The New Left is as Racist As … And Anti-White. By Mark Latham.
When applied to the question of race, identity politics only has one rule: white people are to blame for everything, while non-white people are free to do whatever they like. Newly-arrived migrants can cluster in a single suburb if they wish, not learn English if its suits them and as for a strong work ethic, that’s optional too. To criticise this pattern of urban settlement is to invite a social media scream of ‘racism’.
This is a world away from [the Australia that] Whitlam and Fraser intended. They believed in multiculturalism as a nationally unifying policy. The idea was for people to come from different parts of the world but then be integrated into the Australian mainstream. The new arrivals would bring with them their cultural practices but also embrace the Australian values of free speech, democracy, the fair go (aka meritocracy) and our uniquely laconic, larrikin lifestyle. In return, homegrown Aussies would pick and choose the bits of other cultures that we liked.
Whitlam and Fraser, in effect, had a vision for a blended society in which people from different ethnic backgrounds would mix together and get to know each other, speaking the national language of English. They wouldn’t live apart in ethnic enclaves, separated by geographic and language barriers. No street or suburb would have a dominant ethnic group or religion. …
Yet today, if anyone raises the problem of ethnic enclaves, of racial and religious separatism in our suburbs, they are denounced as racists. This is the new language of the Identity Left. …
When places like Lakemba in Sydney’s West have become 65 per cent Islamic, isn’t this a valid concern? If the original model for multiculturalism is being diminished, why shouldn’t people speak out, highlighting obvious problems? Twice last year I visited Fairfield, also in Western Sydney, and found that 90 per cent of people in the town centre could not speak English. As Bolt writes, ‘We are clustering into tribes that live apart from each other and often do not even speak the same language in the street.’
How can multiculturalism succeed, building trust and harmony between people if they can’t communicate with each other?
We live in strange times. It’s a measure of the Left’s extremism that when it comes to national cohesion, Bolt more accurately reflects the Whitlam/Fraser legacy than the feral mob abusing him. …
Bait and switch:
In the 1980s I listened to Margaret Whitlam, Gough’s wife, express her concern about the way in which their old suburb of Cabramatta had become an ethnic enclave. She wasn’t a white supremacist. …
The Left spends a lot of time lecturing people about the benefits of diversity. But apparently this doesn’t apply to places like Lakemba and Cabramatta, which have become near-monocultural.
Mark Latham was the last Australian leader of the older, more honorable left, that still cared about the working class instead of scorning them as deplorables. Notice how he now stands firmly opposed to the new left. Andrew Bolt was also of the old left.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
