Ingrid Carlqvist and the morality of ethnic nationalism

We Westerners, uniquely I think, are especially prone to establishing morally-based ingroups. In his book, The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt, whose work on academic societies as “tribal moral communities” of the multicultural left, links the tendency to form moral ingroups to a hunter-gatherer past, when those who transgressed the moral standards of the group were shunned and ostracized. (I agree; see here, Discussion section).

It’s interesting that all the utopias promised by the various intellectual and political movements discussed in The Culture of Critique involved moral indictments of the West, thus in effect attempting (and succeeding) to create moral communities. In the end, these moral communities created disastrous nightmares, but much of their power derived from their ability to create moral communities.

For example, the Freudian sexual utopia that became mainstream in the 1960s promised to rid the world of neurosis and the evils of anti-Semitism, but ultimately encouraged callousness in sexual relationships, the de-emphasis on love and affection, and resulted in declines in all of the markers of family stability and functioning (e.g., dramatic increases in teenage unwed mothers). The Political radicalism that promised to rid the world of class divisions resulted in the deaths of tens of millions in the USSR and elsewhere. And now we have the multicultural utopia that has promised that all peoples and cultures will live in peace and harmony together (within Western and only Western societies).

It’s not hard to find examples of dystopic nmulticulturalism.  Indeed, readers of TOO are well-acquainted with the costs of multiculturalism. But I thought that Ingrid Carlqvist’s speech “I want my country back” is a particularly great description of a Western country that has become a moral ingroup enforcing multiculturalism, while at the same time illustrating the predictably dystopic, immoral effects of  multiculturalism.

In Sweden there is enforced silence on any criticism of multiculturalism in the above-ground media. Discussing the cancellation of a talk because it was sponsored by a politically incorrect newspaper, she comments, “That’s the way it works in the New Sweden, the country I call Absurdistan. The country of silence.” Violating the silence is met with moral outrage intended to produce shunning and ostracism:

The situation in Sweden is far worse than in Denmark. In Sweden NOBODY talks about immigration problems, the death of the multiculti project or the islamisation/arabisation of Europe. If you do, you will immediately be called a racist, an Islamophobe or a Nazi. That is what I have been called since I founded the Free Press Society in Sweden. My name has been dragged through the dirt in big newspapers like Sydsvenskan, Svenska Dagbladet and even my own union paper, The Journalist.

While criticizing multiculturalism in Sweden results in moral ostracism, the consequences of multiculturalism to the Swedes are a moral disaster:

In this New Sweden we have more reported rapes than any other country in the European Union, according to a study by professor Liz Kelly from England. More than 5 000 rapes or attempted rapes were reported in 2008 (last year it was more than 6 000). In 2010 another study reported that just one country in the world has more rapes than Sweden, and that is Lesotho in South Africa. For every 100 000 inhabitants Lesotho has 92 reported rapes, Sweden has 53, The United States 29, Norway 20 and Denmark 7.

In 1990 the authorities counted to 3 exclusion areas in Sweden, suburbs where mostly immigrants live, where very few have a job to go to, almost all of them live by welfare and the children don’t pass their exams. In 2002 they counted to 128 exclusion areas. In 2006 we had 156 and then they stopped counting. In some cities, like Malmo where I live, a third of all inhabitants live in an exclusion area.

We Westerners who wish to battle the current regime will not be successful unless we  believe that our cause is moral. And it is. The consequences to Sweden of this onslaught are horrifying and must be seen in moral terms—as warranting moral outrage. (See also “The morality of Majority Rights and Interests.”) We must create our own moral ingroups and appeal to others in moral terms. And we should shame those who continue to carry on in silence, watching the destruction of their people and their culture and just going along with it.