The Militant Monoculture of Multiculturalism

If multiculturalism is compulsory, how is it meaningfully different from the monoculture it condemns?

Foreign Minister Penny Wong will reportedly use the annual Gyngell Lecture at the Lowy Institute in Sydney to warn that “monoculturalism” poses a threat to Australia’s national security, which is ironic, given that the argument would inadvertently expose the monocultural assumption underpinning multiculturalism itself.

If the government has to warn Australians against thinking in “monocultural” terms, then it’s necessarily asserting that there’s a particular way Australians ought to think about culture, identity, and Australian society. It is to claim there must be some common cultural framework that every Australian is expected to accept.

So, whether one is militantly in favour of multiculturalism or militantly opposed to it, both positions ultimately require some degree of cultural uniformity. The disagreement is only over what that monoculture should consist of, and where its boundaries should be drawn.

Wong’s position inadvertently exposes the weakness in the idea that multiculturalism simply means allowing a genuine diversity of cultures, beliefs, and opinions to coexist.

Clearly, it doesn’t.

At some point, multiculturalism requires a shared doctrine that must be defended, and potentially enforced for the sake of “national security.” As such, multiculturalism can tolerate diversity of cultures and opinion only so long as there is agreement on multiculturalism itself.

Once people are free to reject the doctrine of multiculturalism, the ideological consensus that holds the system together will begin to unravel. In that sense, multiculturalism ultimately depends on a degree of monocultural agreement about the legitimacy of multiculturalism.

But if multiculturalism is compulsory, how is it meaningfully different from the monoculture it condemns?

The supposed champion of diversity therefore finds herself defending a monoculture of her own without even knowing it.

The question is not whether Australia will have a monoculture. The question is which monoculture will be imposed on the nation, what it will hold together, and how much diversity of thought it will tolerate before deeming those thoughts a “threat to national security.”