In one of those odd moments in which a politician accidentally speaks the truth, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in 2010 that multiculturalism had failed. She said that the idea of various cultures living in harmony, “side-by-side” didn’t work, that it had “utterly failed.” She’s since changed her tune, of course, but she wasn’t wrong.
Multiculturalism does not, indeed cannot, create a peaceful and happy socio-cultural climate. By its very nature it is about division and disunity, about separating people of various cultures and encouraging them to stay separate from the rest of society.
The multicultural experiment has been a disastrous failure for many reasons, not the least of which is the fantastical expectation of cultures to live in kumbaya harmony when one of the said culture’s cultural beliefs is that members of other cultures should be immediately tossed off a roof.
The hubris and sense of inherent privilege of leftists who pushed the failed multicultural experiment on the Western world can be summed up quite simply: the left imagined that they would forever remain the leader, the voice of the various cultures, the ruling force who presided over their various multicultural ant farms and directed their thoughts, speech, and voting patterns. They, after all, worked to set up this separate but equal “multicultural” world, and they intended to preside over its many parts, keeping them separate, discouraging open-minded and friendly interaction that might result in a mingling of cultures, in assimilation.
“Diversity” is among the terms they adopted to hide the fact that they didn’t embrace diversity at all. They didn’t want these subgroups intermingling; they needed them to be separate . . . and as angry at and resentful toward the “other” groups as possible. “Diversity” became a political tool of division and fear-mongering.
Interestingly, leftist politicians and thought leaders who see divide-and-conquer “diversity” as a political tool were intelligent enough to ensure that “diversity” carried a different meaning for the unwashed masses. For leftist pols and thought leaders, “diversity” meant division, disunity, disharmony. The great unwashed, however, are intended by these very leftists to understand “diversity” as the exact opposite; the rank-and-file are supposed to hear “diversity” as a unifying cry intended to promote peace and harmony among various groups. And they do. Vehemently. Anyone who isn’t for “diversity” is a xenophobe, Nazi, white supremacist, and etc.
Republicans are horrible at communication and messaging. Horrible. And no, it’s not just the combative leftist media at work here.
Case in point, Representative Steve King (R-IA) tweeted the following and has received an enormous backlash:
I saw this and sighed. And shook my head. And face planted on my desk. And then sighed again. What he’s saying is not wrong, but it’s out of touch and clumsy and (yeah, I’ll say it) kind of ignorant as a result. King’s no dummy, but this is red meat for the progressive left who are already indoctrinated with the false idea that “diversity” means a celebration of difference and not, what it actually means for leftist pols and thought leaders, a means of fostering and sustaining division and disunity.
The socio-cultural strength of this cynical ploy is demonstrated by its acceptance by Senator Tim Scott (R-SC). Appearing on Meet the Press, Scott condemns King’s tweet on leftist terms; it’s not even clear that he read the tweet or the article to which it linked.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) on Sunday called Rep. Steve King’s (R-Iowa) comments that diversity is not America’s strength a “ridiculous statement.”“Very little that I can do about people who speak ignorantly, and you just have to call it for what it is, number one,” Scott said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”“Number two, the bottom line is both when Steve King and Tim Scott arrived in this country, we were actually creating diversity because the Native Americans were already here. So that is just a ridiculous statement,” Scott added.
“Diversity is not our strength” is perfectly defensible because America has long been the “melting pot,” where immigrants come to embrace our freedoms and to make their stamp on our culture and society. America is not about diversity and division; it’s about welcoming immigrants and embracing and absorbing parts of their culture while helping them adapt to, embrace, and absorb ours. America is about unity, and ultimately, about assimilation.
So King tries again:
Better, but the GOP really needs to get it together on leftist semantic minefields like this. We already know that words don’t hold the same meaning to the left that they do for us, but we also need to absorb into our understanding and messaging that words don’t hold the same meaning for Democrat leaders that they hold for their own voters. “Assimilation” is a dirty word on the left not because of what it means but because of what it rejects: Democratic leadership’s “diversity as alienation and division” propaganda.
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