They make exceptions for some secessionist movements, but these are also nationalist movements anyway Most multiculturalists, for example, would reject the claim of a person born in the Republic of Ireland, to consider themselves British. Yet for some time after Irish independence there was a small Unionist party seeking Ireland's reincorporation into Britain. As time passed, the equation of southern Irish with Republic of Ireland citizenship became accepted as natural and self-evident. For centuries there was a Burgundian state in Europe, yet there are no classes in Burgundian culture for immigrants in Amsterdam, and there are no Burgundian-Americans. Cultural nationalism is about present politics, not ancient memory, although it uses that memory as an instrument.
Multiculturalism internalises the nationalist world order in each nation state.
Any such system would probably collapse under its own absurdity, but that does not stop the multiculturalists trying to implement it. Since the first version of this summary, it has become academically acceptable to criticise multiculturalism, from the cosmopolitan point of view. Cultural cosmopolitans denounce the exaggeration of differences between cultures, and emphasise common elements. But here, the cure is worse than the disease. Yet the discredited race doctrines were themselves a biological variant of older doctrines of ethno-cultural identity.