March 3, 2007
Melanie Philips, a journalist at the British Daily Mail and author of the book Londonistan, was recently in Australia to give the Quadrant lecture at a Quadrant dinner in Sydney, Australia, 1 March 2007. Philips argues that London is a Londonistan in that "mass immigration, multiculturalism and the onslaught mounted by secular nihilists against the country's Judeo-Christian values" are destroying British nationhood. The greatest danger to the west lies in the way it has been attacked and undermined from within, a process that is continuing and which threatens to hand liberal democracy over to its Islamic enemies who are laying siege to it from without.
She claims that ordinary folk in Britain and Australia feel that they are betrayed and let down by the media and intellectual and political class who try to shut down this debate. Multiculturalism is to blame for this state of affairs---multiculturalism has failed; even worse, it can be blamed for the London bombings. Since strong multicultural identities are intrinsically divisive, reactionary or “fifth columns” , so multiculturalism needs to be replaced with integration (as assimilation). Conservatives hold that cultural separatism and self-segregation of Muslim migrants represented a challenge to Britishness and Australianness and that a “politically-correct” multiculturalism had fostered fragmentation rather than integration.
This is how the crowd at Quadrant understand the issue.
Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of Australian self-confidence and national identity and its resulting paralysis by multiculturalism and appeasement. The result is an ugly climate in Australia of irrationality and defeatism, which now threatens to undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defence of the free world.
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