Anti-immigrant book a hit in Germany

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: The Age

An anti-immigrant polemic written by a former central banker is among the Christmas best-sellers in Germany and its author has become a millionaire, according to media reports.

About 1.25 million copies of Thilo Sarrazin's Germany Does Itself In have been sold since its release in August, publisher DVA said.



Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/antiimmigrant-book-a-hit-in-germany-20101219-191w6.html

[MilesColtrane]

1. From time to time I think it is a very good thing that we still have military bases in Germany.

[AlphaCentauri]

2. We have our own Thilo Sarrazins around

they don't write books but they have the same Nazi feelings

[AlienGirl]

3. Some of them do write books...

http://www.amazon.com/Death-West-Populations-Immigrant-Civilization/dp/0312285485

[DetlefK]

4. Well, I am from Germany.

Germany definitely has come a long way from the Nazi days.

We have a green party ("Die Grünen") with poll numbers of 10-20%. What influence do environmentalists have in your country?

We have two liberal parties in Germany: The greens (left and liberal) and the free democrats ("FDP", free-market liberals, poll numbers 5-10%). What influence do liberals have in your country?

We have a Neo-Nazi party that has seats in various state parliaments, but never makes it above the 5% hurdle required for getting seats in the lower chamber of parliament. What influence do your Neo-Nazis wield?

We have 5 major parties, covering the the whole political spectrum from far-right to far-left. How much choice do you have as a voter?

In my lifetime, I have never heard Hitler- or Third Reich-analogies from the german media, when it came to politics. How obsessed is your media with this topic?






The book is about a simple immigration problem in Germany: Decades ago we invited them to come to our country. We thought they would eventually go away and didn't care about their future. Instead of integrating them into society, we ignored them and they built a parallel society for themselves. How do you fare in a school where you have no feeling for the culture and barely understand the language?

Thilo Sarrazin may have a point, but the main part of the blame rests with us Germans: The immigrants lived at the edge of society, because we failed to welcome them.

[savalez]

6. Good points DetlefK. Thanks.

[JVS]

7. The FDP is nothing to brag about having in your political culture.

[FrancisTreptoe]

24. At least those people have representation in their own government.

Unlike here in the U.S where you have two options.

[JVS]

25. They have representation in our government here in the US. That's the party for those who want to...

slash social programs and taxes. One of their bigwigs in their party suggested a 1 euro bounty on rats as a way for poor people to earn extra money. http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,596596,00.html

I'd vote for CDU before those assholes, because at least the CDU understands the idea of the Social-market economy.

[Bragi]

8. Thanks for that perspective /nt

[bhikkhu]

9. If we criticize Germany for that sort of thing -

I think it is largely because we have worse problems here. We may not have an overtly racist immigration policy, but all one has to do is turn on the news here to find thinly veiled racism beneath every immigration debate. If there is little overt racism in print or on the airwaves, there is no shortage of it anywhere else. My impression is that it has become much more acceptable in recent years to publicly hate minorities, and to justify that as a "traditional values" stance. All too familiar, for the historically aware...

So if we criticize Germany for having an anti-immigration bestseller, its not that we know anything of the conditions there generally, but that the conditions here are quite ripe to be much worse. Its nicer sometimes to pretend its someone else in the mirror.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[truedelphi]

13. Citizens in Germany have also sued NAT0 over the

Chemtrail Programs.

While here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, we cnanot even mention this "non-existant" problem!

[stevenleser]

22. You just did. And you can sue to your hearts content over just about anything no matter how crazy.nt

[apocalypsehow]

26. Is that a fact? How'd they make out?

[stevenleser]

27. Probably like Orly Taitz did here with her birtherism. Judges have little patience for paranoid

conspiracy theories.

[apocalypsehow]

28. I Googled around and all I could find was links to kook websites, about one German meteorologist who

apparently brought suit back into 2008. Given the fact that there is nothing beyond the reporting of the initial suit tells me that you are probably right: the first judge that laid eyes on it likely bounced it out of court - after he or she got finished laughing.

[RZM]

15. Good points

But to answer one of your questions, neo-Nazis have zero influence on politics here. None whatsoever. Their numbers are tiny and the only place they wield any influence at all is prison.

[Hardrada]

17. Good questions! The problem is the fact that we are much more right

than it would appear. Your conservatives are likely to the left of our Democrats or the majority of them anyway. Our far right would probably rate as monarchists in your political spectrum. I can't include fascists on the far right since they were/are more of a movement incorporating often conflicting ideas than they were members of a clearly defined bourgeois party as existed in the Weimar Republic or as exist here.

[devilgrrl]

18. Genau!

BTW, I was in Deutchland is past sommer.... Loved it!

[apocalypsehow]

23. Very well thought out reply, with much food for thought.

:thumbsup:

[golfguru]

10. yes, it is good thing to maintain those bases with loans from China

We Americans have 800 military bases around the world. A few decades
back we had positive foreign trade balance. Now we are borrowing money
like crazy from China and are $14 TRILLION in debt and a huge trade deficit.

But yes, we will maintain those bases in Germany so we can pay interest
to the Chinese for ever because we have no surplus money to pay off the
principal part of loan. We like screwing our future generations with debt
so that we can maintain 800 bases. We feel strong and mighty by doing that.

[molly77]

12. Fascism breeds in racist countries like Germany and the USA

[pampango]

5. "...scared his countrymen with unsophisticated analysis and a eugenics-based argument about...

native intelligence."

http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/panic-pseudoscience-and-muslim-immigration-25717/

Thilo Sarrazin’s notorious book about German immigration and population trends, Germany Does Away With Itself, rests on a simple bit of math. Immigrants are outbreeding native Germans, Sarrazin writes, and since Muslim immigrant laborers in particular have lower IQs than everyone else, Germany will get dumber.

“With higher relative fertility among the less intelligent,” the banker and politician writes, “the average intelligence of the main population will fall.”

Simple, right? He made it even simpler for the German press. “Through natural methods, we are growing dumber,” he told Welt Online over the summer, blaming an influx of immigrants “from Turkey, the Near and Middle East, and Africa.”

It’s an argument that anti-immigration forces make with dreary predictability, and on the surface it might seem logical. Sarrazin isn’t wrong that Muslim immigrants underperform other immigrants to Germany (as well as Germans themselves) in school and on IQ tests. It’s also a persistent problem in Europe that a fraction of the Muslim population gets fed up with Western life and turns inward, away from integration, toward fundamentalism and the sort of parallel societies that breed terrorism.

[cowcommander]

14. It's important to keep in mind that Germans are quite proud of their culture

They're actually quite strict about that. If you want to live in Germany, you've got to learn German, adopt German customs and behave like a German. Not so different from us, in a way.

[AlphaCentauri]

19. Germans have a well establish millenarian culture

while culture in the US still evolving not defined yet

[pampango]

20. True, but that Germany ever wanted or motivated immigrants to adapt to the culture/language.

They invited them as "guest workers" after WWII and never really viewed them as "immigrants" or potential "future Germans". Of course now, many Germans, particularly conservative ones like the author, wonder why Muslims never integrated that well.

[fascisthunter]

21. wuh? I didn't experience that there and I visit a lot

[Boojatta]

16. An anti-banker polemic could also become a bestseller in Germany ...

even if an immigrant to Germany writes it.