Author Jens Heycke called for a refocus on shared identity as opposed to multiculturalism when discussing his latest book “Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire.”
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Heycke talked about the rising focus away from a unified cultural identity in favor of separating cultures alongside racial and ethnic lines, particularly among mainstream progressives.
Through historic research, Heycke emphasized that what he has found proved that a shared identity rather than divisive ones is what truly makes a society thrive.
“I think it’s important to remember [ethnic heritages], but it’s just as important to forge a sense of shared identity, and that’s what this book shows. It shows that’s what makes societies work. It’s what makes them succeed is when everybody has a sense that they’re all on the same team. So I’m hoping that my book will encourage people to think of things that way to kind of play down differences, forget about differences, and try to remember what we all share as Americans,” Heycke said.
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Citing histories in countries such as Sri Lanka and Rwanda, the author traced patterns of societal upheaval and decline as a result of separating people into groups.
“What does happen is when you siloed people into different groups, that sense of community spirit gets lost for people, you know, making the sort of civic contributions that make a society a nice place to live. And people hunker down and think mainly in terms of their own group instead of the entire community. And one of the things my book shows is that that has profound results and has in many societies. You see that in places like Nigeria and Brazil, countries that are very divided by ethnicity, how there just isn’t that public spirit. And it makes those societies, you know, not very nice places to live in,” Heycke said.
He added, “And we can go around the world and virtually every time you’ve gone down the road of identifying people by group rather than as individuals, you’ve ended up with often catastrophic results. It’s just it’s the nature of humans that when you divide them up, you elicit these tribal instincts, these dark tribal instincts.”
Through events such as the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Heycke also warned about the dangerous impacts that could arise from multiculturalism.
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“[D]ividing people into groups can make ordinary people do really bad things. It kind of triggers something dark from within the human psyche that gets people to, you know, to hate each other,” he said.
Though Heycke did not suggest that multiculturalism in the United States could lead to genocide, he expressed disappointment in more negative views of racial relations in the country compared to 20 years ago.
“It says we’re doing something wrong. You know, this is a period when we had a Black president elected twice. Yet you see that enormous decline in what people think about race relations in this country. So to me, that’s kind of a harbinger of what we’re looking at. And I attributed that directly to this relentless focus on identity politics, where we’re making people think only in group terms and not in terms of us as a nation,” Heycke said.
However, he remained optimistic, especially with the release of his book.
“I’m hoping that it will make people realize the importance of having a society that has a sense of unity and a sense of all being in it together,” Heycke said.
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“Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire” was released on Tuesday. Ahead of the release, the book received a positive review from Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson.
“Jens Kurt Heycke provides a much-needed, meticulously researched—and courageous—defense of the melting pot from classical antiquity to 21st-century America. His data and analyses show how and why the assimilationist model alone has always unified fractionalized ethnic and racial groups into a coherent national whole. Out of the Melting Pot, Into the Fire stands as a dire warning to beleaguered Western democracies that have foolishly rejected the melting pot that has so often proven the pathway to their survival and success,” Hanson wrote.
