Hi Leftypol, had some thoughts on the discourse of cultural change that I hoped you'd be interested in. Not a Holla Forumsyp or a racist (that you'll have to take on my word, or don't. Suffice to say, I'm not concerned with I.Q., teh Jooz, 'Genocide' or 'Inherent criminality' or whatever, and I think a state should treat all its citizens equally), although you could call me conservative in what I want a culture to look like (consider myself a real commie tho. I really don't want to convince anyone, I'm just struggling with the subject personally and need to know what other people think.
1. Global multiculturalism is the capitalist equivalent of culture to the capitalist way of economy. The capitalist economy is what you could call 'standardized difference', e.g. there is no 'local' way of producing and consuming. Instead, globally, we see a trend towards divergence to a single market selling the same commodities. The commodities sold all over the globe, however, are very different.
It seems to me that multiculturalism works the same way. Culture is 'deteritorrialized', e.g., where before we had single cultures in single territories, multiple cultures create a diverse territory. This is directly connected to the capitalist labour market (migrants want to offer labour where they are competitive and where rewards are high, and this is enabled by technology produced in the capitalist era, and liberal migration laws associated with capitalism). The trend would seem to be towards ever more absolute global diversity, concentrating in Europe for now. This would be a cultural 'market', e.g., where you are, you are not 'placed' in a single dominant cultural paradigm (like an Italian, or Botswanian culture) but get to 'pick' cultures to interact with as if you are in the marketplace.
2. Ethnicity/Culture is a divide gratefully used by conservatives to stave off accusations of racism. The idea is that everything one could potentially change (habits, language) is relevant for a territory and can therefore be cherished. What you cannot change (skin colour) is supposed to be irrelevant. This allows a narrative where immigrants can simply 'adapt' and any problems with disliked diversity can simply be overcome through will. The divide, however, does not make logical sense. Conservatives are concerned with preserving a territory's 'ownness', not just its culture. Nowadays, territories (especially those in the West) strongly resemble one another. This means that there are three things left:
1. The specific language of a territory/state.
2. Subtle difference in habits.
3. Skin colour and build.
It simply doesn't make logical sense, starting from a stance of wanting to preserve 'ownness', not to care about dissolving ethnic specifity. I think that's why anti-immigration conservatives love to hide their unease with increading diversity in ethnicity behind rhetoric of 'costs' and 'crime' and 'culture' which is often bullshit. They really want their state to remain looking the same, but to admit to it would mean accusations of racism and public marginalization.
3. Skin colour is a piece of difference that cannot be lost, and hence a potential way of Othering that will always remain. Secularism actually increases the potential of this Othering since it removes a layer of societal identification and specifity, namely religion. (I remember a quora answer by a Pakistani who complained that the Islamists were far less racist than secularists).
4. Liberals cannot do otherwise than constanly demand a change to cultural identity, because they do not want to exclude anyone from the culture. The best liberals can do is calling being English, for example, 'being dedicated to human rights and democracy' or something along those lines. But a culture that includes, potentially, the cultures of the whole world has no specifity. It draws no lines with which to define itself because to do so would mean exclusion, which liberals just cannot do. That's why liberals are constantly asking for 'a more inclusive sense of we' because to deny doing so would mean that 'the culture' can only be including a specific group, different from other groups. The video that the pic is from is an example (it's called 'the new country' or something and called on ethnic swedes to integrate to a 'new sense of we' or something like that). The ultimate liberal argument is pulling a sense of anti-identity, like 'we have always been a country of migration, diversity, tolerance', e.g. the culture is that it is no culture.