In Munich, a foreign-born leader, a master spinner with an anger problem, stands up and gives a speech that makes the Far Right cheer and those of foreign descent fear they are once again to be persecuted for the actions of a minority. Yes, David Cameron’s speech at an international security conference has rightly received a lot of attention. Fox News in the States had it on repeat. Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, said it was unwise. Me? Well I’m just your average guy but, really, it upset me to see the Prime Minister of my country asking 2.5 million Muslims to take responsibility for people they don’t know, don’t want to know, while all they really want is to sit and watch telly with a kebab nestled in their tummies. Yes, like real Englishmen.
Cameron in his focus on imposing behavioural norms is harking back to falsified halcyon days of British monoculture. It never existed. As someone put it recently, “Where does he think the Angles and Saxons came from!” It is an utterly facile interpretation of our country. In modern Britain all of us engage in a reflexive process of creating identity that shamelessly steals from all cultures. The white kid who’s a Buddhist vegetarian, loves rap and kung fu movies. The son of Muslims who went to Cambridge, loves bacon and cried when Ross broke up with Rachael (ahem). Multiculturalism, for me, is not so much a political philosophy than a quite literal description of most of our lives. From heterogeneous cuisine, music and literature to our sporting, cultural and political figures.
London in particular is an exemplar of the successes of British multiculturalism. It is a city of hugely diverse cultures. That, as Ken Livingstone once observed, lives to the highest aspirations of Millian liberalism. It is a city that crams eight million individual stories into a tangled web of interdependence and, for the main part, mutual respect. And we are broadly tolerant. The Tube, where everyone’s gazes criss-cross so no-one has to suffer the indignity of meeting another’s eyes is one extreme of our culture of “let each live without interference.” On the other end of the spectrum we have cultural phenomena like the Notting Hill Carnival, exhibitions of exquisite Muslim art and tapestry attended by people from all faiths and cultural backgrounds and sweaty New Year’s Eves in Trafalgar Square where hundreds of languages mingle, sharing universal joy for the New Year and a desperate need to go to the loo.
But let’s be straight here. That wasn’t what David Cameron was attacking. He wasn’t really attacking multiculturalism. He was attacking political extremism. And that’s where his speech unravels and its pernicious intent is so clear. By conflating religious identity with political extremism in such a fluid and lazy way, and not least of all in the backdrop of hundreds of crazed Far Right extremists chanting, “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” in Luton, he gives credence to the widespread view that Islam is somehow antithetical to Western liberalism. It’s an old tale. Richard Hofstadter’s classic essay on the paranoid style in American politics seems somewhat instructive here (or is drawing on arguments from an analysis of American politics too multicultural?). In his analysis, the mad screeches of a few misanthropic malcontents from one part of society (whether Masons, Catholics, socialists or militant Blacks) is conflated with genuine threats from extremists and then the broader group. It is legitimised by semi-respectable institutions conducting their own “inquiries”. McCarthy, for example. And then sold by a craven media that breathes on the oxygen of scandal and fearmongering.
To those that are really scared, let me assure them of a few things. Most of the “divergent” or “alien” cultures in the UK love this country. We don’t denigrate our home by calling it “Broken Britain.” For me, as the son of immigrants that were shown love and acceptance by their adopted home, and whose children were given every opportunity, regardless of the colour of their skin, let me tell you that I know this is truly a Great Britain. Just as you fear terrorism, we fear terrorism. We get the same Tubes, the same buses, the same flights. And we feel as powerless as you do to stop them. Political extremists that want to impose their bonkers worldview on all of us are as terrifying to me as they are to you, whether they happen to be Muslim, Christian or Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist or Sikh. Or the BNP. Like you we want a nice supper, to put our feet up, watch t’telly, have a cup of tea and get on with our lives – lives that we Londoners share with people from all parts of Britain (Manchester for me), from all religions, of all colours and of all races. For David Cameron to pretend otherwise – that you or I could possibly do something to stop extremists that we don’t know or have anything to do with – is the most pernicious of all lies.
Originally published in Tribune
In Munich, a foreign-born leader, a master spinner with an anger problem, stands up and gives a speech that makes the Far Right cheer and those of foreign descent fear they are once again to be persecuted for the actions of a minority. Yes, David Cameron’s speech at an international security conference has rightly received a lot of attention. Fox News in the States had it on repeat. Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice, said it was unwise. Me? Well I’m just your average guy but, really, it upset me to see the Prime Minister of my country asking 2.5 million Muslims to take responsibility for people they don’t know, don’t want to know, while all they really want is to sit and watch telly with a kebab nestled in their tummies. Yes, like real Englishmen.
Cameron in his focus on imposing behavioural norms is harking back to falsified halcyon days of British monoculture. It never existed. As someone put it recently, “Where does he think the Angles and Saxons came from!” It is an utterly facile interpretation of our country. In modern Britain all of us engage in a reflexive process of creating identity that shamelessly steals from all cultures. The white kid who’s a Buddhist vegetarian, loves rap and kung fu movies. The son of Muslims who went to Cambridge, loves bacon and cried when Ross broke up with Rachael (ahem). Multiculturalism, for me, is not so much a political philosophy than a quite literal description of most of our lives. From heterogeneous cuisine, music and literature to our sporting, cultural and political figures.
London in particular is an exemplar of the successes of British multiculturalism. It is a city of hugely diverse cultures. That, as Ken Livingstone once observed, lives to the highest aspirations of Millian liberalism. It is a city that crams eight million individual stories into a tangled web of interdependence and, for the main part, mutual respect. And we are broadly tolerant. The Tube, where everyone’s gazes criss-cross so no-one has to suffer the indignity of meeting another’s eyes is one extreme of our culture of “let each live without interference.” On the other end of the spectrum we have cultural phenomena like the Notting Hill Carnival, exhibitions of exquisite Muslim art and tapestry attended by people from all faiths and cultural backgrounds and sweaty New Year’s Eves in Trafalgar Square where hundreds of languages mingle, sharing universal joy for the New Year and a desperate need to go to the loo.
But let’s be straight here. That wasn’t what David Cameron was attacking. He wasn’t really attacking multiculturalism. He was attacking political extremism. And that’s where his speech unravels and its pernicious intent is so clear. By conflating religious identity with political extremism in such a fluid and lazy way, and not least of all in the backdrop of hundreds of crazed Far Right extremists chanting, “Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?” in Luton, he gives credence to the widespread view that Islam is somehow antithetical to Western liberalism. It’s an old tale. Richard Hofstadter’s classic essay on the paranoid style in American politics seems somewhat instructive here (or is drawing on arguments from an analysis of American politics too multicultural?). In his analysis, the mad screeches of a few misanthropic malcontents from one part of society (whether Masons, Catholics, socialists or militant Blacks) is conflated with genuine threats from extremists and then the broader group. It is legitimised by semi-respectable institutions conducting their own “inquiries”. McCarthy, for example. And then sold by a craven media that breathes on the oxygen of scandal and fearmongering.
To those that are really scared, let me assure them of a few things. Most of the “divergent” or “alien” cultures in the UK love this country. We don’t denigrate our home by calling it “Broken Britain.” For me, as the son of immigrants that were shown love and acceptance by their adopted home, and whose children were given every opportunity, regardless of the colour of their skin, let me tell you that I know this is truly a Great Britain. Just as you fear terrorism, we fear terrorism. We get the same Tubes, the same buses, the same flights. And we feel as powerless as you do to stop them. Political extremists that want to impose their bonkers worldview on all of us are as terrifying to me as they are to you, whether they happen to be Muslim, Christian or Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist or Sikh. Or the BNP. Like you we want a nice supper, to put our feet up, watch t’telly, have a cup of tea and get on with our lives – lives that we Londoners share with people from all parts of Britain (Manchester for me), from all religions, of all colours and of all races. For David Cameron to pretend otherwise – that you or I could possibly do something to stop extremists that we don’t know or have anything to do with – is the most pernicious of all lies.
