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John Howard says he ‘always had trouble’ with the concept of multiculturalism
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Doesnt sound as bad when the quote has context:
Multiculturalism is a concept that I’ve always had trouble with. I take the view that if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country, And in return they’re entitled to have the host citizenry respect their culture without trying to create some kind of federation of tribes and culture – you get into terrible trouble with that.”
I think one of the problems with multiculturalism is we try too hard to institutionalise differences, rather than celebrate what we have in [common].
The man's a deeply committed white supremacist and that's the context of him "having trouble" with multiculturalism.
He jailed refugees in the desert for years, then in concentration camps on tiny islands. During his tenure an "Australian style immigration system" was explicitly being called for by neo-nazis and far right groups across Europe.
He thinks there should be fewer asian australians in the interest of "social cohesion".
He hates aboriginal people, denied that they suffered a genocide and dissolved the only government body that represented aboriginal Australians.
John Howard's whole appeal was being the goofy-looking face of brutalizing anyone not white.
He also suspended the racial discrimination act to implement the NT intervention which saw the army called in to police Aboriginal communities. This also saw the implementation of income quarantining measures aimed specifically at Indigenous Australians, which would serve as the foundation for cashless welfare card policies moving forward.
Local man yells on tram
Calling him a deeply committed white supremacist might be a little of an exaggeration.
If he was a committed white supremacist then the goal with refugees and immigrants would be don't let em in/kill them all, however I've made a handy little plot of all Permanent additions over his entire prime ministerial carrier.
Don't know what he said about Asians but I've heard one in three Chinese at university is a spy either by choice or coercion.
The genocide debate I believe was because he doesn't see the stolen generation as genocide its a definition issue and by that logic and the definition of a genocide below it doesn't technically count (sounds like a greasy politician weaseling his way out of a difficult situation by technicality). 2
genocide /jĕn′ə-sīd″/ noun
However the united nations includes this line: forcibly transferring children out of the group. So long answer is it depends on what definition your using.
By the definition he is technically correct.
None of this is in any way defending him or even saying that he isn't a white supremacist just though that your representation or more likely the headlines from what the guardian said his legacy was is a little misleading.
Also who are you to say that his beliefs haven't changed since when he was in office I would like to think that all people are developing and improving their own ideas throughout the entirety of their lives.
This man's primary religion was keeping getting re-elected at all costs. Immigration kept the economy going well, so he was for it. Just didn't talk about it.
[citation required]
Howard dying will be a great day.
Does it feel good wishing death upon someone?
This man changed Australia for the far worse. So yeah, it feels fine.
Not too sure but did the Europeans adopt aboriginal values and practices when they first emigrated to Australia about 200 years ago?
Name a single culture that adopted the values and pracrices of a nation they defeated in warfare. Not saying that i support any of it just sinply that thats how history has always been and going back in an attempt to rewrite history only raises the queation of how far back do we go?
Alexander the Great after his defeat of the Persian empire.
Roman mithraism
(actually the romans did a looooot of cherry picking)
Mmm yeah nar. He did install his own dictators and make new tax men loyal to himself. So i wouldnt exactly call that adoption more ill let u keep some bits of what u have but u owe me tax.
My point is that his logic is paper fucking thin.
If you truly held that to heart then you'd seek to better align your policies to the preexisting cultures and people's of the land you've settled in. It's mostly just a dog whistle.
The Romans after they defeated the Greeks.
i wouldn't consider being made into a slave adopting my values. But then again in history u can only judge a culture or a person by times they existed in.
Slavery in Ancient Greece and Rome wasn't always slavery in the modern 'Atlantic slave trade' sense we have now. For instance a Greek may actually wish to become the slave of a wealthy Roman household in order to gain Roman citizenship when they were bought back off that household.
David Graeber's, Debt goes into this in far better detail, RIP.
Thats a hard question, the way you've posed it, because 'culture' doesn't really indicate a clean homogenous group that rules another, and there'll be few examples because most leaders of nations could be said to be quite disconnected from the winning ruled people's culture anyway, and the kings or emperors were the conquerers really, not the people. But i'll have a go at providing a cleaner example for the sake of the challenge.
The 'Mongols' Kitan or Liao, when they defeated 'China', they knew they wouldn't be able to hold their rule over the coastal populations without having a seat of power. So outwardly they adopted the practices of the Chinese. This is apparently why the Forbidden City was initially Forbidden. Because the mongols used that area, among others, to continue to live privately in tents like they'd always lived.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/the-forbidden-city.aspx
Another less clean example would be the 1066 Norman takeover of Britain. The Normans undoubtedly left their mark, but they never actually erradicated the anglo-saxons culture. And in doing so the two cultures mixed. You can see artifacts of this in the etymology of english words, for instance the difference between 'beef and cow' i think is a good example.
This is fairly common throughout history. The Mongols did it to such an extent that the Chinese considered them Chinese when they ruled China. It also happened a lot when various empires conquered Egypt or when Alexander conquered the Persians. It happens more often than not.
See the problem I have with believing he's anything but a disingenuous racist shit is this: I've seen no indications he thinks it's a great tragedy we're not practicing indigenous cultures instead of British descendent ones.
Yup, yup.
I've emaigrated and worked alongside immigrants, and one of the most revealing things that keep happening is for English-speaking migrants immediately going from making this exact point to refusing to learn the local language.
It's not one or two, I've had that exact conversation multiple times.
"Yeah, we have too many muslim migrants now, and the reason that bothers me is they refuse to integrate, you know? I'm not against migrants, but they should adopt the local customs."
"Dude, you've been here for three years and you only ever speak English to people".
blank stare
What's the difference between "respect their culture" and "Federation of tribes and culture". Either you take the view that "respect their culture" means allowing people to retain and freely exercise their culture in public, e.g. speaking their language and celebrating their cultural events publicly, in which case it's really indistinguishable to a federation of cultures. The alternative view is, people can only speak English and practice English cultural things in public, in which case is that really "respecting their culture"?
I suspect Howard is dog-whistling the latter, because Australia is doing the former, and it certainly doesn't sound like he's supportive of that, otherwise why would be have so much trouble with it?
Language has nothing to do with it except that its extraordinarily useful to have everyone speak the same language the easiest way to achieve this would be to choose the language that the largest number of people speak so we will end up with English huh what a surprise.
As for difference in “respect their culture” and “Federation of tribes and culture” is simply that federation of tribes and cultures is needlessly putting people in boxes (makes it easier to win a vote by appealing to extremist boxes we witnessed this with trump) but other than that all its doing is dividing people based on ethnicity/religion/race doesn't sound very equality-like to me. Maybe the solution is we let people have there federation of tribes and cultures and they are all equal but separate. Now where have I heard that one before.
Forcing other people who have a shared language to not speak that language to each other sounds more divisive than allowing people to speak to each other in whatever they want to.
But honestly why would you care? Does it bother you that you're unable to eavesdrop on a conversation you have no part in? If they want to speak to you, then they'll speak English.
Also I didn't notice anywhere in my post that suggested people shouldn't learn to speak English. You put that up as a strawman argument.
Bro im not claiming people should speak only english. My point was literaly that its irrelivant
And the other point is you talked about Trump, which is the height of irrelevant since we are talking about Australia. If you're not Australian, get the fuck out of here. We don't need US politics infecting our country.
Trump is probably the best example of extrimist popularism seen in a western democracy. We heading down a dangerouse path of americanisation. America is our distopian future.
I'm not sure how else I was supposed to interpret this. Maybe instead of being cryptic, just spell out what it is you're saying instead.
Sounds like "Language has nothing to do with it except" Would be immwdiatly followed by the exception to language having nothing to do with anything.
I think your suposed to interpret it by not quoting an exception to a rule as a rule for the purpose of misrepresentation. Its amazing how less cryptic things become when u havnt cut half of it out.
Isn't this just a more polite way of saying we ought to have one homogeneous culture though?
"values and practices" is subjective, but most people using this talking point really mean that migrants should behave, sound, and think the same way they do, except maybe possessing an innate ability to make a ripper fried rice.
Accepting this type of statement allows migrants to be accused of forming ghettos, having poor English, basically... just being different.
Multiculturalism (to me) is not about conforming to a common culture, rather we have a culture of embracing other cultures provided that they are not intolerant nor harmful. So basically, a migrant can behave as they wish subject to those provisos.
European here. Your definition of multiculturalism is precisely why integration has been difficult for many of our immigrants.
A society that has no requirements on its new citizens, welcoming them all in an enlightened spirit of tolerance, is ultimately self defeating. New arrivals have no reason to assimilate, since they get everything they need anyway, and instead they live just like they used to. This forms subcultures and does not foster allegiance to overall society.
At the same time, the lack of cultural assimilation and applicable education denies them opportunities to economically advance themselves, reinforcing the subculture effect and alienating the native population.
Now I’m not saying everyone must live in monoculture with the exact same set of beliefs and values, but they must at least value certain common rules, more than their religion or cultural upbringing. Otherwise Society fractures.
I disagree. A society is more than culture. It's politics, law and economics, which are the pieces that actually run a society. I would never suggest migrants should ever import politics, economics and laws from their home country.
Culture and religion however, are personal things. There's no need to force those on anyone. If a society feels the need to do this, it has a tolerance problem and they ought to ask themselves, why does someone praying to a different god, speaking a different language or celebrating a foreign event threaten you?
A nation is defined by its couture without culture a nation is nothing more than a random assembly of people. With no common goals or interests a nation is goes nowhere.
If someone is to become part of a nation they must adopt that nations core cultural beliefs above there own even their religion because obviously we have never seen any civil wars based on religion being held above others and thank god we don't have at least one of those going on right now in the world.
I would argue that one of these fundamental Australian beliefs is that anyone are free to go believe in whatever fucking god u want but for many people their core religious belief is that their own religion is the only one and it must be spread by any means possible insert quote from Quran and Bible here. That belief must be given up and put below that of the nation else we have a religious genocide on our hands.
I've never been to Europe, and I'm not familiar with the difficulties you're having there.
I will say though, you and I have different ideas about the way multiculturalism and immigration ought to work.
This sounds a little creepy TBH. What do you mean "since they get everything they need anyway" ? Should the things they need be measured out according to some kind of social credit?
Why is assimilation and integration so important?
Couldn't have said it better myself. I feel there is a lot of trying to "fix" differences rather than expanding commonality. As you said ultimately every culture needs some semblance of a common goal to work towards together. I mean this is why I think citizenship should be a vote based system its easy to study for a test it takes real integration to get a vote from a citizen (especially if u only give each citizen n votes per time period)
[First Nations people have entered the chat]
Did we emegrate or invade?
Well that makes it okay.
This implies that a country is a country with a never changing set of values, and not something that has a set of values because of all the changes that led to the current set of values. He is basically doing the thing where the current state of something is held up as the way it has always been, and assumes that there is no reason to ever change.
Yeah, celebrating differences is great. That doesn't mean that those differences should never change because they happened to exist at one point in time, and even them they never universally apply to everyone in the area/group, they mostly are what those in power say they are.
We don't choose countries based what they believe we choose countries based on how they choose to believe. So simply adopt those beliefs of what being Australian means and with your ballot steer this nation to greatness.
This made me realise that the article is not about the quote or any sociology; it’s about politics and John Howard. I dislike articles like this just like the ones about Elon Musk. Political nonsense to get people riled up.
Think there's a greater relevance here. He's speaking to a newly formed political think tank that current members of our parliament are actively engaged with. It speaks to the underlying values that one of our major political parties is actively leaning into.