believes in equal rights while simultaneously treating women and girls differently. We cannot hold to the principle of free speech while selectively introducing blasphemy laws. Nor can we believe in the rule of law that we have inherited while also saying there’s another system of law that trumps it.

As the biblical axiom says, a city divided will fall.

The question of multiculturalism was front and centre at two conferences I recently attended in London. The Alliance of Responsible Citizenship (ARC) Forum and Spiked Conference. It was also very present to me as I travelled after these events, particularly to Morocco.

I must say, Morocco was amazing. A stunning and varied landscape, from the Sahara Desert to the shores of Casablanca, dry and rocky plains to the verdant Dades Valley. Wonderful people and delicious food. As you would expect as well, a rich culture and history, stunning artistry and architecture – all the things I love to take in, learn from, and engage with.

Hassan Tower in Rabat, a minaret and the 

associated mosque, both never fully completed.

Yet alongside the beauty and hospitality, there were cultural differences that left me uneasy. You would always see young boys riding bikes or kicking footballs on the streets, but never girls. Men would sit drinking tea on the roadside cafes, but never women. On the beaches, the men dressed as they liked but as you will anticipate, even in the 45 degree heat, the women were fully covered.

These cultural decisions are, of course, for Moroccans to make in Morocco. In the same vein, here in New Zealand, we must make our own cultural decisions. Either our women and girls are as free to ride bikes and kick soccer balls as boys, or swim at the beach as they choose – or not.

One of the many and wonderfully varied landscapes of Morocco. This is Ait Benhaddou - a fortified village and also the location for films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator. Stunning beautiful, but hard touring when it was 45 degrees!

Even more important is that we understand that when we have a culture, it is because we believe the attributes of that culture to be right. Here in New Zealand - as too the UK, USA, and Portugal where I also visited - we possess institutions such as democracy, free speech, and equal rights because previous generations judged them to be good and worth preserving. These are not simply arbitrary concepts that we just happened upon or would consider swapping out on a whim. As Leo Strauss famously quipped, “if all cultures are equal, then cannibalism is just a matter of culinary taste.”

Which leads me to two concepts of multiculturalism that were discussed at these conferences - soft and hard multiculturalism. I will also add a third, that I call muddled multiculturalism.

Soft multiculturalism is where the various cultures, religions, and traditions of citizens are welcome so long as they sit within – and under – a single cultural norm of laws and national identity. Individual beliefs are welcome, provided they operate within the framework of the nation’s laws and civic norms. For example, a culture may not tolerate someone choosing to change their religion, but in New Zealand, our cultural norm is one of religious freedom – individuals can believe what they want; can change what they believe; or not believe at all.

Hard multiculturalism in contrast seeks to embrace and balance every culture as equal. We are hearing this from various political leaders all the time – our societies have no single culture or identity, and that each distinct culture is to be celebrated, supported, and actively promoted even if there are contradictions between them. This approach is commonly found among progressive political movements and leaders, including the likes of Sir Keir Starmer and now Andy Burnham, and certainly Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau.

I would add a third category: muddled multiculturalism. Unlike hard multiculturalism, which seeks to treat cultures equally, muddled multiculturalism privileges other cultures while downplaying or disparaging one’s own.

It is where those in positions of leadership – be it political, academia, corporate, or media – outwardly reject their own culture while enthusiastically embracing ‘foreign’ ones. It is increasingly common to see political and corporate leaders enthusiastically celebrate non-Western cultural and religious festivals while showing noticeably less enthusiasm for traditions rooted in their own heritage.

In the UK, many on the left resile against Britian’s flying their own Union Jack or the flag of St George yet happily wave the flags of foreign nations, or even worse, parade with the flags of terrorist groups!

While hard multiculturalism tries to put competing and often contradictory cultures on equal footing, this third category of muddled multiculturalism sees the destructive and deliberate undermining of one’s own culture to pander to new ones. Worse still, this pandering is rarely due to a genuine belief that these new cultures are better or superior, but rather the pandering is for cheap performance, virtue signalling, and sectarian votes.

For those embracing this muddled multiculturalism, one explanation may be a loss of confidence in their own cultural inheritance. This in turn is born from a deficient appreciation of history or an ideological adherence to the relativistic ‘all cultures are equal’ maxim. The absurdity of this latter maxim becomes immediately clear by the muddled types themselves, for they immediately reject their own culture and certainly do not treat it as equal with others.

Here in New Zealand, my stepchildren, boys and girls, can both play in our streets because of the norms of our Judeo-Christian inspired culture. We have inherited this culture because successive generations regarded its principles as both beneficial and morally sound.

This should be self-evident but sadly it is not to the muddled. They seem to believe that we can simultaneously have a society that allows some girls to play outside, for example, and for others to be locked up at home.

Whether New Zealand is a Christian country or not is up for debate, but our culture – our sense of human rights, laws, and moral norms – are all founded on Judeo-Christian values. We have the sad irony of many deliberately ignoring and undermining the underlying culture of our nation, while simultaneously embracing warmly cultures that are in direct conflict with it.

Just one of the extraordinary altarpieces within churches in Portugal.

Just as I felt a sadness noting the absence of young girls not being able to play outside as the boys were, I also feel a sadness for the muddled multiculturalists. To be that muddled and confused; to undermine one’s own culture by the very virtue that our Western culture allows freedom of thought, conscience, and speech so as to then embrace alternative cultures which have never accorded the same equality of rights.

As I noted at the start, our trip took us to both Morocco and Portugal. I loved visiting Morocco and learning from its culture. Yet if asked where I would choose to live, raise a family, and build a future, I would choose Portugal. That preference reflects not geography or ethnicity, but the cultural values embodied in each society.

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Simon O'Connor a former National MP graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Political Studies . Simon blogs at On Point - where this article was sourced.