Is Singapore the only example of multiculturalism actually being successful?

[Faggy Blanket]

Very interesting discussion here. Echoing others' points on Singapore not being true multiculturalism, at least the way it's understood in the West. Sure, there's fusion food and other superficial cultural exchange, but that doesn't change the lack of social mobility for anyone who isn't Chinese. The country ensures that everyone gets a plate as long as the Chinese are eating, and the Tamils and Malays know that. I think there are literal racial quotas in the universities and businesses too IIRC (of course there are more spots for Chinese). It's authoritarian as fuck, because that's the only way to make sure a system like that works..

I'd love to get into Singaporean history sometime.

 

[Protistology]

It brings up a multitude of questions if authoritarianism is the only way to keep a multicultural/racial society from devolving into a third world shithole or if multiculturalism depends entirely upon the character of the cultures that make up said nation, compare it to south africa, a democratic multicultural nation which is devolving into shit, there is an SA thread somewhere on here with some rather enlightening posts.

Yugoslavia says hello.

 

[raspberry mocha]

Lee Kuan Yew just copied what Israel was doing.

America is way too libertarian to adopt anything close to Singapore, too bureaucratic for Bukeleism, even in a regional sense. It doesn't really need to copy any of those because America has its own brand of multiculturalism, with the only real downside being that it compels ethnics to forfeit their identities leading to the racial neuroses we see now. If anything, Singapore has had more of an effect on China thanks to Deng Xiaoping.

 

[Climaxing Sunset]

Switzerland is technically a multicultural society that survived for many hundred years, probably close to a thousand. You have the Swiss Germans, the majority, followed by the Swiss French, Swiss Italians (who descend from northern Italian migrants over the centuries), Swiss Romansch, a native Latin speaking minority as the four main ethnic groups. But as of recent decades you have many more ethnic groups in Switzerland, such as other Europeans & Americans settling in, immigrants from the Balkans such as Albanians, Bosniaks, Serbs, Croats, & Macedonians, and a few Asian immigrants. There has been some tensions between the Muslim minority (largely Balkan Muslims) and the Catholic majority but overall, the Swiss suppressed that and keep Islam under a watchful eye.

Singapore can be vaguely seen as a quasi Switzerland of Asia only in city form and without mountains

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

It's based on my memory from films 20 years ago. Plus a country being extremely wealthy doesn't mean the lower classes live in a decent way.

From what I know Singapore has one of the highest standards of living in the world (if you have money). They are 12th in the world Human Development Index, while the US is 21st. The GDP Nominal and Per Capita (PPP) is 3rd and 5th in the world, while the US is 9th and 7th respectively. So, they generally make more than Americans and according to accepted international markers and standards, their country is more developed. I don't think the US should really be saying much of anything about Singapore since they seem to be doing quite well.

Median income is higher than the US according to some measures. Yeah there’s pretty severe inequality when you compare how the bottom 10% live to the top, but the lowest classes are still living in a clean, safe environment. Crime is basically nonexistent, education is some of the best in the world, utilities are modern and state of the art, healthcare is affordable and top-notch. I’d much rather be destitute in Singapore than the US, for example. Plus they execute drug dealers.

The US doesn't have much room to speak on income disparity between economic classes. Neither the US nor Singapore made the top 100 for income equality our of ranking of just 168 countries.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

History is full of examples of multicultural societal success... as long as there is prosperity.
Assyrian empire was succesful because they respected and incorporated the gods of the tribes they conquered.
Mongols despite their reputation, incorporated the wisest men of each city they conquered into their leadership structure. The first chinese city may have been hard to take, but for the second they had engineers from the first oversee the building of siege engines for them.
America itself is an example of multicultural success between germans, english, italians, swedish, dutch.

Multicultural success seems to depend on prosperity though. When things go well, there's incentive to smooth things over. When things get tough financially, they have a tendency to become hellish.

Singapore is very wealthy and that helps to pay to keep the order.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Singapore also puts alot of effort into building its own unique identity. They also don't allow liberals to gnaw at the social fabric by demanding race based appointments in government, academia and wat not. Disrespecting the State itself is also a punishable crime. You could literally go to jail in Singapore if you call it a racist colonial enclave of Malaysia.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

History is full of examples of multicultural societal success... as long as there is prosperity.
Assyrian empire was succesful because they respected and incorporated the gods of the tribes they conquered.
Mongols despite their reputation, incorporated the wisest men of each city they conquered into their leadership structure. The first chinese city may have been hard to take, but for the second they had engineers from the first oversee the building of siege engines for them.
America itself is an example of multicultural success between germans, english, italians, swedish, dutch.

Multicultural success seems to depend on prosperity though. When things go well, there's incentive to smooth things over. When things get tough financially, they have a tendency to become hellish.

Singapore is very wealthy and that helps to pay to keep the order.

Another point about multiculturalism is that it still seems to require a healthy core population of a specific founding ethnicity. You can have genuinely multilingual and multiethnic empires but it requires for a specific core cultural througline to support itself based on values that everyone agrees upon. The US has attempted this primarily through the enshrinement of the constitution, the raising of the founding fathers as its common patriarchs and the institutional promotion of the English language as its cultural keystones, which allows itself to easily integrate on both a micro and macro level.
The issue the US has is mainly through those institutions being eroded over time and the displacement of the original core groups. You can make it work through thick and thin but the common fabric must remain.

 

[Glowie]

Singapore has highest GDP in Asia and even surpassed United States, chinks can get shit done when they're in high trust society and have freedoms and democratic system.

I know their hydrogen power research, part in food Revolution (edible proteins cultivated from bacteria and strong import economy among other industries with trickle down economy.

Whenever you're a consoomer, highly trained academic or a businessman Singapore is great place to be if you're high earner and don't mind taxes that are used properly, not wasteful government dictates or military industrial complexes.

Singapore enjoys good contact with Japan, developed west and has great social cohesion due to peaceful history and co-existence. Highly educated student and people flee from CCP to Singapore thanks to Chinese majority, religious and personal freedoms they didn't have in China.

Pro human rights groups bitching how drug smugglers get gassed part and parcel in their agenda. Singapore doesn't want cancer to take root or spread. I for one have no sympathy for drug pushers.ll

 

[Lemmingwiser]

chinks can get shit done when they're in high trust society and have freedoms and democratic system

I don't believe there's anything democratic about Singapore.

You can have genuinely multilingual and multiethnic empires but it requires for a specific core cultural througline to support itself based on values that everyone agrees upon

How would we even begin to establish for any historical society what values are universally upheld, and verify for each region that people generalyl agreed on those values?

 

[mindlessobserver]

I don't believe there's anything democratic about Singapore.

They are unironically a National Socialist state to be sure, but it's not a one party state. There are opposition political factions. Of course you are correct that it's not the sort of raucous free wheeling you normally get in a democracy

 

[Glowie]

I don't believe there's anything democratic about Singapore.

Multiparty electoral system and as a result powers of ruling party (PAP) are flattened by opposition, basic capability to vote for candidates and policies that serve interests of individuals.

 

[Colonel Gaddafi]

You can have small amounts of ‘diversity’, but still keep things in check so long as you have a death grip on the criminal justice system. Singapore works because it’s actually mostly homogeneous (70 something percent Chinese) and totalitarian.

Libya worked because:

1.) We were mostly homogeneous. 97% Arab-Berber, (that’s not actual ethnic Arabs, but ethnic Berbers who are culturally Arab with a good bit of euro admixture), and a small number of minorities like sub Saharan Africans, Indians, mixed Berber (like the Touareg), and a handful of Europeans (Greek, Italian, Americans, etc.)

2.) We had a government that made everyone play nice or else. What’s happened since then? The minorities have made life hell on the rest of us, and the largest ethnic group eventually fractured off into smaller camps over things like religion and ancestral affiliation. All of this retarded in fighting left us susceptible to a literal nigger invasion as they used Libya as a springboard to our cousins in Italy.

By the time you reach the diversity levels of the US and Europe I feel that even totalitarianism wouldn’t save it, you literally need to deport them, and then rule over with a strong government that is highly intolerant of antisocial shenanigans.

 

[Shadfan666xxx000]

How would we even begin to establish for any historical society what values are universally upheld, and verify for each region that people generalyl agreed on those values?

I'm not a trained sociologist or historian so take it with a grain of salt but there are a good set of things which give it away. Common language, pledges to certain ideals and studying the intellectual traditions such cultures draw from are key markers of the common ground such cultures would share.
Take Russia for example, as another poster mentioned, you have wildly varying regional cultures with differing languages, religious traditions and ethnic conflicts aplenty at one point. But as the soviets built their new nation, they built a stronger foundation for common ground with increasing Russian language literacy, heavy propaganda in favor of the workers revolution (which was later strengthened by the victory of WW2) and a strong focus on maintaining regional ties to the metropole. It wasn't perfect, the methods were often brutal and questionable and many republics broke away and are more or less vassal states on the periphery now, but what remained has also stood by the core unit through decades of economic disruption and stagnation and is currently asserting itself confidently as a world power again.
Once you can rightfully assert enough of a common heritage and can keep them bound enough under a common umbrella enough that they can't see themselves outside of it, you can have empires that are stable despite it. In other words, you need to make it so that they only think of themselves on the world stage as Americans or Russians despite the fact that they might not speak the same language as another man making the same claim a few towns away.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

The Soviets managed to integrate muslim, christian, and even buddhist republics even better, in many ways because they slipped into their inner workings at much deeper level than the Empire ever did. It demanded from national republics (new word for former colonies) to leave the middle ages behind and embrace papa Lenin. Imo it was quite successful, Armenians lived in Baku, Azeri lived in Armenia, Russians lived in Chechnya, Jews lived in Uzbekistan, muslim Tatars and Bashkirs were integrated and made secular. Soviet cinema showed people of various ethnicies and underlined that everyone was a friend of everyone as long they are all working class. Was the USSR multicultural, though? Yes and no. You could have retained your culture until the said culture was in line with the Party. Of course, anyone who refused integrate, faced the wall.

They had a very schizophrenic policy to the cultures within their realm. They didn't mind doing shit like collectivizing reindeer herds in Siberia and completely warping the way of life for dozens of different tribes, and they had no tolerance for certain forms of Islam preached in Central Asia. Stalin also did mass deportations in WW2 and redrew all the borders of Central Asia to make up a bunch of new ethnicities like "Karakalpaks." But they also did establish a lot of cultural institutions and promoted the languages of all the ASSRs.

Although the best argument against Soviet multiculturalism is looking at their leadership. Stalin was the only non-Slav to be in charge (although Lenin might count as a Jew depending on who you ask). Most of the non-Slavs in high places were Jews who mostly got purged by Stalin, and there wasn't a single Tatar or Central Asian who ever came close to being in charge.

History is full of examples of multicultural societal success... as long as there is prosperity.
Assyrian empire was succesful because they respected and incorporated the gods of the tribes they conquered.
Mongols despite their reputation, incorporated the wisest men of each city they conquered into their leadership structure. The first chinese city may have been hard to take, but for the second they had engineers from the first oversee the building of siege engines for them.
America itself is an example of multicultural success between germans, english, italians, swedish, dutch.

Multicultural success seems to depend on prosperity though. When things go well, there's incentive to smooth things over. When things get tough financially, they have a tendency to become hellish.

Singapore is very wealthy and that helps to pay to keep the order.

It's racial/ethnic. Multiculturalism works as long as its clear that there's one race on top. For instance:
-In the Assyrian Empire it was Akkadians who worshipped the god Ashur
-In the Mongol Empire it was ethnic Mongols who were either part of Genghis Khan's tribe or who surrendered to him first
-In the United States it was white Anglo-Saxon Protestants from north of the Mason-Dixon line, aside from some blips before the Civil War where it was southern white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (i.e. Andrew Jackson), the 1930s-2000s when it was white people in general, and I guess now it's white people/(((white people))) from either coast who follow liberal Christianity or Reform Judaism

It's like this in Africa too, so it isn't necessarily prosperity, although it is mandatory your society has to be improving the general prosperity. People criticize tribalism, but when one African tribe is dominant in the country, things are always more stable. Although the African model is more precisely a confederation of tribes heading the government with the most dominant tribe has their guy become president and other tribes getting minister positions (i.e. a chance for the tribe to take money to hand to their tribe). I guess that's "multiculturalism" in a way, but the African leaders always either promote pan-Africanism or are trying to create a national identity for their country. I don't multiculturalism made Africa poor, because Somalia for instance is an ethnostate of 99% Somalis but is one of the biggest shitholes on the continent.

 

[PS1gamenwatch]

More videos of Anti-Singapore demonstrations during the 90s in the Philippines after a Philippine maid was accused of murder then executed:

 

[MMS-China]

Highly educated student and people flee from CCP to Singapore thanks to Chinese majority, religious and personal freedoms they didn't have in China.

So just like Australia. I see the Chinese Gay and Lesbian couples everywhere.

 

[YourFriendlyLurker 2.0]

Multiculturalism works as long as its clear that there's one race on top.

In other words, it works in empire-style or autocratic countries. It doesn't work in liberal democracies because no shit, not all cultures are equally good.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

In other words, it works in empire-style or autocratic countries. It doesn't work in liberal democracies because no shit, not all cultures are equally good.

It doesn't work in democracies either because identity politics inevitably comes up. All of the most corrupt politicians in American history at city and state level were those who relied on the "ethnic" vote. They'd put their "captains" in charge of the Irish, the Italian, the Polish, etc. neighborhoods and harvest their votes. In the South they'd do it with blacks (they never teach you in school that in many Southern cities blacks could vote because the white political machine helped them vote so blacks would vote 100% for them). So really any sort of ethnic distinction in a nation is going to cause degeneration of democracy.

An extreme example is India, since in order to form a government at any level in India, politicians need to partition out favors to a million different ethnic groups and castes. India is only a democracy because the British established a very robust system there which the Indians have been unable to destroy, potentially because the country is so diverse. Pakistan had an easier time becoming a dictatorship since they have one dominant ethnic group (Punjabis) and drove out all the Hindus and Sikhs.

 

[Glowie]

So just like Australia. I see the Chinese Gay and Lesbian couples everywhere.

Only a gay chink would obsessively look out for gay guys.

Man you're obsessed and thirsty

Singapore is a economic powerhouse unlike China, deal with it. Businesses in China flee from CCP to Singapore to avoid Draconian purges and disappearances.

And they make profit, Singapore Dollar is stronger than Yuan, RMB or Hong Kong Dollar as well.