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.
65000 years of indigenous Australians: “This dude said what?!”
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.
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). 1
Don’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.
a handy little plot of all Permanent additions over his entire prime ministerial carrier
This man’s primary religion was keeping getting re-elected at all costs. Immigration kept the economy going well, so he was for it. Just didn’t talk about it.
Don’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.
[citation required]
Howard dying will be a great day.
Not too sure but did the Europeans adopt aboriginal values and practices when they first emigrated to Australia about 200 years ago?
Name a single culture that adopted the values and pracrices of a nation they defeated in warfare. Not saying that i support any of it just sinply that thats how history has always been and going back in an attempt to rewrite history only raises the queation of how far back do we go?
Name a single culture that adopted the values and pracrices of a nation they defeated in warfare.
Alexander the Great after his defeat of the Persian empire.
My point is that his logic is paper fucking thin.
immigrants should be expected to “adopt the values and practices” of the country they move to.
If you truly held that to heart then you’d seek to better align your policies to the preexisting cultures and people’s of the land you’ve settled in. It’s mostly just a dog whistle.
Thats a hard question, the way you’ve posed it, because ‘culture’ doesn’t really indicate a clean homogenous group that rules another, and there’ll be few examples because most leaders of nations could be said to be quite disconnected from the winning ruled people’s culture anyway, and the kings or emperors were the conquerers really, not the people. But i’ll have a go at providing a cleaner example for the sake of the challenge.
The ‘Mongols’ Kitan or Liao, when they defeated ‘China’, they knew they wouldn’t be able to hold their rule over the coastal populations without having a seat of power. So outwardly they adopted the practices of the Chinese. This is apparently why the Forbidden City was initially Forbidden. Because the mongols used that area, among others, to continue to live privately in tents like they’d always lived.
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/perspective/the-forbidden-city.aspx
Another less clean example would be the 1066 Norman takeover of Britain. The Normans undoubtedly left their mark, but they never actually erradicated the anglo-saxons culture. And in doing so the two cultures mixed. You can see artifacts of this in the etymology of english words, for instance the difference between ‘beef and cow’ i think is a good example.
Name a single culture that adopted the values and pracrices of a nation they defeated in warfare.
This is fairly common throughout history. The Mongols did it to such an extent that the Chinese considered them Chinese when they ruled China. It also happened a lot when various empires conquered Egypt or when Alexander conquered the Persians. It happens more often than not.
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.
Forcing other people who have a shared language to not speak that language to each other sounds more divisive than allowing people to speak to each other in whatever they want to.
But honestly why would you care? Does it bother you that you’re unable to eavesdrop on a conversation you have no part in? If they want to speak to you, then they’ll speak English.
Also I didn’t notice anywhere in my post that suggested people shouldn’t learn to speak English. You put that up as a strawman argument.
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 disagree. A society is more than culture. It’s politics, law and economics, which are the pieces that actually run a society. I would never suggest migrants should ever import politics, economics and laws from their home country.
Culture and religion however, are personal things. There’s no need to force those on anyone. If a society feels the need to do this, it has a tolerance problem and they ought to ask themselves, why does someone praying to a different god, speaking a different language or celebrating a foreign event threaten you?
I’ve never been to Europe, and I’m not familiar with the difficulties you’re having there.
I will say though, you and I have different ideas about the way multiculturalism and immigration ought to work.
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.
This sounds a little creepy TBH. What do you mean “since they get everything they need anyway” ? Should the things they need be measured out according to some kind of social credit?
Why is assimilation and integration so important?
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I feel there is a lot of trying to “fix” differences rather than expanding commonality. As you said ultimately every culture needs some semblance of a common goal to work towards together. I mean this is why I think citizenship should be a vote based system its easy to study for a test it takes real integration to get a vote from a citizen (especially if u only give each citizen n votes per time period)
I take the view that if people want to emigrate to a country, then they adopt the values and practices of that country,
[First Nations people have entered the chat]
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.
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.
Bigots generally do.
