(Above: a couple from the vaults of the intertubes).
Who'd have thunk it ...
During the last decade the chief harbingers of Left ideas in Australia have been the “cosmopolitan” intellectuals rather than the working class for whom they were intended. (Paul Keating got what he deserved).
The problem is the gulf between the word and its political meaning. Multicultural means many cultures, yet no Australian PM would support this exclusive interpretation because it cannot sustain a nation and Bowen's entire argument is that the policy actually means the opposite, a stronger and united Australia.
The task for Australia is to achieve unity in diversity. The problem with multiculturalism is obvious: the right wing believes it undermines unity and the left-wing hijacks the concept to promote separate ethnic cultures. Nothing is likely to change. But Bowen's definition is correct, so he should be wished good luck in our latest effort to fly with this flawed terminology.
Who'd have thunk it ...
There's that pompous prat Paul Kelly, tediously explaining why multiculturalism is a bad word and tainted beyond measure, in what is an excruciating and numbing variation on One Nation themes, in Weighed down by the M-word.
That's right, in Mr. Kelly's world, the M* word is roughly equivalent to the F* word, or the C* word, so dangerous and deadly it can't be spelled out in the header. In Mr Kelly's world, multiculturalism is a problem, unfortunately embraced by both sides of politics.
And to justify his stance, as he sides with the 'common confused' Australian, he resorts to this kind of guff:
The truth is that multiculturalism as a political concept has not been embraced by the Australian public. One of the best explanations for such failure comes from social researcher Hugh Mackay, a champion of diversity. "The word itself is still a problem and I think it was not smart to resurrect it," Mackay says. "This word has got a lot of baggage. The 'ism' gives the impression it is something being imposed. Australians are ready to celebrate the diversity of our culture, from sport to religion. They see our society as pluralistic and like it. But once you try to make this official you leave the impression it is being imposed from above and people get very suspicious. Politicians would be better off using neutral words like diverse or pluralistic that don't focus on race, ethnicity or religion. People like the word cosmopolitan because it implies a richness in our diversity."
People like the word cosmopolitan? Because it implies a richness in our diversity?
I have to say I rolled around on the floor at that one. Would those people include Gerard Henderson, who can't wait to deliver his weekly tirade at fashionable, dangerous inner city types, with their hideous taste in wine and coffee and trendiness? And the way they're completely out of touch with the suburbs and regional centres.
Here's a typical sample, as he berates Nikki Gemmell for daring to mention that virtually none of her friends in Australia attended church.
Maybe. But all this reveals is that Gemmell's acquaintances Down Under tend to be cosmopolitan types. In Australia, the Christian revival is very much a product of the suburbs and regional centres. (here, in Mock Christians at your peril, lefties).
Ah yes, those fiendish cosmopolitan types, and their Christian-mocking leftist ways. It just goes to show how Hugh Mackay, a cosmopolitan type if ever I've heard one, simply doesn't have a clue about the dangers of rampant cosmopolitanism - yes it too is an -ism - with its tendency towards caviare munching, oyster swallowing and champagne sipping decadence, completely at odds with the noble character of the average common confused Australian.
And it's a widely held notion, at least where gibberish and rhetoric are ready substitutes for ideas:
Indeed if you rush off to the abstract of a Marian Sawer piece, here, you can explore in detail the way cosmpolitan is actually a front for dangerous elites:
In neo-conservative accounts, members of the new class sneer at, have contempt for, look down on or wince at the values of ordinary people—although no empirical evidence is provided of such behaviour. The columnist Janet Albrechtsen is word perfect in the way she reproduces this neo-conservative anti-elitism: ‘When they [electoral losers, gay rights activists] do not get their way, they sneer at dowdy, unsophisticated Australia for falling behind swank social fashions paraded on the international stage’. The idea of contempt is necessary to discredit the values being upheld by the new class—who would want someone contemptuous of them spending their taxes?
These ideas were introduced into Australia through the magazine Quadrant and were given a wide airing through the book The Great Divide by sociologist Katharine Betts. This book positioned the author on the right side of the ‘great divide’ between the world of ordinary people and the cosmopolitan world of the elite. She warned that while new class advocacy of increased welfare expenditure might make it appear sympathetic, ‘at bottom’ the new class was contemptuous of the materialism and parochialism of the working class. This view of a new class elite lecturing the electorate to accept asylum seekers and wincing at ‘basic Australian values’ has been taken up with enthusiasm in free-market journals and in the Murdoch press. (emphasis added for bonus fun).
These ideas were introduced into Australia through the magazine Quadrant and were given a wide airing through the book The Great Divide by sociologist Katharine Betts. This book positioned the author on the right side of the ‘great divide’ between the world of ordinary people and the cosmopolitan world of the elite. She warned that while new class advocacy of increased welfare expenditure might make it appear sympathetic, ‘at bottom’ the new class was contemptuous of the materialism and parochialism of the working class. This view of a new class elite lecturing the electorate to accept asylum seekers and wincing at ‘basic Australian values’ has been taken up with enthusiasm in free-market journals and in the Murdoch press. (emphasis added for bonus fun).
Go wash out your mouths with common soap, Kelly and Mackay, and not that fancy French perfumed muck those cosmopolitan elites use.
And Kelly goes downhill from there, because somehow he seems to think it's logical to jump from 'owning' cosmopolitan as a splendid new word to explaining the Australian psyche:
Australians distrust social engineering, being told what to think and feel. Multiculturalism has this connotation.
Actually there are some Australians who distrust commentariat columnists scribbling as minions of Murdoch and being told what they should think and feel about multiculturalism. And cosmopolitanism.
Paul Kelly has this unfortunate connotation.
Naturally in this situation, obscurantism, befuddlement and confusion are the last refuge of the scoundrel:
The bigger point, however, is that the public remains confused. It must be confused if multiculturalism means different things in different nations and if Cameron's attack on multiculturalism equates with Australia's own version of multiculturalism. After 30 years the concept is still contested yet nobody seems able to find a replacement. John Howard loathed the term but never devised an alternative and settled instead for "Australian multiculturalism".
Uh huh. So even John Howard preferred multiculturalism to cosmopolitan, or those even more pathetic fancies, diversity and pluralism.
The problem is the gulf between the word and its political meaning. Multicultural means many cultures, yet no Australian PM would support this exclusive interpretation because it cannot sustain a nation and Bowen's entire argument is that the policy actually means the opposite, a stronger and united Australia.
Yes, you see, multicultural means many cultures, whereas diversity and pluralism mean many cultures, and so are much better words, and when talking about a stronger and united Australia, what better way to evoke it than by calling it a diverse, pluralistic, cosmopolitan nation (bugger off hix from the stix, we don't like your kind of flix).
The task for Australia is to achieve unity in diversity. The problem with multiculturalism is obvious: the right wing believes it undermines unity and the left-wing hijacks the concept to promote separate ethnic cultures. Nothing is likely to change. But Bowen's definition is correct, so he should be wished good luck in our latest effort to fly with this flawed terminology.
Uh huh. So in the end we've sat through a lot of blather, and a lot of silliness for nothing, except perhaps the notion that the left wing in Australia uses the concept to promote separate ethnic cultures, which is grossly stupid, indeed an offensive level of stupidity to which only a cosmopolitan might aspire ...
But it does put the pond in a terribly difficult position. You see, over at Fairfax, George Brandis explains, by way of personal memoir, why Politicians must defend the multicultural project, and explains in succinct terms the meaning of the word.
Brandis grew up in Petersham, back in the day, and his maternal forbears were Irish, and he remembers the way that the Irish were taunted for their strange religion, and their treacherous, treasonous attachment to Irish republicanism (not to mention Mannix and the work of the Irish in opposing the conscription campaigns of World War One). And these old enmities were still lurking when I grew up. Yes, the Irish were the Islamics of their day ...
And as he wanders through the arrival of Greeks and Italians, a trend which grew after the second world war, and the Asian influx, Brandis concludes with a relatively simple explanation of multi-culturalism:
No side of politics owns multicultural Australia - it is the successful product of Liberal and Labor administrations, across the decades.
In a free country, nobody should be denied the right to challenge or question it. But equally, those of us, from both sides of politics, who have championed the ideal of a liberal society receptive to and respectful of people of all races and faiths, should resist those intemperate voices and be steadfast in its defence.
In a free country, nobody should be denied the right to challenge or question it. But equally, those of us, from both sides of politics, who have championed the ideal of a liberal society receptive to and respectful of people of all races and faiths, should resist those intemperate voices and be steadfast in its defence.
You see, Mr Kelly, it isn't a concept that's difficult to understand, and it even allows cosmopolitans and elitist inner suburban green loving reprobates into the pact.
Eek, and it even means the pond has common ground with George Brandis.
Quick, head for the hills, the rapture must be nigh. Damn those suburban Christians and their trickery ...
Put it another way, as Monty Python did at the end of their Meaning of Life:
Well, that's the End of the Film, now here's the Meaning of Life.
... Well, it's nothing special. Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.
Indeed, it's so eminently dull and wise and possibly unachievable, that the Pythons had to do something about it:
And finally, here are some completely gratuitous pictures of penises to annoy the censors and to hopefully spark some sort of controversy which it seems is the only way these days to get the jaded video-sated public off their fucking arses and back in the sodding cinema. Family
entertainment bollocks! What they want is filth, people doing things to each other with chainsaws during tupperware parties, babysitters being stabbed with knitting needles by gay presidential candidates, vigilante groups strangling chickens, armed bands of theatre critics exterminating mutant goats - where's the fun in pictures? Oh well, there we are - here's the theme music. Goodnight.
How about armed bands of roaming cosmopolitan inner suburban greenies stabbing minions of Murdoch with limp noodles of over-cooked spaghetti, or perhaps putting them in the stocks and tossing fried rice at them, chanting humiliate the fear mongers*, wankers, tossers and cretins* wanting to diss multiculturalism in favour of cosmopolitanism? How can we be dangerous deadly elites if everyone's cosmopolitan?
You see, those astericks in the header did link up to words. In much the same way as M might stand for mumbo jumbo ...
And now, just so we can remember the evil ways of jet setting cosmopolitans way back when, here's a commercial. Just remember a lot of them have got lung cancer by now:
And when we have replaced multiculti with cosmopolitan we will have the dreary commentators telling us that Stalin used cosmopolitan ('rootless cosmopolitan') to disparage jewish intellectuals for their lack of patriotism, so we'll have to find another word untainted by the left.
ReplyDeleteBrandis does have his moments:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator/thisweek/13599/only-the-tories-can-cut-the-state-down-to-size.thtml