Multiculturalism Failing, The Rise of the European Far Right & The Tea Party

20 November 2010

Summary: The consciousness change which is driving Europeans toward the far right, and Americans toward the Tea Party is linked. The traditional moral values which underlie Western liberal democracy are in the process of being rejected, and the rejection is spreading upwards instinctively through society, not downwards from the elite. We are witnessing the beginning of a new anti-liberal era, whether we end up like the French Revolution or Fredrick The Great's Prussia depends on the extent to which society maintains elite leadership during this psychological transition.

Across Europe multiculturalism is a philosophy in retreat. Angela Merkel, German's Chancellor, and one of the most widely respected politicians in the world, recently said German's attempt to create a multicultural society had "utterly failed". In a number of European states far right parties are attracting nearly 30% of the popular vote, these rough populist parties mainly attract the blue collar workers who once voted for socialism. Mainstream political parties are struggling to keep up with the changing sentiment, and left wing parties are finding it especially hard to adjust. The French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently began expelling Romanian immigrants, despite Romania being a member of the EU. Although his actions probably violated EU laws, the EU turned a blind eye.

To a large extent, modern Western philosophers have come to regard multiculturalism and political correctness as integral components of the advanced values system commonly called "liberal democracy". In 1989 Francis Fukuyama's famous essay "The End Of History" described liberal democracy as not only the end point of man's ideological evolution towards justice, also the only values system capable of delivering long term economic prosperity. Today the American Constitution guarantees free enterprise, freedom of speech, racial equality and democracy. The European Court of Human Rights goes further, forbidding elected governments from overriding many "progressive" principles.

However, the European Court Of Human Rights has long been unpopular with UK voters, and Sarkozy's popular expulsion of Romanian immigrants shows that is also loosing the support of French voters. In the United States the American heartlands are still primarily white, and multiculturalism is not a major political issue. However, Sarah Palin, de facto leader of the Tea Party, rails against "political correctness". Palin claims the American left is infected with elitist European "Cultural Marxism".

So in both Europe and America the populists cry: "Stuff your advanced elite values, they don't work, let us be the judge of right and wrong!" Sarah Palin says "Shoot moose and crack Simon Cowell jokes. The wishy washy politically correct liberal consensus isn't just naive, it's evil Marxist poison." Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Nationalists, says "Kick the Muslims out. We don't want stone throwing privatives in Holland, our precious homeland is being destroyed by the naive decrees handed down to hapless tax payers from the ivory tower at the European Court Of Human Rights." 

The elite, however, reject this populist criticism of their values system. The elite claim the populists are in fact irrational, their proposed reforms are regressive, and would damage society. However, dismissing populist criticism too quickly ignores the strong intuitive sense of dissatisfaction now widespread within Western society. The public are violently rejecting incumbent politicians, and surveys show many Americans believe the US is heading toward economic disaster. Journalists these days talk about the end of Western dominance and American hegemony. Is it just about China's size, or is there something else that China is doing differently, something relevant to liberal democratic morality?

Those few elitists who admit the West is failing claim the problem is not flawed elite morality, rather populist immorality. Liberal democracy, they point out, is turning into populist democracy. This populism is poisoning democracy, pushing irrational and regressive policy decisions, undermining the economy. Yet if populist democracy was rolled back and Regan or Roosevelt ran America would the problem really be over, or does Western failure actually go much deeper? For example, considering great statesmen of the past, eg Otto von Bismarck, would their pragmatic judgements conflict with modern morality? Is modern morality flawed, is it doomed to real world failure? China moves 1.4 million people to build a hydroelectric plant, is that kind of old fashioned pragmatism vital to the environmental challenges ahead? Can the soft bellied politically correct and human rights obsessed Westerners compete with the hard headed Chinese? If liberal values are vital to success, why is China doing so well rejecting them? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the Western model which goes beyond regressive populism?

Liberal democratic values make up what is, in effect, an ultra-modern moral system, perhaps just 40 years old. For example, up until 1965, some American states didn't even allow blacks to vote. England's famous Prime Minister Winston Churchill hated Ghandi and gassed Kurdish rebels. In Ancient Greece, Alexander the Great was an idealist who promoted racial equality and cosmopolitanism, but modern politicians regard him as a veritable tyrant. Today people marvel at how illiberal our grandfathers were, which puts the dramatic change into perspective. If we look at China, we see that their society does not share this modern liberal morality at all. For example, China does not value individual rights to the same degree, it is far more utilitarian. Is China simply old fashioned, and only the West properly modern? Or has our post 1960s Western 'moral evolution' taken a dangerous wrong turn? Is it possible that liberal democratic values are not the most advanced values in history, that our grandfathers were not the evil monsters we now imagine them to be, that we have actually regressed, we have become naive ideologues?

If you look carefully, you can see that modern Western moral values are no more than logical extensions of Christian ethical principles, specifically an individual right to freedom and equality. Long ago 18th Century Enlightenment philosophers rejected morality and advocated utilitarianism, but today it is precisely the Western elite who advocate elevating morality over pragmatism, and the populists who are increasingly calling for greater realism. Yet general moral principles fall apart in specific cases. So the Western elite have become like the Ptolemaic scientists, constantly fighting against inconsistencies. Modern politicians debate absurd questions such as: do we have a human right to the internet, or a human right not to pay for someone else's internet. Newspapers run articles seeking to reconcile the immorality of torture with the reality of terrorism. The solution: torture, they proclaim, does not work, thus solving the dilemma. Have the West gone mad? Does it take a Sarah Palin or a Geert Wilders to point out that the emperor has no clothes?

Therefore the consciousness change which is driving Europeans toward the far right, and Americans toward the Tea Party is linked. The psychology or ideology of modern liberal democracy is in the process of being rejected as a result of real world failure. However, it is important to notice that neither the Tea Party nor the European Far Right articulate a coherent alternative philosophy, their rejection remains instinctive and pragmatic. Sarah Palin exemplifies this pragmatism, a female who champions down to earth maternal common sense, an outsider, an action hero not a philosopher. Although these movements are currently vilified by the elite, revolutionary consciousness change generally works it way upwards through society because the elite are less intellectually flexible. Anyone who rejects principles that go to the heart of modern Western morality will suffer indignation, hence the increasingly bitter political climate.

The flaw in these movements is their populism, because voters are also sensing a conflict between democracy and effective policymaking. Will voters disillusioned with liberal failure flock to these radical parties in increasing numbers, or will voters disillusioned with democratic failure recoil from these populist parties? Also, because these movements are purely reactionary, with no vision of what should replace liberal democratic morality, they are notoriously empty movements. Will the Far Right develop a new moral philosophy, will they embrace utilitarianism, or will they developed some sort of advanced new objective ethical philosophy such as that taught by Socrates?

Although the Tea Party and the European Right call themselves 'freedom' movements, that is because they are fighting against the constitutional moral constraints placed upon them by the elite, not because individual freedom is the true essence of their movements. To properly understand these political movements, we have to think in terms of changing human consciousness, and realize that these changes are in their infancy. The far right movement actually has nothing to do with individual freedoms, rather the opposite - the far right is about the rejection of liberal freedom and liberal equality. Critics will say I have it all backwards, that the Tea Party is about freedom not challenging liberal morality. Yet, if one looks very carefully at this issue, it is clear that the pragmatic rejection of the moral consensus is the vital dynamic of the far right even in America.

Rejection of the moral consensus was also the vital dynamic in Weimar Germany. Hitler did not come out of economic decline itself, rather the wholesale rejection of prevailing ideology - the sociological equivalent of nervous breakdown. Economic decline can trigger an ideological crisis, but change itself comes out of the individuals intellectual realization, unconscious or conscious, that his ideological assumptions are flawed. The more deep seated the ideology, the more stubbornly an individual clings to it, and the more extreme the external crisis which provokes reform. Of course, once the ideology finally cracks, the individual often overcompensates in the opposite direction, becoming naive. Ideological change fills the individual with idealistic energy, when this excitement drains away the ego begins returning. The naive grow up, the angry cool, the saintly become sinners again.

In Plato's Laws he says: The first rule of policymaking is to stay focused on collective good, never individual good, and societies which forget this principle will perish. The second rule is that wisdom is supreme, all laws and moral principles are dogmatic approximations which do suit all people at all times, wisdom must take into account the changing nature of both sociological personality and circumstances. Today, the wilful disregard of these vital philosophical principles is the source of Western decline. Western moralists have created a dogmatic system which elevates individual liberty & equality over collective good. Out of this lunacy political correctness and multiculturalism, the two most obvious war cries of the populists, flow. Lee Kuan Yew, the Philosopher King founder of Singapore, describes the Western world as in a state of intellectual regression driven by the liberal assumption that man is worthy and human personality is irrelevant to policymakers. Lee Kuan Yew says the art of good government is to sense human personality and constantly strive to improve human society.

Because the Western psychological disease is individualism, the cure is collectivism, and the two conventional political philosophies which embody that are socialism (scientific idealism) and cultural conservatism (moral idealism). With the failure of socialism, it is natural that populists in Europe and the US head toward nationalistic social-conservatism. From the big picture long term viewpoint, what we are really talking about is a move from the subjective to objective, from the individual to the collective - the Chinafication of the Western World. The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution, 1930s Fascism etc all toyed with this massive transition, but it looks as if the big moment is, at last, finally close at hand. Drink does not take over a man's life at a constant pace, it begins slowly, and accelerates. In the same way individualism has accelerated, we have been twitching for hundreds of years, now full blown neurosis is finally breaking out.

Beyond socialism and nationalism there is a more sophisticated vision, what I call the New Eastern Philosophy. This is philosophical objective idealism, it's a step above both mathematical and inspirational thinking. One day this vision will spread across the West, and the populist Tea Party and Far Right will be replaced by an elitist movement which rejects both democracy, liberal morality and individualism. In other words, the New Eastern Philosophy is the missing intellectual vision which explains the instinctive policy choices currently being made by the populist right. This vision goes beyond where China is today, the vision is deeply spiritual, it would never adopt atheism as the official government philosophy as the modern Chinese have done. Nor would it talk about inequality and freedom as a moral issues, which for all their idealism the modern Chinese leadership still do. Singapore & China are the most enviable examples of modern political philosophy, but they are still way short of Socrates or Confucian levels of idealism. Remember, Socrates said the only purpose of human life is to die better than one is born!

READER FEEDBACK:

I am wrong about France illegally kicking out the Romanians. France exempted the Romanians from the usual EU freedom of moment rules when they joined the EU. The attempt by some EU politicians to brand Sarkosy's expulsion of the Romanians illegal was absurd, it's not that the EU turned a blind eye, it's that they didn't have a leg to stand on. I blame the FT for my mistake, I got that idea from them, and unlike me they are supposed to have checked all their facts. :-)