“Multiculturalism was once a term of tolerance, an acceptance of acceptance in an increasingly cosmopolitan and urbanised western world. Today it has become just a convenient label which politicians can use to assault immigration.” This is the insight offered by Adrian Hamilton writing in The Independent today.

He argues that there is a scarcity of figures coming forward to challenge the populist rhetoric employed by the likes of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel recently. Mrs Merkel asserted that multiculturalism had “utterly failed.”

“It was wishful thinking, she argued, to believe that Germans and foreigners ‘could live happily side by side.”

He likened the current language used in the debate over immigration to the language of the 1930s in that “it contains and implies attitudes of ethnic purity and cultural superiority, alongside xenophobia, which are dangerous in their logic and potentially extreme in their emotion.”

Across Europe and America there has been a rise of politicians and other public figures rising to prominence by exploiting anxieties over immigrants – namely Muslim immigrants and the Muslim community at large. Mr. Hamilton argues that Mrs. Merkel’s comments on the supposed failure of multiculturalism were “little wonder” given that her poll rating had sunk. She had “seized the opportunity to up her voter-approval figures.”

He argues that the ability to use anti-immigration and anti-Muslim rhetoric to score political points becomes especially acute when you factor in the current economic climate.

“Worries about jobs have become mixed with fear of Islamic terrorism and now the talk of cuts everywhere. As societies have turned inwards so they have also turned against the outsiders. It does not express – as yet – a desire to scapegoat the immigrants, to load them with the hatreds and fears which people in an age of anxiety are feeling. It's more a sense that society as people have known it is changing too fast and that the foreigner is somehow part of the process of exsanguination going on.”

In Europe, the most striking example of a politician using anti-Muslim rhetoric to rise in popularity is Geert Wilders. Wilders’ party’s support is part of a pact to form a coalition government in the Netherlands. In return for his party’s support, Wilders has insisted on banning the burqa in the Netherlands and putting halting Muslim immigration.

At home in the UK, we saw similar rhetoric employed by the BNP in the lead up to the general election. The language was of immigration resulting in Britain and Europe being “colonised by Islam.” Although the BNP did not gain any seats in Parliament, their total vote increased to over 500,000. In the lead up to major elections and following them we have seen Islam and Muslim bashing language also deployed by the likes of Lord Pearson of UKIP and Philip Hollobone of the Conservatives – to name just a few that have tried to make a name for themselves at the expense of the Muslim community.

The manufacturing and exploitation of anti-Muslim bigotry has seen the rise of extremist movements such as the English Defence League (EDL). Their anti-Islam stand has been taken to streets across Britain, often resulting in violence. 

The current climate is one of “he who shouts loudest and longest wins” – regardless of whether what they’re saying is based in any reality. It is against this tide that the defenders of a pluralistic society must struggle. Let the champions come forward.

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Back to the future  - Multiculturalism is synonymous with Cosmopolitanism   |2010-10-24 19:32:12 Multiculturalism is synonymous with Cosmopolitanism. Just as the German Nazis raged in a froth about an earlier Semitic faith & Rootless Cosmopolitanism in the "out of touch" urban centres, today they rage about Islam, mullticulturalism & metropolitan elites. Recently a poll found that 10% of Germans want another Fuhrer. Here we have the Neo-Moseleyite EDL & BNP. Remember then in fascist Italy, many Jews supported them anti-busines socialists.

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