Barry Cohen, Hermann Goering, Multicultural versus Multiracial and how to join the tolerant Anglo Celtic melting pot. Love it or leave it.

With Michael "Neo" Costa seemingly retired from the ranks of commentariat columnists at The Australian, I guess the editor felt the need to balance the books by slipping in a substitute twelfth man, namely Barry Cohen, who can lay claim to a stint as Minister for the Arts, Heritage and Environment in the Hawke government.

It's a most peculiar effort, under the header Not all cultures are good. Peculiar because it's hard to work out what Cohen is attempting to say.

Well a few things are clear. He tells us how he hates the word multicultural - when he hears it, he likes to reach for his pistol, never mind that he might be borrowing and mangling from Hermann Goering or similar, and thereby invoke Godwin's Law - and all the more strange, because what is someone so proudly Jewish doing defiantly quoting a Nazi?

And so because he is bold and brave and fears no Nazi influence - even if he is sort of quoting a Nazi - even so, he says he must, as a result, end up living in fear of the language police who think of him as a rabid racist not fit to mix in polite society.

It is the standard epithet hurled at those who question multiculturalism. How has it come to this?

Indeedy, what an excellent way to evoke paranoia as the tone for a column.

Why when I hear the words language police, I generally like to go out and arrest someone for misusing and abusing the language, say by using 'elude' when they meant 'allude'. Or vice versa. And so on.

But back to the multicultural question. What's the problem?

Strangely, it is the Anglo-Celtic culture that is continually denigrated. No culture is perfect but few can match the British tradition of equality before the law, respect for minority views, freedom of speech and association, political and civil rights and above all, democracy. The word that best fits that heritage is "tolerance". Oddly, those most critical of that culture often come from the most oppressive and repulsive regimes, those ruled by feudal monarchies, military and theocratic dictatorships and one-party states.

Great, good, tolerance, love the concept. How can we best express our tolerance?

The idea that all cultures are equally good is arrant nonsense. A glance at Freedom House's annual rankings of freedom will attest to that. Australia ranks among the very best.

Excellent. By being intolerant of cultures not up to the very best, like Australia's. And Britain's. Though not the current Britain perhaps, as it collapsed way back when color television and the Beatles arrived, and wearing bowler hats declined (or so Hal G. P. Colebatch assures me).

And how best can we express our intolerant tolerance?

To those who believe it is the government's responsibility to re-create the culture from whence they have escaped, I suggest they consider other options.

Like love it or leave it? Our way or the high way? Or why don't you go back to where you came from, back to that militaristic one party theocratic state? Perhaps called China? Remembering that in China the Communist party is god?

Um, sorry, not China. Nowhere in particular. Because you see throughout the column, Cohen doesn't actually specify the actual cultures of the recent arrivals in Australia most deserving of our intolerant tolerance, or should that be our tolerant intolerance? They must remain a mystery, wreathed in an allusion, yet perhaps known to all. Or perhaps not.

But Cohen is keen to replace the concept of multicultural with multiracial.

Ours is a multiracial and tolerant society, and our culture should be a gradually evolving one, free from government interference and guidance. Let it remain so.

Because I think he' s saying he wants a monoculture practised in a multiracial way, rather than any of this multicultural nonsense.

So why, I hear you ask, do I bridle at the word multiculturalism? We are a multiracial society and a harmonious one. What I object to is the idea promoted by the multicultural lobby that not only should we be a society of a hundred cultures but it is the government's duty, nay obligation, to see that we remain permanently culturally divided. If some groups wish to remain separate from mainstream Australia, then that is their choice, but they should not expect governments to aid and abet those divisions.

Governments have a responsibility to assist new arrivals to settle in by helping them to find work, learn English, obtain housing and, if necessary, provide welfare. They should not help create the society from whence they escaped.

In return, migrants have a responsibility to learn about Australia's history and culture, including indigenous Australia and those of Anglo-Celtic origin, which was the dominant culture for 150 years.

Um, does that mean I have to go back to lamb chops and three vegetables three nights a week, sausages and three vegetables three nights a week, and fish on a Friday, with garlic and chillis banned from the house? Because that was the dominant culture way back when in the good old Anglo-Celtic days, and god it stank.

I keed, I keed. But I do have my doubts about the usefulness of multiracial as a term. Because the construct of race is under question (there's a rather large wiki on the subject here) and because ethnicities and population groupings tend to better explain cultural linkings rather than perceived superficial racial characteristics such as skin color and the shape of eyes (though when you get those northern Chinese talking about the barbarians in the south, it does tend to get personal).

So what Cohen promotes as a meaningful term - a multiracial society - is actually a confusing and befuddling one. For example, when talking of anti-semitism, we need to remember that the definition of who is semitic is actually a biblical one, and the grouping not only includes Hebrews/Israelites, but also Arabs, Canaanites, Akkadians and so on (I can't be bothered with all the details, wiki them here).

Because if you come from the early melting pot of civilization, it's a big pot and a lot of melting has gone on over thousands of years. And divisions, when they've tended to form, usually haven't been around the hard to distinguish issue of race, so much as religious and cultural affiliations.

But then it seems Cohen loves the notion of the melting pot, provided we all eventually meld into the over-arching Anglo-Celtic melting pot, because it's been dominant for a hundred and fifty years (sorry black dudes, forty thousand years doesn't compete with a quality 150, or even if you do your maths right, an epic 221 years, because let's face it, right from the get go, white culture has been dominant and somehow inherently superior).

So any newcomers need to understand they must conform to standard Australian traditions as established by those first exceptionally tolerant Anglo Celtic arrivals (well with the exception of those who instituted the White Australia policy to keep dangerous Asiatics out):

Each new wave of migrants followed the same pattern. Arriving with little, they gravitated to areas with cheap accommodation among people who spoke the same language, ate the same food, worshipped at the same church and were familiar with the same culture. Older Australians had doubts about these cultural "ghettoes" but in time they not only got used to them but grew to cherish them. Eventually there was hardly a nationality, religion, race or creed that didn't have its own cultural identity and community in Australia. With a few exceptions the integration was seamless and tensions were rare. Adult immigrants found it hardest to assimilate into the local community. Differences became less obvious with each passing generation. Each group made their contribution towards a new, constantly changing Australian culture.

Why am I drawn to that wonderful song Melting Pot at this point?

Take a pinch of one man
Wrap him up in suntan
Add a touch of blue blood
And a little bitty bit of
whatever you choose
Curly black and kinky
Mix it with love and let's see
If you lump it altogether
Well you've got a recipe
for a get along scene...
Oh what a beautiful dream
If it could only come true
You know you know...

What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world
and all it's got
Keep it stiring for a hundred years or more
Turn out coffee colored people
by the score

Well it makes as much sense as Cohen, and by this point, I was wondering exactly what he was on about. Since he never gets around to naming the offending immigrants who've got up his nose, and who are guilty of remaining culturally divided, outside the broad holy accommodating church of Australia, and who insist that their culture is as equally good as Australia's, thereby indulging in arrant nonsense.

At the start of his piece, Cohen is equally vague:

I became involved in politics almost 50 years ago with the prime motivation of fighting racism. However, I am aghast at the way multicultural advocates have taken control of the race debate by denouncing as racist anyone who disagrees with their view of the future of Australian society.

Then he lists his own - ethnic - background, including Polish and Lithuanian Jews via South Africa, Celts from Scotland and Ireland, a handful of Thais and "the very best British bloodstock". Oh yes, bloodstock. Such a quaint notion, as if the British bred their nobility like thoroughbred racing stock, which doesn't really explain how we ended up with bonnie Prince Charlie as the most recent line, now fortunately retired from stud service.

Cohen rambles his experiences of the great Catholic and Protestant wars (cultural nee religious) and his experience of anti semitism (cultural, since being Jewish isn't a matter of race) and then to befuddle me further tells me that these cultural experiences somehow convinced him that Australia is one of the least racist countries in the world.

Well if the divisions are over religion and nothing to do with the color of your skin, he might actually have a point. But you see there's race, and then there's culture, and most of what Cohen talks about involves culture.

Even when he goes on a further rant about "good" migrants:

It is not in the least surprising nonetheless that when Australia, under Ben Chifley, abandoned its practice of only seeking migrants from Britain, and turned to Europe there was some apprehension about how it would work. It was, as we know, a great success. First came the Italians, Poles, Germans, Balts, Dutch and others, followed by those from wherever there was suffering. Millions sought safe haven from wars, oppression, famine or poverty. They came to a country that offered the freedoms they had been denied, provided them with the opportunity to earn a decent living and enabled them to rear a family free from the threat of violence.

Which of course means that Australia is a great multicultural country, rather than a significantly multiracial one - if you use any sensible recent definition of the nature and extent of races, genetically based, as opposed to cultural definitions.

And by the end of the piece, I still remained profoundly confused as to its purpose and intent. I still didn't have a clue who were being naughty and who were undermining Australia's wonderful melting pot of tolerant fair minded 'love us or leave us' multiracialism.

It was only when I turned to Cohen's piece The Anti-Semitic Labor Party, published in The Age way back in October 2004 that I began to edge towards a hint of understanding, as it berated the Labor party and defiantly sang a song of support for Israel:

Let's hear the Labor feminists take the Arab nations to task for their abominable treatment of women. Let's hear those Labor supporters, who are so loud in their denunciation of homophobia, demand an end to the barbaric treatment of gays. Let's also hear civil rights activists bemoan the lack of basic freedoms available to most of the 300 million Arabs in the 22 Arab countries.

Well okay, I hate that we're fighting for a government in Afghanistan which acts in abominable ways towards women. I hate the barbaric treatment of gays in Australia by Christians, and by Islamics elsewhere. I bemoan the lack of civil rights in many Arab countries, just as I bemoan Fox for broadcasting Glenn Beck.

But these, for the love of the lord, are cultural not racial issues. Religion isn't a racial issue, no matter what the Nazis might have pretended about the Jews as they went about their evil business. Or how else could Sammy Davis Jr be a Jew, or Elizabeth Taylor convert, or Marilyn Monroe cross over when she hooked up with Arthur Miller?

So what is Cohen on about? Why won't he name names?

Why it would surely have been simple enough in a cultural way to assert that there was no place for Islam - or Scientology - in a culturally tolerant Australia. Or to insist that if recent immigrants didn't watch out, good old Labor party lore of 'last on, first off', 'last in, first out' would be invoked quick stix.

And we know who's been amongst the last in, and which ones have been targeted by everybody else who got here before them.

In the end, I was left thinking that the only response was the one offered up by Malcolm Muggeridge when he heard that the CIA had been financing a number of literary and cultural magazines around the world, including Encounter.

When I hear the word gun, I reach for my culture.

Make that multiculture.

(Below: and while on the subject of Goering quotes, here's another one. But please don't think I'm quoting it approvingly).