What are your views on Multiculturalism in Ireland? - Threadbanned User List in OP

Happydays2020 wrote: »

Does Ireland work now? Did it work in the 1980s and 1990s when it was far less multicultural?

It was working pretty well in the 1990's. Indeed the very reason we got our first influx of extra EU migration was because it was working. There were remarkably few "refugees" and "asylum seekers" coming here in the doldrums of the 1980's or before the birthright loophole post the GFA. I actually knew a family of refugees who came here in the late 70's. They were an extreme rarity and it seems even rarer for being genuine. There were some folks from the Middle East coming here for educational reasons in the 80's but that was about it. Come the Celtic Tiger, come the opportunistic migrations. If we look farther afield the nations in the Far East that are well on the up are less multicultural than Ireland or Europe and more "nationalist" and less open to migration.

Well Ireland has been multicultural for centuries and was built on multiculturalism. Natives, Celts, Vikings, Normans. Some more is grand.

This is a current nonsense, though oft repeated in support of this politic it remains a nonsense.

"Celts" never came here in any numbers, the Vikings, Normans and English came here as invaders and conquerors that led to centuries of oppression for the native Irish, the echoes of which are still in play in the north of this divided island, even the fact we're having this discussion as Bearla, or have you blithely decided to forget your history lessons in school? That's the "multiculturalism" you want to elevate? And while there was some admixture with the Viking/Normans, the genetics of Ireland remained remarkably stable and "local" right down to today. The fact is that Ireland was and is one of the least "multicultural" native populations in Europe and no amount of current right on revisionism is going to change that fact.

The lack of censure when someone is calling another poster a racist is interesting alright and we have seen many many examples of it. Though to be fair to the mods and moderation, of the ban and cards handed out on this very thread, the vast majority of them have been handed out to posters on the pro multicultural side. If you added in the accusations of racism you'd have few of them left standing. And as ever, report such posts. I'd bet that they rarely are. I've seen this in forums I've modded in the past. Posters complain that [insert issue here] gets a free ride, yet I saw few if any reported posts.

Mike Murdock wrote: »

The last, desperate act of those that have lost the argument.

That's been by far the biggest eye opener for me on this thread; I expected a much more robust and cogent defence of the politic, but it's been the quite remarkable lack of argument points in favour of multiculturalism that surprised me. They have boiled down to exoticism for its own sake, charity and the Irish were immigrants too. Add in some inaccurate revisionism about how Ireland was always multicultural and that's pretty much it. What has also surprised is how little it appears the subject and politic has been thought about by those that hold it as such a positive. It's been just taken as an Accepted Truth it seems, with little or no enquiry into it. Taken on faith essentially.

Now I get why it might be for some. To take the as usual simplistic American "right/left" labels I have found those who are more left tend to be more kind, more about society and more open, but more naive, the more right tend to be less kind, more selfish, more about the individual, less open to the new, but more realistic. Both are obsessed with "race", the more exotic the better, just obsessed in a different way*. So the "left" are going to more drawn to the exotic and charity and diversity isn't it just great without really questioning it too deeply.




*On the Left of things if one were to look at NGO media, some government missive and latterly even mainstream advertising, one would swear that Ireland has a huge percentage of Black and dark skinned people living here and half of them, the men anyway, appear to be in multiracial couples. If one looks at the Right of things, immigrants and "New Irish" are equally seen as shorthand for Black and dark skinned people. Neither are close to an accurate reflection of the makeup of actual non native Irish people living here. There are around 20-25000 Black Africans living here, but around 400,000 White Europeans living here. Around 16 times the number. Hell, alone there are more Lithuanians than Africans in Ireland. The vast majority of the New Irish are White Europeans.