Multiculturalism turned into apartheid?

Proponents of multiculturalism often equate criticism of multiculturalism to racism or xenophobia. This kind of systematic silencing has for many decades muted critics of multiculturalism all over Europe. Anyone who questions whether multiculturalism is good for our societies is put away as a racist or xenophobe. Any literate can dismiss the racism accusation since a culture is not the same thing as a race but this simple mistake is often made.

In my home country a prominent politician by the name of Geert Wilders has called this “the disease known as cultural relativism” and I do believe he hit the nail on the head. Cultural relativism is the view that all cultures are equal and that right and wrong are culture-specific. It is this disease that is partly, if not entirely, responsible for the justification of multiculturalism. While I do believe that people are equal, the same cannot be said for cultures. The western culture is far superior to say Islamic cultures in the Middle East. The western culture is generally one of tolerance. We have our separation of church and state (which I would much rather call the separation of religion and state but for the sake of understanding what I mean we’ll keep it at that), men and women are equal in their rights, we tolerate homosexuality, you won’t find us chopping off someone’s hand because they stole something or blowing ourselves up because of some imaginary holy war.

In Europe multiculturalism has become such a widely accepted and praised concept whereas patriotism is often related to racism. One of things that I found to be at the root of all this is World War II. After World War II people were and still are afraid of being related to Nazism, racism or xenophobia in any way and for that reason they would much rather be silent and not take part in the discussion than to be labeled any of these things. In the Netherlands the ethnic Dutch are almost afraid to express love for their country out of fear of being called a racist, xenophobe or being related to a party that has been non-existent for over 67 years now. The political left here is in full support of multiculturalism as far as anyone in this country can remember and they will gladly sign for the suicide of their own culture so that our society can be “enriched” by other cultures.

Unfortunately this beloved experiment has failed. In the Netherlands it hasn’t failed just a little bit, but it has entirely failed and it has resulted in something that cannot be described as anything but some form of apartheid. In theory this multicultural society would be one where the cultures would enrich each other but in practice you have a clash of civilizations due to cultural and religious differences. The result is not a society where many cultures live together, but a society where many cultures exist and each generally keep to their own. You have entire neighborhoods or parts of cities comprised of the same ethnic groups with the same culture and religion. Admittedly this is mainly caused by socioeconomic factors and generally only applies to first generation immigrants but nonetheless there is not an inch of possibility for integration (let alone assimilation) so long as things continue this way.  In the Netherlands we could easily call parts of our cities New Ankara or New Rabat and a simple walk down these streets would not convince you otherwise.

This problem will persist so long as we are joined by tens of thousands of immigrants who continue this cycle. Not to even speak of the damage done to next generations who have barely been given the opportunity to integrate due to these apartheid neighborhoods. Just a glance at the statistics by the CBS (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek), a governmental institution that gathers statistical information about the Netherlands, we can see that the ethnic population has barely increased and stayed at a steady 13 million for the last 11 years (2002-2013) whereas the non-ethnic population has increased from 2.96 million to 3.54 million. That is an increase of 578 thousand in just 11 years whereas the ethnic population only saw an increase of about 96 thousand. These are high figures for a country the size of the Netherlands, because keep in mind we only have a population of about 16.8 million. It really says enough about the failing immigration policies in the Netherlands.

The statistics by the CBS are found here:  
http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?VW=T&DM=SLNL&PA=37296ned&D1=25-51&D2=%28l-11%29-l&HD=120817-0901