Okin’s article gave rise to intense debate, which was later published in book form, to which even one of multiculturalism’s earliest introducers contributed, the Canadian professor of political philosophy Will Kymlicka, whose 1995 work MulticulturalCitizenship placed its then only 33-year-old author in very hot waterI think if you mean ’got him in trouble’, then ’hot water’ would be the right translation.I think if you mean ’got him in trouble’, then ’hot water’ would be the right translation..

Those who today recount this 1999 debate, still marvel at how little impact Okin’s critique had over the following decade. Still today we see renowned Swedish feminists condone honour-related violence, while they rage over the lack of female representation on company boards. Young immigrant women who ‘fall down’ from balconies are considered to be expressions of the same gender power arrangements, like Swedish boys playing war games and dressing in blue. Read the blogs of renowned Swedish Feminists anytime, and you will find that the latter upsets a lot more than the former.

Kymlicka, despite Okin’s many hard-hitting observations about multiculturalism justifying the oppression of women in minority cultures, still had a point in the debate when he argued that feminism has more in common with multiculturalism than Okin acknowledged. Both feminism and multiculturalism consider there to be a problem that the liberal social model maintains certain traditional power structures. This means that, for feminists, as well as for multiculturalists, it is not enough that all individuals in the community receive the same individual rights. Both in feminism and multiculturalism, one believes to the contrary, Have I understood this correctly?Have I understood this correctly?that there are underlying structures in different social settings (in families, workplaces, educational institutions and so on) that perpetuate prejudice and influence individuals to act in a way that reinforces traditional inequalities – between men and women as well as between representatives of different cultures.

In both cases, one assumes that human behaviour is determined more by the fact that they are part of a collective than that they are individuals. So one is assumed, in any given context, to identify with the male community and act in order to strengthen its position. It is assumed, then, that it is easier for me to appreciate a male poet of ancient Greece, than it is for a contemporary female fiction writer who lives next door. But what if the male poet lived 700 years ago and was of Persian origin? Do I value him higher than the neighbouring woman, because he and I are of the same sex? Or rather, do I rather appreciate the woman more because she and I are part of the Swedish culture? And what if the ancient Greek poet had a different sexual preference than myself, while the Persian poet had the same?

Which collective identity is, to put it simply, strongest? That of being Swedish? Or being a man? Or being heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual? In recent times, this kind of collectivist thought model has infiltrated a large part of society – especially in the media and the educational orthodoxy. There it is remarkably controversial to claim that my appreciation of the great masterpieces in philosophy, science, literature, art history, music history and so on, is based on its inherent qualities which I appreciate, and therefore which did not originate in my belonging to this or that collective.

This speaks volumes about both how much impact multiculturalist thinking has actually had, and how multiculturalist thinking is part of a larger thought-conglomerate, which states that we are predestined to think and act according to our membership of various collectives. It is also based on the idea that the power structures that exist between these collectives must be offset, so that we as individuals can act freely and independently.

When you listen to the young Islamists who seem marinated in Mattias Gardell’s type of thinking, or young Swedish university students that have turned against the Enlightenment tradition that has guided the development of Europe to date, one can naturally become depressed. But one can also see it as proof that we are not predestined to think in a certain way on the basis of the culture from which we originate. On the contrary, it shows that we are free individuals who are able to transcend our cultural conditions and act in accordance with individually developed preferences and knowledge.

But multiculturalism’s vision of separate enclaves that shut people in boxes, inside which everyone is expected to think alike, is rejected not only by how people actually act and function. It is also on a collision course with the dream of a multicultural society brought about by us changing and evolving through the slow-acting influences from other cultures.

Enclaves of like-minded collectivists, or meeting places for freethinking individuals? That is the choice Angela Merkel and David Cameron are talking about.