John Howard says he ‘always had trouble’ with the concept of multiculturalism
John Howard says he ‘always had trouble’ with the concept of multiculturalism
Former Australian prime minister tells right-wing conference that immigrants should ‘adopt the values and practices’ of their new country
No shit.
Crusty old white man expects others to change but not himself.
The irony is that it is the waves of migration of people from different backgrounds and cultures that has made Australia the place it is today.
No one but Howard looks back on the boring, white bread, meat and three boiled veg culture that was Aus in the 1950s with any sort of nostalgia.
I mean unfortunately there are those that do but god damned.
When my mum and her lot got off the boat from Poland they were talked down to, isolated, and told to fit in and shut up.
My mum never taught us the language because she wanted us to fit in and not have the awkward time at school she had.
Now you can hear multiple languages, see a blend of architectural styles, enjoy all sorts of festivals/art/cusine, you can see other perspectives, religions, philosophies.
It's far from perfect, it's not like we're post racism or anything but we've come so far. What pride I have in our country comes from how it has grown from its dubious origins (in the modern nation state sense), the beautiful shit we create when we mix our differences together, and how far we might yet still go.
Doesnt sound as bad when the quote has context:
Multiculturalism is a concept that I’ve always had trouble with. I take the view that if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country, And in return they’re entitled to have the host citizenry respect their culture without trying to create some kind of federation of tribes and culture – you get into terrible trouble with that.”
I think one of the problems with multiculturalism is we try too hard to institutionalise differences, rather than celebrate what we have in [common].
The man's a deeply committed white supremacist and that's the context of him "having trouble" with multiculturalism.
He jailed refugees in the desert for years, then in concentration camps on tiny islands. During his tenure an "Australian style immigration system" was explicitly being called for by neo-nazis and far right groups across Europe.
He thinks there should be fewer asian australians in the interest of "social cohesion".
He hates aboriginal people, denied that they suffered a genocide and dissolved the only government body that represented aboriginal Australians.
John Howard's whole appeal was being the goofy-looking face of brutalizing anyone not white.
He also suspended the racial discrimination act to implement the NT intervention which saw the army called in to police Aboriginal communities. This also saw the implementation of income quarantining measures aimed specifically at Indigenous Australians, which would serve as the foundation for cashless welfare card policies moving forward.
Calling him a deeply committed white supremacist might be a little of an exaggeration.
If he was a committed white supremacist then the goal with refugees and immigrants would be don't let em in/kill them all, however I've made a handy little plot of all Permanent additions over his entire prime ministerial carrier.
This is by every country blue one at the top is the total doesn't look like white supremacy to me (the 2 with hard drop-offs 2001-2002 are both a result of the kiwis). 1Don't know what he said about Asians but I've heard one in three Chinese at university is a spy either by choice or coercion.
The genocide debate I believe was because he doesn't see the stolen generation as genocide its a definition issue and by that logic and the definition of a genocide below it doesn't technically count (sounds like a greasy politician weaseling his way out of a difficult situation by technicality). 2
genocide /jĕn′ə-sīd″/ noun
The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. The systematic killing of a racial or cultural group. "the Nazi genocide of Jews left few in Germany or Poland after World War II" Similar: race murder racial extermination The systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status, or other particularity.However the united nations includes this line: forcibly transferring children out of the group. So long answer is it depends on what definition your using.
By the definition he is technically correct.
None of this is in any way defending him or even saying that he isn't a white supremacist just though that your representation or more likely the headlines from what the guardian said his legacy was is a little misleading.
Also who are you to say that his beliefs haven't changed since when he was in office I would like to think that all people are developing and improving their own ideas throughout the entirety of their lives.
Local man yells on tram
Not too sure but did the Europeans adopt aboriginal values and practices when they first emigrated to Australia about 200 years ago?
See the problem I have with believing he's anything but a disingenuous racist shit is this: I've seen no indications he thinks it's a great tragedy we're not practicing indigenous cultures instead of British descendent ones.
Yup, yup.
I've emaigrated and worked alongside immigrants, and one of the most revealing things that keep happening is for English-speaking migrants immediately going from making this exact point to refusing to learn the local language.
It's not one or two, I've had that exact conversation multiple times.
"Yeah, we have too many muslim migrants now, and the reason that bothers me is they refuse to integrate, you know? I'm not against migrants, but they should adopt the local customs."
"Dude, you've been here for three years and you only ever speak English to people".
blank stare
What's the difference between "respect their culture" and "Federation of tribes and culture". Either you take the view that "respect their culture" means allowing people to retain and freely exercise their culture in public, e.g. speaking their language and celebrating their cultural events publicly, in which case it's really indistinguishable to a federation of cultures. The alternative view is, people can only speak English and practice English cultural things in public, in which case is that really "respecting their culture"?
I suspect Howard is dog-whistling the latter, because Australia is doing the former, and it certainly doesn't sound like he's supportive of that, otherwise why would be have so much trouble with it?
Language has nothing to do with it except that its extraordinarily useful to have everyone speak the same language the easiest way to achieve this would be to choose the language that the largest number of people speak so we will end up with English huh what a surprise.
As for difference in “respect their culture” and “Federation of tribes and culture” is simply that federation of tribes and cultures is needlessly putting people in boxes (makes it easier to win a vote by appealing to extremist boxes we witnessed this with trump) but other than that all its doing is dividing people based on ethnicity/religion/race doesn't sound very equality-like to me. Maybe the solution is we let people have there federation of tribes and cultures and they are all equal but separate. Now where have I heard that one before.
Isn't this just a more polite way of saying we ought to have one homogeneous culture though?
if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country
"values and practices" is subjective, but most people using this talking point really mean that migrants should behave, sound, and think the same way they do, except maybe possessing an innate ability to make a ripper fried rice.
Accepting this type of statement allows migrants to be accused of forming ghettos, having poor English, basically... just being different.
Multiculturalism (to me) is not about conforming to a common culture, rather we have a culture of embracing other cultures provided that they are not intolerant nor harmful. So basically, a migrant can behave as they wish subject to those provisos.
European here. Your definition of multiculturalism is precisely why integration has been difficult for many of our immigrants.
A society that has no requirements on its new citizens, welcoming them all in an enlightened spirit of tolerance, is ultimately self defeating. New arrivals have no reason to assimilate, since they get everything they need anyway, and instead they live just like they used to. This forms subcultures and does not foster allegiance to overall society.
At the same time, the lack of cultural assimilation and applicable education denies them opportunities to economically advance themselves, reinforcing the subculture effect and alienating the native population.
Now I’m not saying everyone must live in monoculture with the exact same set of beliefs and values, but they must at least value certain common rules, more than their religion or cultural upbringing. Otherwise Society fractures.
I take the view that if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country
This implies that a country is a country with a never changing set of values, and not something that has a set of values because of all the changes that led to the current set of values. He is basically doing the thing where the current state of something is held up as the way it has always been, and assumes that there is no reason to ever change.
Yeah, celebrating differences is great. That doesn't mean that those differences should never change because they happened to exist at one point in time, and even them they never universally apply to everyone in the area/group, they mostly are what those in power say they are.
We don't choose countries based what they believe we choose countries based on how they choose to believe. So simply adopt those beliefs of what being Australian means and with your ballot steer this nation to greatness.
This made me realise that the article is not about the quote or any sociology; it’s about politics and John Howard. I dislike articles like this just like the ones about Elon Musk. Political nonsense to get people riled up.
Think there's a greater relevance here. He's speaking to a newly formed political think tank that current members of our parliament are actively engaged with. It speaks to the underlying values that one of our major political parties is actively leaning into.
65000 years of indigenous Australians: “This dude said what?!”
Yeah that’s the sort of thing you shouldn’t be able to say in English with a straight face
"Strange... that sounds like the kind of thing a racist would say."
Remember the good old days, when, straight off the boat, Giovanni would change his name to John, and schoolboys would be caned for playing soccer rather than rugby or Aussie Rules? Howard does.
Remember the good old days, when, straight off the boat, asylum seekers drowned? Howard does.
Remember the good old days when Australia's closest thing to pizza was a quiche with tomato sauce on top.
My Nono and his family got straight off the boat and were interned in Darwin on suspicion of being commies. Ahh the good old days.
Bigots generally do.
6Howard always implied a distinction between Asian countries and Australia's Asian communities. As Brett (Citation2003: 151) reminds us, Asian-Australians were consistently presented as individuals instead of members of cultural groups. As such, and by virtue of the fact that they had brought in values like family, hard work and entrepreneurial flair – not coincidentally the restricted pool of ‘Asian values’ that overlapped with Howard's cultural outlook – ‘Australians of Asian descent’ could aspire to be ‘as honoured citizens as any other section of the Australian community’ (Howard Citation1996).This circumstance allowed the ‘integration’ of Asians as individuals maintaining the separateness from Asian countries from the identitarian point of view.
8In a speech to the Heritage Foundation – often overlooked supposedly because it was given three years into his ‘retirement’ – Howard (Citation2010: 5–6) stated that ‘the values that bind the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand … are deeper and more abiding … than the bonds between any other countries’ and that ‘one of the errors that some sections of the English-speaking world have made in the past few decades has been to confuse multiracialism and multiculturalism’, to conclude that ‘the English-speaking nations have made an enormous contribution … in excess of any other grouping of countries – to the defence of liberty in the last two hundred years’. Howard thus appropriated the whole intellectual body underlying the Anglospherist perspective in its entirety.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10361146.2014.965658
Emphasizing “shared values” in international relations and emphasizing the closeness of “values” with similarly anglo-sphere nations.
The “shared values” rhetoric is a very thin wrapper hiding outright white supremacism.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
John Howard has declared he “always had trouble” with the concept of multiculturalism, because immigrants should be expected to “adopt the values and practices” of the country they move to.
The former Liberal prime minister made the comments at the inaugural conference of new right-wing political forum the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) on Wednesday in London.
Critics including the former Labor prime minister Paul Keating have accused Howard and other reactionary conservatives of “outrageously and wilfully misinterpreting” the referendum result in an attempt to return to “the great assimilation project”.
When Pauline Hanson, a former Liberal, was elected to the lower house and formed the reactionary One Nation party, Howard responded by adopting some of her anti-Asian rhetoric including his suggestion that Asian migration should be “slowed down a little, so the capacity of the community to absorb [was] greater”.
The voice was one limb of the Uluru statement from the heart, which also calls for truth-telling and treaty-making, which is founded on the fact sovereignty of Indigenous nations has never been ceded.
Addressing the audience assembled by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and backed by a pro-Brexit hedge fund billionaire and a Dubai-based investment group, Anderson decried the influence of “cultural elites”.
The original article contains 914 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 78%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I wish the media would just stop letting this has-been steal oxygen. There are other people with way more relevant opinions.
The media in this country has so much to answer for in terms of the people they give oxygen to.
Conservative of politics, but really rather radical of eyebrow.
Try an interesting little exercise some day. Punch Howard' and 'multiculturalism' into the Hansard database. You will find he has never mentioned the word.
When you punch in 'Howard' and 'multicultural' you do get it nine times but each and every time he is referring to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
(From when Albo was cosplaying as a leftie)
Why do we still care what this man thinks
When mommy and daddy love each other very much, sometimes they’re from different cultures…