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Personal belongings were left at the scene of a shooting at Bondi Beach on December 15, 2025 in Sydney, Australia.
The true problem lies elsewhere, such as in economic and power interests, the old drivers of wars and genocides.
On December 13, 2025, a man with a gun killed two students in a classroom at Brown University and left half a dozen seriously injured. This tragedy did not make headlines around the world because shootings are a tradition in the United States. According to various statistics, for a century (it would be necessary to add the colonization of centuries before, carried out by religious fanatics against Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans), mass murderers have tended to be supporters of the supremacist right, but it is they who blame diversity for all the ills of their societies. Fear is big business.
This massacre took a back seat when, the following day, 11 people were killed in Sydney, Australia. The victims were members of a Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah. Since the ban on semi-automatic rifles and strict regulation of firearms in 1996, massacres in Australia are a rarity.
Immediately, social media was flooded with explanations about the danger of Islam to the world, even when it was revealed that the man who stopped and disarmed one of the two attackers in the midst of the massacre was a 43-year-old Muslim, father of two children, who was shot twice. Benjamin Netanyahu will probably honor him with the Israel Prize in Human Values and Civil Heroism.
A couple of hours later, the richest Argentine in the world and resident of Uruguay, Marcos Galperin, who presents himself as the “founder and executive chairman of Mercado Libre” and Konex Prize winner, commented on the massacre with the same prejudice that the killers surely share: “Welcome to the new multicultural and diverse Australia.”
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire.
Could it be that the problem perceived by those who are against diversity is skin color? Why are non-Caucasians always the problem? When, for centuries, white people devoted themselves to assaulting, destroying, and massacring the rest of the world, they were only bringing civilization to those “shithole countries,” to use President Donald Trump's language to refer to the countries of the South. “Why do we accept people from these shithole countries, like Somalia, and not accept people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark?” Perhaps because, to them, we are the shithole country.
The common factor is always the same: The problem is not cultural diversity, but something as superficial as skin color. When they find out that the native British and Belgians were black-skinned people, their blood sugar rises.
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire. There was no trade, let alone free trade (an ancient activity until it was destroyed by capitalism), without cultural, linguistic, religious, and technological exchange. From the 10th century until the beginning of the European slave trade, the Kingdom of Nri achieved almost 1,000 years of coexistence based on the principles of “peace, truth, and harmony.” The Nri culture, located in what is now Nigeria, shared with the Ubuntu philosophy of the southern continent its collective conception of the individual and its conception of peace and social harmony as higher goals. Its communal ownership of land and production, and its intense trade with other nations as far away as Egypt, ended with the arrival of Europeans and the novel slave trade based on skin color.
The same was true of Native American peoples. In most Indigenous cultures, foreigners who were adopted not only ended up integrating into the new society, but also tended to occupy a place of great respect in the social pyramid. The same cannot be said of the deeply racist societies of the revered Free World (“the free race,” white)―unless we are talking about sepoy soldiers.
In the Great Peace League of North America, the Iroquois adopted foreigners from all cultures and languages, including Europeans, who often did not want to return to “civilization.” Native diversity also included members of different genders (men and women “of two spirits”). These were not naive savages. For centuries, they defeated European armies armed with advanced technology, not because of their arrows but because of their superior social organization. They even expanded throughout the Ohio River basin in response to attacks by British and French armies. It was not for nothing that the natives mocked the white man's concept of freedom: “We are free,” they said. “We are not desperate to be rich, nor do we obey the orders of our leaders when they do not convince us. You submit to anything: kings, captains, priests...”
We could continue with other cultures, such as the Arab Empire, which lasted several centuries. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted, prospered, and multiplied for centuries in one of the most outstanding civilizations in science, rational analysis, and technology.
Of course, if we look at the entire history of humanity, we will always find plenty of examples of violence, massacres, and genocide. No one can say that in these centuries of coexistence there were no conflicts, wars, and brutalities, because that is a chronic ailment of the human species. But if we compare realities, we can say that our contemporary world, which prides itself on being advanced and civilized, has stood out for its exceptional brutality. Suffice it to mention the world wars, the atomic bombs, or the imperial dictatorships imposed by the “sacrificed white man” (Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt) on the rest of humanity. Always victimizing themselves for their own crimes. As Ukrainian Golda Meir said, “We can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children.”
Although we cannot say that there are welcome forms of hatred, we can say that there is no single type of hatred. Slaves hated their masters for what they did, and masters hated their slaves for what they were. It is one thing to hate for what one is and another to hate for what one does.
If there is a problem with the ancient culture and morality of diversity and tolerance, it is that racists who promote civil and imperial violence are protected by the law. In fact, we reward them. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why the sect of global billionaires is racist, sexist, and hates the poor, whom they divide and parasitize every day.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
On December 13, 2025, a man with a gun killed two students in a classroom at Brown University and left half a dozen seriously injured. This tragedy did not make headlines around the world because shootings are a tradition in the United States. According to various statistics, for a century (it would be necessary to add the colonization of centuries before, carried out by religious fanatics against Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans), mass murderers have tended to be supporters of the supremacist right, but it is they who blame diversity for all the ills of their societies. Fear is big business.
This massacre took a back seat when, the following day, 11 people were killed in Sydney, Australia. The victims were members of a Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah. Since the ban on semi-automatic rifles and strict regulation of firearms in 1996, massacres in Australia are a rarity.
Immediately, social media was flooded with explanations about the danger of Islam to the world, even when it was revealed that the man who stopped and disarmed one of the two attackers in the midst of the massacre was a 43-year-old Muslim, father of two children, who was shot twice. Benjamin Netanyahu will probably honor him with the Israel Prize in Human Values and Civil Heroism.
A couple of hours later, the richest Argentine in the world and resident of Uruguay, Marcos Galperin, who presents himself as the “founder and executive chairman of Mercado Libre” and Konex Prize winner, commented on the massacre with the same prejudice that the killers surely share: “Welcome to the new multicultural and diverse Australia.”
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire.
Could it be that the problem perceived by those who are against diversity is skin color? Why are non-Caucasians always the problem? When, for centuries, white people devoted themselves to assaulting, destroying, and massacring the rest of the world, they were only bringing civilization to those “shithole countries,” to use President Donald Trump's language to refer to the countries of the South. “Why do we accept people from these shithole countries, like Somalia, and not accept people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark?” Perhaps because, to them, we are the shithole country.
The common factor is always the same: The problem is not cultural diversity, but something as superficial as skin color. When they find out that the native British and Belgians were black-skinned people, their blood sugar rises.
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire. There was no trade, let alone free trade (an ancient activity until it was destroyed by capitalism), without cultural, linguistic, religious, and technological exchange. From the 10th century until the beginning of the European slave trade, the Kingdom of Nri achieved almost 1,000 years of coexistence based on the principles of “peace, truth, and harmony.” The Nri culture, located in what is now Nigeria, shared with the Ubuntu philosophy of the southern continent its collective conception of the individual and its conception of peace and social harmony as higher goals. Its communal ownership of land and production, and its intense trade with other nations as far away as Egypt, ended with the arrival of Europeans and the novel slave trade based on skin color.
The same was true of Native American peoples. In most Indigenous cultures, foreigners who were adopted not only ended up integrating into the new society, but also tended to occupy a place of great respect in the social pyramid. The same cannot be said of the deeply racist societies of the revered Free World (“the free race,” white)―unless we are talking about sepoy soldiers.
In the Great Peace League of North America, the Iroquois adopted foreigners from all cultures and languages, including Europeans, who often did not want to return to “civilization.” Native diversity also included members of different genders (men and women “of two spirits”). These were not naive savages. For centuries, they defeated European armies armed with advanced technology, not because of their arrows but because of their superior social organization. They even expanded throughout the Ohio River basin in response to attacks by British and French armies. It was not for nothing that the natives mocked the white man's concept of freedom: “We are free,” they said. “We are not desperate to be rich, nor do we obey the orders of our leaders when they do not convince us. You submit to anything: kings, captains, priests...”
We could continue with other cultures, such as the Arab Empire, which lasted several centuries. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted, prospered, and multiplied for centuries in one of the most outstanding civilizations in science, rational analysis, and technology.
Of course, if we look at the entire history of humanity, we will always find plenty of examples of violence, massacres, and genocide. No one can say that in these centuries of coexistence there were no conflicts, wars, and brutalities, because that is a chronic ailment of the human species. But if we compare realities, we can say that our contemporary world, which prides itself on being advanced and civilized, has stood out for its exceptional brutality. Suffice it to mention the world wars, the atomic bombs, or the imperial dictatorships imposed by the “sacrificed white man” (Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt) on the rest of humanity. Always victimizing themselves for their own crimes. As Ukrainian Golda Meir said, “We can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children.”
Although we cannot say that there are welcome forms of hatred, we can say that there is no single type of hatred. Slaves hated their masters for what they did, and masters hated their slaves for what they were. It is one thing to hate for what one is and another to hate for what one does.
If there is a problem with the ancient culture and morality of diversity and tolerance, it is that racists who promote civil and imperial violence are protected by the law. In fact, we reward them. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why the sect of global billionaires is racist, sexist, and hates the poor, whom they divide and parasitize every day.
On December 13, 2025, a man with a gun killed two students in a classroom at Brown University and left half a dozen seriously injured. This tragedy did not make headlines around the world because shootings are a tradition in the United States. According to various statistics, for a century (it would be necessary to add the colonization of centuries before, carried out by religious fanatics against Indians, Blacks, and Mexicans), mass murderers have tended to be supporters of the supremacist right, but it is they who blame diversity for all the ills of their societies. Fear is big business.
This massacre took a back seat when, the following day, 11 people were killed in Sydney, Australia. The victims were members of a Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah. Since the ban on semi-automatic rifles and strict regulation of firearms in 1996, massacres in Australia are a rarity.
Immediately, social media was flooded with explanations about the danger of Islam to the world, even when it was revealed that the man who stopped and disarmed one of the two attackers in the midst of the massacre was a 43-year-old Muslim, father of two children, who was shot twice. Benjamin Netanyahu will probably honor him with the Israel Prize in Human Values and Civil Heroism.
A couple of hours later, the richest Argentine in the world and resident of Uruguay, Marcos Galperin, who presents himself as the “founder and executive chairman of Mercado Libre” and Konex Prize winner, commented on the massacre with the same prejudice that the killers surely share: “Welcome to the new multicultural and diverse Australia.”
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire.
Could it be that the problem perceived by those who are against diversity is skin color? Why are non-Caucasians always the problem? When, for centuries, white people devoted themselves to assaulting, destroying, and massacring the rest of the world, they were only bringing civilization to those “shithole countries,” to use President Donald Trump's language to refer to the countries of the South. “Why do we accept people from these shithole countries, like Somalia, and not accept people from Norway, Sweden, or Denmark?” Perhaps because, to them, we are the shithole country.
The common factor is always the same: The problem is not cultural diversity, but something as superficial as skin color. When they find out that the native British and Belgians were black-skinned people, their blood sugar rises.
The now demonized multiculturalism is as old as the domestication of fire. There was no trade, let alone free trade (an ancient activity until it was destroyed by capitalism), without cultural, linguistic, religious, and technological exchange. From the 10th century until the beginning of the European slave trade, the Kingdom of Nri achieved almost 1,000 years of coexistence based on the principles of “peace, truth, and harmony.” The Nri culture, located in what is now Nigeria, shared with the Ubuntu philosophy of the southern continent its collective conception of the individual and its conception of peace and social harmony as higher goals. Its communal ownership of land and production, and its intense trade with other nations as far away as Egypt, ended with the arrival of Europeans and the novel slave trade based on skin color.
The same was true of Native American peoples. In most Indigenous cultures, foreigners who were adopted not only ended up integrating into the new society, but also tended to occupy a place of great respect in the social pyramid. The same cannot be said of the deeply racist societies of the revered Free World (“the free race,” white)―unless we are talking about sepoy soldiers.
In the Great Peace League of North America, the Iroquois adopted foreigners from all cultures and languages, including Europeans, who often did not want to return to “civilization.” Native diversity also included members of different genders (men and women “of two spirits”). These were not naive savages. For centuries, they defeated European armies armed with advanced technology, not because of their arrows but because of their superior social organization. They even expanded throughout the Ohio River basin in response to attacks by British and French armies. It was not for nothing that the natives mocked the white man's concept of freedom: “We are free,” they said. “We are not desperate to be rich, nor do we obey the orders of our leaders when they do not convince us. You submit to anything: kings, captains, priests...”
We could continue with other cultures, such as the Arab Empire, which lasted several centuries. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted, prospered, and multiplied for centuries in one of the most outstanding civilizations in science, rational analysis, and technology.
Of course, if we look at the entire history of humanity, we will always find plenty of examples of violence, massacres, and genocide. No one can say that in these centuries of coexistence there were no conflicts, wars, and brutalities, because that is a chronic ailment of the human species. But if we compare realities, we can say that our contemporary world, which prides itself on being advanced and civilized, has stood out for its exceptional brutality. Suffice it to mention the world wars, the atomic bombs, or the imperial dictatorships imposed by the “sacrificed white man” (Rudyard Kipling, Theodore Roosevelt) on the rest of humanity. Always victimizing themselves for their own crimes. As Ukrainian Golda Meir said, “We can never forgive the Arabs for forcing us to kill their children.”
Although we cannot say that there are welcome forms of hatred, we can say that there is no single type of hatred. Slaves hated their masters for what they did, and masters hated their slaves for what they were. It is one thing to hate for what one is and another to hate for what one does.
If there is a problem with the ancient culture and morality of diversity and tolerance, it is that racists who promote civil and imperial violence are protected by the law. In fact, we reward them. Otherwise, it would be impossible to understand why the sect of global billionaires is racist, sexist, and hates the poor, whom they divide and parasitize every day.