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[해외논단]''유럽 多문화주의''의 허구

 

유럽의 정치적 명분론이 마침내 그 폐해를 드러내기 시작했다. 1950년대 이후 네덜란드는 비유럽 이민자들에 대한 정치적 관용정책에 따라 상당한 어려움을 겪어왔지만 계속 민족적 문화와 종교의 위력을 부정하는 고고한 자세를 지켜왔다.

유럽 나라들, 특히 스칸디나비아 국가들에서는 이민자들에게 문화적 적응과 동화를 요구하는 것은 불가피하게 나치와 유사한 ‘인종주의적’ 요구를 함축하는 것으로 여겨지기 때문에 문화적 차이에 대한 무조건적인 관용정책이 채택되었다.

최근까지도 국적을 원천적으로 인종주의적인 것으로 간주해온 독일은 이민자들을 문화적·정치적 동화 대상에서 제외하고 모든 이민자를 궁극적으로 본국으로 돌아갈 ‘손님’이라는 허구를 간직해왔다. 그러나 이민자들은 가족을 독일로 데려왔고 또 시민권을 요구하고 있다.

프랑스는 문화적·정치적 동화정책을 신봉했다. 그러나 북아프리카 노동 이주민들의 경우 이를 적용하지 않았다. 현재 프랑스 인구의 5% 내지 10%에 달하는 이슬람 소수인종은 큰 문제를 일으키고 있으며, 프랑스 당국은 뒤늦게 젊은 세대들을 문화적·정치적으로 동화시키려는 노력으로 문제를 해결하려고 한다.

그렇지만 네덜란드의 최근 상황은 원래 이 나라가 모든 인종을 대등하게 취급하는 다문화 사회을 지향해왔다는 점에서 아주 흥미롭다. 그것은 편리한 환상이었고 위선이었다. 다른 서유럽 국가들과 마찬가지로 네덜란드 국민도 자신들의 사회와 규범의 우월성을 확신하지 않은 적이 없기 때문이다.

네덜란드는 이민자들에게 관대한 복지 혜택을 주었다. 자국의 매우 큰 이민 인구가 비록 이국적이긴 하지만 결국 국민으로 융화되어 네덜란드가 평화로운 다문화 사회가 될 것으로 생각했다. 이것은 비록 훌륭하긴 하지만 비현실적인 생각이었다.

모두가 알고 있듯이, 네덜란드는 과거와 다름없이 엄격하고 편협한 포스트칼뱅주의 사회로 남아 있었다. 그들은 결코 다문화 사회가 될 수 없었다. 이런 상황이 증오와 폭력의 폭발을 초래할 것이라는 가능성은 어느 누구도 예상치 못했다. 문제는 바로 이 때문에 발생했다.

이슬람 이민사회의 중심세력은 네덜란드 다문화주의의 조건을 거부했다. 그들은 네덜란드어를 배우려 하지도 않았다. 네덜란드 사회의 중심 세력은 동성애 옹호 운동가인 핌 포르토인이 1998년 총선 유세에서 네덜란드는 ‘만원’이라면서 더 이상의 이민에 반대했을 때 그러한 이슬람 이민자들의 거부 자세에 분노를 표출했다.

이후 포르토인은 살해되었지만 범인은 이슬람 교도가 아니었다. 그러나 영화감독 테오 반 고흐는 이슬람 남성들의 여성 천대를 비판하는 영화를 만든 후 무슬림 청년에 의해 살해되었으며, 이 사건으로 무슬림들과 그들의 학교·사원에 대한 보복 공격이 촉발되었다.

이러한 네덜란드적 비극은 인간적, 사회적, 정치적 현실에서 엄연한 문화적 차이를 낙관적 자세로 외면해온 결과이다. 이것은 부분적으로 유럽의 나치 참화에 대한 반사작용이다. 그 이후 유럽인들은 인종적·문화적 차이를 차별대우와 갈등의 원인으로 해석하게 되었고, 이에 따라 이 같은 차이를 회피할 뿐만 아니라 부인하기에 이르렀다.

결과적으로 유럽인들은 인간의 본성에 대해 일정한 환상을 키우게 되었다. 서방 국민들은 역사적으로 그러한 환상이 완전히 허구라는 것이 증명되었음에도 계속 그것을 신봉하고자 한다. 이 환상에는 서구 민주주의의 핵심 가치가 인간에게는 천부적인 것이며, 또 교육과 정치·사회 제도의 자유화 그리고 정치적 행동이 아직 그러한 가치를 인식하지 못하고 있는 사람들을 깨우칠 수 있다는 믿음이 포함된다./윌리엄 파프(美 칼럼니스트)

워싱턴 타임스

정리=권화섭 객원편집위원

PC, EUROPEAN-STYLE: A BLEND OF HYPOCRISY, NAIVETE

By William Pfaff

PARIS -- The damage done by political correctness is only now beginning to be felt. Great trouble has been made in the Netherlands, which since the 1950s has followed what was meant to be a policy of generosity concerning non-European immigrants, but which involved a high-minded denial of the power of national cultures and religion.

In a number of European states, notably including Scandinavia, a policy of unquestioning tolerance of cultural differences was adopted because to demand cultural adaptation and assimilation from immigrants was thought to imply a ``racist'''' claim by the host country to superiority (with inevitable comparisons made to Nazi Germany).

In Germany itself, where nationality was until recently considered ethnic in origin, immigrants originally were automatically excluded from cultural or political assimilation, and the fiction was maintained that they were all ``guests'''' who would eventually go home. Instead, their families followed them to Germany, and they demand citizenship.

France believed in principle in the cultural and political assimilation of immigrants, but in the case of its North African worker migrants did not practice it. Like Germany, it pretended to itself that the Muslim North Africans would eventually go away.

Now, of course, this Muslim minority (uncounted, but between 5 and 10 percent of France''s population) poses a great problem, which the French are attempting to deal with through belated efforts at cultural and political integration of the younger generations.

However, the Dutch case is the most interesting because the Dutch (like the British) said their aim was a multicultural society composed of equals.

This was a convenient illusion, or form of hypocrisy, because there, as in the rest of Western Europe, the host-country population never ceased to believe firmly in the superiority of its own society and norms.

The Dutch gave the immigrants benefit of their generous welfare system. They took for granted that the social discrimination and economic disadvantages suffered by the immigrants were inevitable results of the choice to immigrate.

Their notion that the Netherlands would eventually become a peaceful multicultural society in which its very large immigration population would melt away, becoming successful if exotic Dutchmen and women, was well-intended but quite unrealistic.

As everyone could see, the Netherlands remained what it had been before, a tight, parochial and intolerant post-Calvinist society (the Calvinism having transformed itself into an equally conformist and parochially Dutch version of liberal intolerance). It was not a likely candidate for multiculturalism.

However, the possibility that all this would lead to an explosion of hatred and violence was never imagined -- even though the conformity the Netherlands expected from its Muslim immigrants was profoundly subversive of Muslim religion and culture. The conflict arose from that.

A crucial part of the Muslim immigration rejected the terms of Dutch multiculturalism. It would not even learn to speak Dutch.

A crucial part of Dutch society expressed its own anger at this rejection when Pim Fortuyn, the homosexual-rights activist, made himself into a sensationally successful parliamentary candidate in 1998 by saying that the Netherlands were ``full'''' and wanted no more immigrants. (He was subsequently murdered, but not by a Muslim.)

This year, the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh''s tendentious attack on the Muslim treatment of women, including, to Muslims, blasphemous images, ran on Dutch television. Van Gogh was subsequently murdered. This time the murderer was a young Muslim, committed to Islamic fundamentalism. Revenge attacks on Muslims and their schools and mosques followed.

This specifically Dutch tragedy was created by good intentions combined with false assumptions about the human, social and political realities of cultural difference.

These false assumptions were in part the product of Europe''s reaction to the Nazi catastrophe. After that, racial and cultural distinctions were interpreted as cause for discrimination and conflict, and accordingly they were not only avoided but denied.

Certain illusions about the nature of man were (and are) promoted. People in the West want to continue to believe in these illusions, despite all that history has done to disprove them.

They include the belief that the core values of the Western democracies are innate in men, and that education, the liberalization of political and social institutions, and political action can liberate these values among people who don''t yet recognize them.

It is believed that men and women are not only all headed toward liberal democracy but towards secularism or religious indifference. North America and Western Europe are more advanced on this course; the Balkan societies, the Muslim world, ``failed states,'''' etc., are thought merely to be held back by various circumstances.

Western political (and even economic) values are said to be universal, valid for all societies now and in the future. Hence the unity of mankind is only a matter of time. The moral complexity of the human condition in the past is ignored, or is simply unknown.

It all adds up to a naove version of the belief in inevitable human progress that was first launched in the French enlightenment and has inspired virtually every Western political ideology we have known since -- and that history has repeatedly disproved.

(C) 2004 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

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TEASER FOR ONE-SHOTS

William Pfaff writes about European multiculturalism and its consequences.

``The damage done by political correctness is only now beginning to be felt. Great trouble has been made in the Netherlands, which since the 1950s has followed what was meant to be a policy of generosity concerning non-European immigrants, but which involved a high-minded denial of the power of national cultures and religion...''''

End transmission

AP-NY-11-18-04 1844EST