Multiculturalism is not a strength but a stress, and we saw that in the terror last week of our political class

I support tolerance, and am the son of immigrants, but multiculturalism is actually a policy to help migrants keep their home culture and get us all to “celebrate difference”.

Anthony Albanese still can’t admit multiculturalism has failed, even as politicians try frantically to censor our speech to limit the damage.

“Multiculturalism has been a part of modern Australia,” the Prime Minister protested on Friday.

“People in cities like Melbourne and Sydney live in peace and harmony and we are enriched.”

What? “Peace and harmony”?

Tell that to Jews living in fear after an eruption of Jew-hatred not seen since World War 2.

The Prime Minister can’t admit multiculturalism has failed. Picture: Michelle Haywood

Tell that to Assyrian Christians, many of whom fled Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, only to see their Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel stabbed in his Sydney church last week by, allegedly, a Muslim boy from a family from Lebanon.

Tell that to the 51 NSW police injured outside the bishop’s church by rioting Assyrians demanding the boy be handed over so they could take “an eye for an eye”.

And tell the rest of us we’re “enriched” after another bloody brawl last week, where youths of African appearance at a Melbourne shopping centre allegedly slashed each other with an axe and a machete.

No, multiculturalism is not a strength but a stress, and we saw that in the terror last week of our political class.

Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was stabbed in his Sydney church last week by, allegedly, a Muslim boy.

Julie Inman Grant, our eSafety commissioner, threatened X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook owner Meta with fines of $785,000 a day if they didn’t take down footage of the bishop being stabbed.

Even Opposition Leader Peter Dutton supported her censoring footage “which can trigger violent reactions as we saw”.

NSW Labor premier Chris Minns also backed the ban, saying the footage was “guaranteed to sow division in the community and make passions boil over.”

Is that multicultural Australia today – such a powder keg that we must be banned from seeing the consequences of folly for fear of “violent reactions” and “passions” boiling over?

Anthony Albanese says people in cities like Melbourne and Sydney live in peace and harmony and we are enriched. Picture: Getty

Note the difference: no one demands total censorship of footage of President John Kennedy’s assassination; or of a Vietnamese girl running naked and screaming after being burned in a napalm attack in the Vietnam War; or of WikiLeaks footage of Americans killing civilians in Iraq.

But it’s not just last week that showed multiculturalism failing. Add the Sydney Muslim hate preachers, ethnic crime gangs and more.

No, this “peace and harmony” spin is a fraud.

I support tolerance, and am the son of immigrants, but multiculturalism is actually a policy to help migrants keep their home culture and get us all to “celebrate difference”, as the NSW, Victorian and Queensland governments all put it.

There were 51 NSW police officers injured in the riot outside the bishop’s church. Picture: Liam Mendes

It’s even to help migrants get by without assimilating or even learning English, so they can live in their own “communities” – or, frankly, tribes, In fact, nearly 900,000 Australians now tell the census they can’t speak English well or at all. Inevitably, they’ll look for mutual support instead from their own tribes, each with their own historical loyalties, hatreds and customs.

Yet multiculturalism appeals to politicians, especially collectivists. I first saw why as a young Labor staffer, trailing after Immigration Minister Stewart West before the 1984 election as he visited migrant groups in Darwin, spraying IOUs and cheques.

I saw it again when a later Labor Immigration Minister, Chris Hurford, tried to deport notorious hate preacher Taj Din al-Hilali, but was forced by Labor heavies, including Paul Keating, to grant the Egyptian permanent residency to please Muslim voters.

Multiculturalism has been a tool for politicians to win votes by cutting deals with leaders of the least assimilated. The assimilated get nothing.

This policy became even more dangerous when it quickly became fashionable to not just “celebrate” other cultures but to trash our own – to teach that Australia is so racist that we supposedly committed “genocide” and “stole” generations of children just because they were Aboriginal.

We’ve been playing with fire. The British and Austro-Hungarian empires were destroyed by nationalism, and now multi-ethnic nations like Australia risk being destroyed by identity politics, as we teach newcomers and their children to give their loyalty to any identity group but the Australian one.

You see it now. How many of our young feel proud to wave the Australian flag? Even their prime minister flies two race flags alongside the Australian one.

Multiculturalism is a mistake, especially with our record mass immigration. We’re different enough without politicians paying us to stay apart. The government’s real duty is not to encourage what divides but what unites: to turn a nation of tribes into a people.

Last week was a warning. Beware politicians stopping us from saying what we’ve seen.