Monoculturalism

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Monoculturalism is the practice of actively preserving a national culture via the exclusion of external influences. Japan, China, South Korea, and North Korea are examples of monoculturalism, as was pre-World War II Europe. Usually a monocultural society exists due to racial homogeneity, nationalistic tendencies, geographic isolation, or political isolation (sometimes but not always under a totalitarian regime).

Recently, right-of-center governments in several European states—notably the Netherlands and Denmark— have reversed the national policy and returned to an official monoculturalism. A similar reversal is the subject of debate in the United Kingdom, among others, due to evidence of incipient segregation and anxieties over "home-grown" terrorism.

Several heads-of-state have expressed doubts about the success of multicultural policies: The United Kingdom's Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard, Spanish ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar and French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy have voiced concerns about the effectiveness of their multicultural policies for integrating immigrants.

National Socialist Germany practiced monoculturalism as part of its campaign for Pan Germanism and German Nationalism, yet monoculturalism was typical of the era and many European countries were monocultural at that time. Some European countries are still effectively monocultural due to the people's shared culture and ethnicity, like Finland, though some areas of that country are heterogenous.

See also

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