Frank Ellis's classic 1999 essay for American Renaissance, republished February 22, 2026, remains a scorching indictment: multiculturalism isn't benign coexistence — it's a revolutionary ideology that mirrors Marxism in ambition, tactics, and endgame. Where classical Marxism sought to overthrow capitalism by pitting class against class, multiculturalism wages cultural and racial war to dismantle homogeneous Western societies, replacing them with bureaucratic control, enforced "equality," and ideological conformity. Ellis, a British scholar of Russian and Slavonic studies, draws direct lines from Soviet Communism to today's political correctness (PC), arguing both are utopian projects that demand total submission of thought, behaviour, and institutions.
Core Thesis: Multiculturalism as a Softer Totalitarianism
Ellis contends successful, enduring societies are racially and culturally homogeneous — no thriving civilisation has ever spontaneously embraced multiculturalism. Those pushing it either deny this reality or actively seek to subvert strong nations to impose centralised control. Like Marxism's promise of a classless paradise, multiculturalism sells a harmonious "diverse" utopia — but delivers conflict, resentment, and ever-expanding state power to manage it.
The key difference? Marxism used hard violence (gulags, purges); multiculturalism deploys a "gentler" tyranny via woke PC, anti-racism laws, sensitivity training, and social ostracism. Once internalised, no camps are needed — people self-censor and police each other like conditioned "zombies" or "PC-men."
Direct Parallels Between Multiculturalism and Marxism
Ellis maps the connections meticulously:
Collectivised Guilt and Group Enemies: Marxism branded entire classes (kulaks, bourgeoisie) as inherently guilty, justifying their destruction. Multiculturalism extends this to "whites," "men," "heterosexuals," or "Western culture" as oppressors by birth. "Racism" and "sexism" become original sins passed down generations — young whites today suffer preferences and vilification not for personal acts, but for belonging to a "guilty" group. Ellis quotes Robert Conquest on Soviet peasants: "not one of them was guilty of anything; but they belonged to a class that was guilty of everything."
Redefinition of Truth: Marxist "truth" was class-based — what served the proletariat was true. Multiculturalism grants infallibility to "oppressed" perspectives (feminist, black, gay, etc.), dismissing objective facts as "privileged" or "Eurocentric." Dissent becomes not error, but moral failing or mental illness — echoing Soviet psychiatry for dissidents.
Subversion of Institutions: Both infiltrate everywhere: education, media, judiciary, corporations. Judicial activism erodes rule of law; universities censor like Soviet commissars; media pushes "socialist realism" fantasies (wise black judges, genius minorities, degenerate whites) to show the world "as it ought to be," per Bertolt Brecht.
Political Correctness as Soviet Descendant: The term "political correctness" originated in 1920s Soviet usage ("politicheskaya pravil'nost'"). Mao's Cultural Revolution echoed in 1960s Western campuses via the Little Red Book. George Orwell's 1984 warning — "a Party member... should be able to spray forth the correct opinions as automatically as a machine gun" — describes today's automatic PC responses.
Utopian Engineering and War on the Past: Both reject tradition, history, and human nature for engineered perfection. Edmund Burke's critique of French revolutionaries fits: they have "no respect for the wisdom of others" and confidence only in their own novelty. Multiculturalism wages war on Western heritage, equating Shakespeare with rap as "equally valid," or repackaging Crime and Punishment as "Crime and Counseling."
Real-World Examples Ellis Cites
Vilification of race-realist scholars (Arthur Jensen, J. Philippe Rushton, Chris Brand) under hate-speech threats — intellectual terror without overt gulags.
Bureaucratic explosion to handle "racial disputes," denying race as a factor in outcomes.
White flight from diverse cities — proof multiculturalism doesn't deliver harmony.
Media role models borrowed from Soviet propaganda: idealised minorities, demonised traditional whites.
Conclusion: The Road to Hell — and Potential Backlash
Ellis warns multiculturalism, like Soviet Communism, defends its "paradise" at all costs, leading to constant conflict and suppression. It may collapse like the USSR (from internal contradictions), but not before immense damage. The West underestimates it at peril — outcomes could include racial partition (as Michael Hart suggested) or outright race war, especially in the U.S. as the key battleground.
From a race-realist, conservative vantage, Ellis's piece exposes multiculturalism not as tolerance, but as cultural Marxism reloaded: same absolutist drive to erase distinctions, same demand for ideological purity, same collectivisation of guilt. It thrives on division to justify control, perverts Western moral language against itself, and unlike failed economic Marxism, operates through "soft" cultural hegemony that Westerners are slow to recognise as tyranny.
The essay's revival in 2026 underscores its enduring relevance: as mass migration accelerates and woke PC tightens, the Marxist-multicultural link isn't conspiracy — it's observable pattern. Homogeneous societies built the West's prosperity and freedom; forced diversity dismantles them. The choice: defend natural cohesion or watch engineered utopia become dystopia. Ellis leaves no doubt which path leads where.
https://www.amren.com/news/2026/02/multiculturalism-and-marxism-2/