German chancellor agitates against immigrants

[Hannah Bell]

Two months ago, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and chair of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), sought to distance herself from the racist positions put forward by then-German Central Bank official Thilo Sarrazin in his book Germany is Abolishing Itself. At the time, Merkel declared that Sarrazin’s theses were “of little help and counterproductive.”

Since then, Merkel has joined Sarrazin’s campaign. Last weekend, she told a conference of Christian Democratic youth that multicultural society in Germany was dead. “This multicultural approach has failed, utterly failed,” she told the cheering careerists and social climbers present as delegates of the CDU’s youth movement.

The chairman of the Bavarian-based Christian Social Union (CSU), Horst Seehofer, went even further and declared that Germany was not a pro-immigration country and there should be no relaxation of its restrictive immigration policy. “We of the CSU,” he declared, “are in favour of a German Leitkultur (dominant culture) and oppose multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is dead.”

This denial of the right of people of different cultures, religions and national origins to live together on the basis of equality recalls the blackest chapter in German history...The language has changed. The “body of the German people” has been replaced by “German Leitkultur.” Instead of Jews, it is Muslims who are subjected to discrimination. But the content remains the same...

These are not empty threats. In the coming week the German cabinet will decide on a law on forced marriages and on those who refuse to “integrate..." The debate on immigration and “integration” is even more sinister when one considers that Germany has a higher rate of emigration than immigration. Every year more people leave the country than the number of people who come to live in it. Industry groups are complaining of a lack of skilled labour and demanding access to highly qualified foreign workers.

So what lies behind Merkel’s change of course? Why is the campaign against the supposed “foreign infiltration” of the country assuming ever more hysterical forms?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/oct2010/merk-o22.shtml

[Cid_B]

1. Germans are tired of it...

... and those comments from Merkel may be the tipping point.

[leveymg]

2. Bigotry is big this year. It's sweeping the world like the flu. Some here at DU are infected.

There are those who would rather the public were divided against itself and fear the stranger than focus on the Uber-monied few who bled the rest dry.

[maryf]

3. K&R nt

[Starry Messenger]

4. k & r