This bit of multiculti showbiz was ginned up by the City of Paris and the U.S. Embassy—which has gone so far as to lend the Stars And Stripes (see right) to the islamopropaganda—along with (what a surprise) Harvard University.
The Institut's website says the Festival has been "organized through a partnership (réalisé en partenariat )between the City of Paris, the United States Embassy in France and Harvard University." Such réalisations always cost you money.
Since Barack Hussein Obama sent former Muppets CEO Charles Rivkin to be the U.S. Ambassador to France (what did his bijou post cost him, I wonder?), Rivkin has pursued a "Minority Engagement Strategy " designed to endear himself to, while increasing the political power of, those residents of France who are not, well, French. [In Smart-Power Shift, U.S. Now Actively Cultivating Muslim Minorities In The EU, By Garret Martin, European Affairs, April 2011]
This very odd, very undiplomatic U.S. interference in France's affairs received publicity after Wikileaks published American diplomatic cables about the program and its assistance to the Islamisation of France.
The cynical/ suspicious/ paranoid among us might think that Obama is using the U.S. State Department to facilitate the dominance of his ancestors' religion over Europe—achieving what Muslim invaders over the course of a millennium could not.
Charles Rivkin, who is billed as a French-speaking lifelong Francophile, evidently has decided to thank the country that has brought him such joy over so many years by doing what he can to destroy it. A graduate of Yale and Harvard and son of a Kennedy-administration ambassador, Rivkin may also serve as yet another example of how our most "elite" institutions are busily breeding an elite that is bent, for whatever reasons, on ruining the country that has offered them so much. Is it coincidental that New York had to endure the spectacle of a "Festival of the Cultures of Islam" in the very week that marks the 10th anniversary of the Muslim jihad-strikes against New York and Washington?
Those cynical suspicious paranoids might well be right. But further Wikileaks revelations show that for some time U.S. (I can't make myself call them "American") diplomats have been meddling multiculturally in their host countries, in plain violation of their duty as diplomats to remain neutral with respect to domestic politics, .
Now, some will say American diplomats have always meddled, and many Mexicans, Guatemalans, Chileans, Iranians, white South Africans and others might be inclined to agree. But more typical American meddling has usually been in the service of great power politics, whether advancing the Monroe Doctrine or containing Communism—and making Central America safe for the United Fruit Company. It had not previously taken the form of passive-aggressive hostility—on a racial basis—against the native peoples of countries where U.S. diplomats are accredited.
It may be that the glorious cause of ending apartheid in South Africa (and what business of the U.S. government's was that?) even as South Africa was actually fighting real live Communists in Angola and Southwest Africa is what led to this "progressive" change.
More recent Wikileaks leaks reveal that in 2008, i.e. before the elevation of the Luo Pharaoh to the White House, U.S. diplomats in Moscow were higly critical of their opposite numbers in the Russian Foreign Ministry. [WikiLeaks: Russian Foreign Ministry 'Bastion' of Sexism and Low Pay, By Alexandra Odynova, The Moscow Times, August 30,2011]
This under the tutelage of Bush appointees, so the itch to meddle multiculturally is apparently bipartisan (and maybe goes to the type of people recruited by the State Department nowadays).
It is unclear whether these particular diplomats tried to act on their criticisms, beyond chiding their Russian counterparts for insufficient progressivism. (The irony in that should be evident to anyone who remembers the hectoring shenanigans of Soviet diplomats!) I rather doubt it. In Russia, which remains a Russian country despite the best efforts of NATO, neocons, George Soros and a host of other Western meddlers, they would probably have been ejected posthaste if they had.
Did these paladins of the State Department find Russian diplomats incompetent? It doesn't seem so. Did they find them insufficiently Russian? Indeed no. If anything, probably too much so. The concerns these stalwart foreign service officers raise are more redolent of the EEOC or an Ivy League faculty lounge than of any reality in Russia. Just what is so wrong with Russia's diplomatic corps?
A 2008 cable signed by Ambassador John Beyrle laments that "sexism runs rampant" at Russia's Foreign Ministry, where only 15 per cent of Russian diplomats were women. The cable notes that the Foreign Ministry "remains a bastion of Slavic males who went to Moscow's top schools," in contrast to the marvellously effective U.S. Foreign Service, whose staff has become "more diverse."
No doubt Russians would be better represented in the world by Muslim lesbians with no education. As for the predominance of "top schools," if that is such a problem, will the U.S. Foreign Service please stop recruiting at Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Ivy League schools and Stanford, please? (Actually, that might at a stroke give America a diplomatic corps far more in tune with the country it's supposed to represent, but that's a topic for another time.)
As noted above, though, the Russian Foreign Ministry does remain (cough!) Russian. When these offenses against diversity and egalitarianism were brought to the attention of Foreign Ministry chief of personnel Vladimir Morozov, rather than grovel and promise set-asides like a good Western apparatchik, he stalwartly defended the composition of Russia's diplomatic corps. Morozov saw nothing wrong with the male dominance at his Ministry: "Men were better equipped to handle long-term absences from home, harsh climates, and the 'complex political and military situations' in which Russian diplomats often found themselves," was Morozov's reported response.
Will Americans ever again hear such a practical evaluation of what diplomats have to be ready to contend with, and why it makes sense for most of them to be men? Will Americans ever again hear such a blunt assessment even of the U.S. Armed Forces' needs in order to be combat-ready? (One shudders to think what is said in Russian commanders' private assessments of what the U.S. military has become.)
The contrast is striking. Whatever its government's faults, and no doubt they exist, Russia is served by diplomats who are Russians and focused on Russia's interests. Americans are ill-served by diplomats who are often carefully matched to the ethnic profile of the countries where they are sent—virtually ensuring conflicts of interest—and encouraged by the U.S. government to think it their business to impose cultural Marxism, Frankfurt School-style, on all historically white nations.
But Russia refuses to take her medicine. Russia is in the painful process of reviving the Russian nation after the 75-year Communist multicultural nightmare that was the U.S.S.R.
Saddled with governments actively hostile to their interests—even to their continued existence—the peoples of the West may soon be looking to their Eastern brethren for lessons in how to restore their own beleaguered nations.
Henry McCulloch (email him) writes requently for VDARE.COM.
