THE P RTAL
February 2015
Page 24
Multiculturalism:
how it works
With Irving Berlin as his example,
Geoffrey Kirk explains how multiculturalism
is designed to get others to do the work
of secular liberals for them!
Ihave never
quite understood multiculturalism. The first problem is that it seems to apply to other
cultures only when they accommodate themselves to Western secularism. The second is that it only applies
here. We laud ‘moderate’ Islam – advocates of women’s rights who sit light to sharia law – and demonise as
‘extremists’ orthodox Muslims who believe the opposite.
With Christians the dynamic is reversed. We lament
the treatment of the orthodox suffering under Islamic
regimes; and persecute them in our own country
with laws about gay marriage, abortion and (soon)
euthanasia.
The ideal of the multiculturalist, it seems, is the
‘assimilated other’ – a Jew, Muslim or Hindu who has
been tamed sufficiently to be invited onto ‘Thought
for the Day’. The role of the obligingly assimilated,
of course, is to do the work of the secular liberals for
as Irving Berlin became a name to conjure with.
them.
Said George Gershwin, the very epitome of musical
strictly orthodox
respectability: ‘The first real American musical work is
Consider the case of Israel Isidore Beilin, a native of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”. Berlin had shown us the
Tyumen, in the then Russian Empire. His father was way; it was now easier to attain our ideal.’
the cantor in the local synagogue, and the family was
caught up in one of the periodic pogroms which swept sacred American anthems
across the region.
Berlin was to repay the compliment with a heart-felt
tribute to his adopted country: ‘God Bless America’
The young Israel was said to have childhood (later to be sung at the first anniversary commemoration
memories only of the smouldering ruins of the family of 9/11). But t