But civilised life, especially in countries with great ethnic and religious diversity, would soon break down if everyone felt free to say anything they liked to anyone.

What I'd like to know is WHY western Europe, which was already, natively and unsustainably, overpopulated, invited millions of Muslims and other immigrants to come and create a multiethnic society and melting pot, when, quite aside from the issue of overpopulation, this was bound to cause all sorts of social and political problems, especially in respect to social cohesion and national identity . . . ?!

WHY . . . . ??!!

The economic reasons (state and capital interest in cheap foreign labour) are well known, but they cannot alone account for this MADNESS.

What DOES account for it, I think (together with the economic reasons), is the state's, and with it, our political, social science, and media elites', interest in being able to claim the moral high ground for themselves by publicly displaying their "colourblindness" (indifference to ethnic difference) and "anti-racist" credentials (greatly enhanced in the aftermath of Nazi horrors, which state ideology of "colourblindness" was largely an overreaction to, as well as to the injustice and inhumanity of Jim Crow and Apartheid), thus strengthening state authority (power) and control over the population and giving huge political and professional advantage (over rivals) to those who embraced its racial ideology of multiethnic society and the melting pot.