The Avoidable Stupidity Of Multiculturalism

We’ve reached the limits of multiculturalism’s logical absurdities, threatening to blow right past them.

Hi! I’m Zohran Mamdani! Ready for a lesson in cultural differences, bigots?

Today’s essay is a short one, published primarily to shorten a “Max’s Musings” entry that was threatening to run long. Let’s get right into it.

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani landed in hot water recently after attempting to weaponize sympathy for himself and his religion:

Here’s the problem:

The “aunt” who Zohran Mamdani said was too afraid to wear her hijab on the subways after 9/11 is actually his dad’s cousin.

The socialist mayoral front-runner made the revelation during a press conference Monday after critics seized on his story, sharing photos on social media of a woman they identified as his aunt, who was pictured without a hijab.

“I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago,” Mamdani told reporters about the relative, whom he said he affectionately called his aunt.

And:

Internet sleuths later claimed that a public health consultant, Masuma Mamdani, was the Democratic nominee’s only aunt, posting photos of her in which she appeared without a hijab and noting that she lived in Tanzania on 9/11.

Asked about the posts on Monday, Mamdani was prompted to do some damage control and clarify he wasn’t referring to a biological aunt.

Typically, a candidate who constantly has to clarify and explain himself usually doesn’t win elections. However, I doubt this incident will hurt Mamdani. If anything, this helps him in a multicultural city like New York and people honestly believe Islamophobia is rampant. If these sorts of appeals didn’t work, they probably wouldn’t use them.

For the record, I don’t think Mamdani lied on this specific point, even as he has a long track record of dishonesty. I think he truly believes this cousin of his father was an aunt. There’s a difference between lying and honestly believing something that isn’t true, and I think, in this case, it’s more the latter for Mamdani.

There’s also a cultural component. Those who rushed to Mamdani’s defense pointed out that in other cultures, it’s normal to call an older relative not your parents or grandparents “aunt” or “uncle.” This is certainly true, though I’d also say it’s not as common a practice as suggested. I’ve known people from all over the globe and every time they referred to an aunt or uncle, it was meant literally.

One of the funniest - along with most annoying - aspects of this affair was how leftists pretended like we were supposed to know Mamdani wasn’t referring to his literal aunt. It was even more annoying when it was White liberals saying so, when we all know everyone initially thought Mamdani was referring to a literal aunt, and among Whites or other people of European descent, referring to your dad’s cousin as aunt or uncle isn’t a common practice. The level of pathological lying is just incredible with these people. Whatever it takes to remain compliant with the ideology!

X account “mattio” couldn’t have said it better:

this is 100% going to be one of those leftist plausible deniability things where “aunt” means one of his mom’s friends or something and then leftists get to go “stupid white people, obviously he wasn’t referring to his actual aunt. muslims use auntie as a term of endearment for a family friend.”

All nonsense aside, the reason why this affair matters is what it reveals about multiculturalism’s absurdities. Someone named “Asad” said:

The (mostly white) press corp is not accustomed to how South Asians and other peoples of Asia (as well as Africa and Latin America) relate to extended relatives, so they’re going to spend an absurd amount of time litigating the particulars due to their own cultural illiteracy.

So we have a problem in that White people don’t engage in the practice, after all. The bigger problem is that, apparently, Americans are supposed to be aware of the cultural norms and nuances of every single ethnic group in the world. If this is another one of multiculturalism’s obligations, it’s one Americans never asked for, not to mention it’s an absurdly unrealistic demand.

Even in a multicultural society, there must still be a common language, a common way of speaking so we can all understand what we’re saying. Not only that, having a common language and way of speaking makes it easier to relate with one another. Nothing about this is “bigotry” or “phobia.” A society full of people who cannot understand one another is a dysfunctional society. I don’t understand how liberals think you can have a functional society without its people being able to communicate coherently.

Even in America or Canada, it’s very difficult to get by in life without speaking English. Mamdani-multiculturalism makes things even more complicated, because now we’re forced to constantly figure out what the hell someone is saying, since even a term as fundamental as “aunt” means something entirely different halfway around the world, and it’s our duty as Americans to know exactly what someone halfway around the world means when they say something. By the way, no such demands are placed on those people when they come to our country.

Here’s a lecture from “Amit Singh Bagga”:

In South Asia, home to *nearly 2 billion people,* your parents’ cousins are your aunts and uncles.

Your first cousins are your sisters and brothers.

Your cousin’s kids are your nieces and nephews.

Yes, that is how our societies work.

Wait - is Mamdani running for mayor of Mumbai or New York City? This is how stupid this whole thing is. We’ve reached the limits of multiculturalism’s logical absurdities, threatening to blow right past them. It’s just never good enough, is it? America is very generous to the world and let’s literally anyone and everyone come here and prosper. Now, America must literally adopt cultural practices from every corner of the globe, otherwise, it’s a horrible country and people are dying because we misunderstood what they meant when they said “aunt.”

Equally as bad is what Mamdani did in playing the “Islamophobia” card. As I said before, he used it because it works. But that doesn’t make it right. Almost 3,000 people died on 9/11. Though it’s true that hate crimes against Muslims did increase in the aftermath, it was short-lived, more Muslims ended up coming to America in the years following 9/11, and the country as a whole took great strides to ensure Muslims felt more included in the country. The fact Mamdani is even a leading candidate for NYC mayor proves him entirely wrong about the potency of Islamophobia in America.

At the risk of sounding callous, you can’t have an Islamist terrorist attack kill almost 3,000 people on a single day and not expect some kind of backlash. Humans are emotional beings and respond emotionally to traumatic events. People often do irrational things when emotional. Is it even that irrational, though?

Even before 9/11, Muslims have always been a distinct, somewhat-Balkanized group in America because of their cultural distance. When you have a population that doesn’t assimilate quite as well as other groups, that group will always be eyed with greater suspicion than other groups. It might not seem fair, but this is scientific fact. China, for example, is America’s global rival, yet Chinese in America don’t receive anywhere near the scrutiny Muslims do. Why is that, do you think?

Back in Mamdani’s homeland of India, following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, there was concern over backlash against Muslims. India is a country with strong anti-Muslim sentiment despite 14 percent of the population being of the faith, something you’d think Mamdani would be concerned with. This isn’t to say Islamophobia is okay, but it’s to say that anyone who’s asking the public to completely disassociate Islam from something like 9/11 is asking for the impossible. If someone carries out a religiously-motivated attack, both the religion along with its adherents will be judged. How could they not?

I’m personally tired of these attempts at weaponizing sympathy, but Americans clearly cannot get enough of it. I’d like to think someone like Mamdani would be rejected outright for trying to guilt people into voting for him, even if you otherwise share his political views. But again, he does it because it works and half of America believe the worst things imaginable about their own country. How patriotic of them.

To come full circle, I’m in no position to say Mamdani was lying when he claims he was referring to his father’s cousin when he spoke of his aunt. At the same time, good politicians make the effort to speak with clarity and not cause misunderstandings. Maybe Mamdani is still just an amateur. Or maybe he’s the culturally insensitive one, expecting everyone to understand his own norms while disregarding that of others? Multiculturalism means everyone gets to have their own culture, to have it recognized and respected, right?

Maybe his “aunt” did in fact fear wearing the hijab after 9/11. And yet, does he really expect Americans to think she and all the other Muslims were the real victims of that terrible day? That’s why bothers me most about what he said. Fear of not wearing religious garb in no way the same level of tragedy as loss of life. Even in America, there are people who fear displaying Christian religious garb out of concern for public ridicule. This, in a country with freedom of religion. Nobody feels sorry for them. Why feel so sorry for a Muslim woman who didn’t feel as though she could wear her hijab?

Maybe 9/11 really was a long time ago. Maybe the horrors of the day really have faded from memory. Still, it doesn’t make anything Mamdani said worthy of our sympathy. Americans aren’t the bad guys here, yet his entire political platform revolves around the belief Americans can do no right by people like him. He represents a whole new class of politician whose politics are defined entirely by grievance towards the country they claim as their own - Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, now Mamdani. It’s hard to say how popular they are, but the more America diversifies and the more radical politics become, we’ll have to consider the fact someone like them could rise to the level of national leadership.

Though I respect all religions, I can’t help but notice the fragility of Muslims, particularly those residing in the West. They’re always the victims, they’re always trying to draw as much attention onto themselves as possible. The Japanese, they’re not. Our government and society happily indulges them to the point they claim this country as their own, themselves as the real Americans. I’m not exaggerating either - Muslims, according a mainstream leftist commentator, built America.

As I near the end of this entry, I am introduced to a Substack essay written by

Zineb Riboua

, explaining the ideology of Third-Worldism, which is what she argues is the true political belief system of politicians like Mamdani. I won’t be able to analyze it here, but after skimming it, I think it’s worth sharing her concluding remarks.

She says:

Conservatives often fail to grasp these shifts, and Anglo-Americans even more so. They treat Third-Worldism as a policy platform when it operates as a moral creed. Its power lies not in practical solutions but in its claim to moral purity and its ability to turn resentment into virtue. Universities have nurtured this sensibility for decades, replacing historical complexity with ideological certainty and teaching generations to interpret politics through the binary of victim and oppressor. Mamdani’s rise is the political outcome of that education.

What did Shahib Bolsen say the American Dream was? To become the oppressor. That’s the dream of Third-Worldism as well, but in addition to claiming moral purity and turning resentment into virtue to justify themselves becoming oppressors, Mamdani-ism, as I’ll call it, doesn’t seek to overturn the existing order, not entirely. They seek to gain as much as they can from it, while simultaneously undermining it. If/when it finally does fail, they can either claim even more power, radically transform things, or they’ll wash their hands of it and go someplace else where they can strive to become oppressors once more.

This is what passes for being American, according to our betters. I want no part of it. I just don’t know how to stop it without violence.

Ultimately, this is all a critique of multiculturalism. It’s the root cause of our problems. I’m not so rigid to say multiculturalism has no value whatsoever. We live in a multicultural world, after all, and our society needs to understand how to manage relations between different groups. And that’s the contradiction which lies at the heart of Western-style multiculturalism: we’re supposed to find unity despite not understanding one another, despite having different cultural norms, privileging different values, or harboring grievances towards other groups. Multiculturalism expects us to understand, when Mamdani refers to his aunt, he might be referring to someone else entirely. This isn’t a problem you see in societies without Western-style multiculturalism. Again, it’s all really stupid to think you can find unity when clearly, we’re not even speaking the same language.

Do liberals think unity grows on trees? I think they confuse the fact they manage to share planes, trains, and automobiles with people of other cultures without issue with unity. But that’s not all that difficult. Just be a halfway pleasant person and you can manage relations with anyone. Unity is something totally different. Unity means that person stands next to you, fights with and for you, seeing you not as a competitor, but as a compatriot. Unity is how you overcome crisis, how you win wars, how you avoid internal conflict. The more differences we share, the harder it is to achieve unity. The more time you spend trying to avoid inter-group conflict, the less time you have for unity. It’s common sense.

Take, for example, this woman. I have to warn you, listening to her speak is a deeply unpleasant experience:

Now imagine that the elites in charge expect you to consider this woman to be as much your countryman as your country’s founders were, that this is someone you should link arms with in ironclad unity in the face of crisis. Wait - you don’t need to imagine it, because that’s exactly what they demand of us today in the West. How ridiculous a proposition is this?

This immigrant and her attitude are precisely what’s driving the Third-Worldist movement and a big part of the coalition political figures like Mamdani are building. Whatever unity they promote is one of unity among other Third-Worldists and any of their other allies. It’s not a message of unity among Americans, specifically White Americans not on their side, who’ve been identified as the enemy.

The only defense against this sort of thing, short of violence, is culture. Cultures are survival mechanisms, as well as a way of maintaining unity, continuity, and passing down knowledge and practices. Third-Worldists constantly demonize cultures of the West as a humiliation ritual, as a way of ensuring the West never develops a culture ever again. Without culture, society is completely defenseless. And it’s why the Left wants to keep those borders open, the foreigner flooding in by the millions.

Cultures aren’t static things. They adapt and evolve to changing circumstances. But there’s a difference between that and changing because you’re afraid someone like Zohran Mamdani’s aunt might not feel welcome in America or that young Asian woman might resent your country. Well, guess what? They still think America is Islamophobic and they still hate you and your country. So, was it really worth it to let your guard down, to compromise with the foreigner? Or is multiculturalism’s benefits outweighed by its drawbacks?

That’s all for today. Do you refer to your dad’s cousin as aunt or uncle? How common is this practice, really? What does it all say about the utility of multiculturalism? Is it really worth it? Can you make a strong case for multiculturalism?

Tell us in the comments below.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

If you liked this post from We're Not At the End, But You Can See It From Here, why not share? If you’re a first-time visitor, please consider subscribing!