It seems the updated version of the “British Disease” has now (unsurprisingly) taken root in Canada.
In Montreal, an independent journalist was violently thrown to the ground and arrested by the police while documenting a pro-Hamas protest. To add insult to injury, the leading French language newspaper cheered the decision.
In the 1970s, the term “British Disease” referred to the economic stagnation and labor unrest in the contemporary UK.
Now I use the term in regard to an oppressive regime that intervenes in order to mediate among factions in an increasingly fractious society. This was predicted by Mark Steyn 20 years ago regarding the development of a separate and assertive Muslim identity within British society.
Steyn predicted that the Muslim minority, given its antipathy toward traditional British society and norms, would make claims that the British government would find hard to resist. In a series of escalating decisions, the government would buy off the Muslim minority in hopes of maintaining social peace. As has happened, and as those claims escalated in the form of riots and terrorism, the British government has become more oppressive in order to placate this dissident minority, to the point where people can now expect a knock on the door by the police, and time in jail, for a spicy Facebook post.
If you want an explanation of why the British establishment ignored decades of child r*ape in Rotherham and other cities that’s your answer. In order to buy “social peace”, lower-class white British girls were expendable in a way that men of Pakistani origin were not. Shame, really, but for the social good choices had to be made. Perhaps those girls should have just laid back and thought of England.
It looks like Canada skipped a few steps in its escalatory process and now just arrests people for documenting protests of protected classes. As a side note, aggressive pro-Hamas demonstrations have been tolerated in Montreal both at universities and within the city itself.
One of the big unanswered, even unasked, questions of the past thirty years about the “diversity” movement is how much diversity can co-exist within the same physical space. In other words, how diverse can you become as a society before you have no society at all?
It seems Canada is as desperate as Britain to find out.
Mary Harrington, at X: “One interesting feature of this phenomenon seems to be that the word “multicultural” is a misnomer. In fact what’s emerging across the West is a strikingly consistent transnational urban street monoculture
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, replying: “Yes of course the mixing of global cultures doesn’t create some incubator of diversity, instead it creates a lowest common denominator slop culture—and lowest does mean lowest”
My comment: “I’ve had a similar thought. ‘Diversity’ will mean that dog-loving Brits can not longer bring their dogs to public place, Frenchwomen who enjoy topless sunbathing will be forbidden from same, Americans who place high value of free speech will have to watch their words carefully…”
“In fact what’s emerging across the West is a strikingly consistent transnational urban street monoculture”
That describes international airports. Step off the plane, and it is hard to know if you are in Kazakhstan, Korea, or Dubai. Although it may be possible to guess that it is a Western airport, because it won’t be as clean.
There is “good” diversity — like having a Thai restaurant down the street. And then there is “bad” diversity — the kind experienced by vulnerable young English girls while their Government looks the other way, or by people attending markets in German cities. Why is it so hard for politicians & lawyers to understand that “diversity” does not mean tolerating rape & murder?