A conversation with Germans
Andrew, an American who lives in Europe, sent this revealing account of German attitudes regarding Turkey and the EU, non-European immigration, and Israel. The sense I get from Andrew’s description is of the Germans as a morally crippled people, a people incapable of embracing some of the most basic aspects of nationhood, such as protecting their borders, because of the association with Nazism that any authoritative or exclusionary state action has in the German mind. As I read it I thought, “Thanks again, Adolf, for ruining Europe and the white West.”
I just returned to Munich from a trip to a small north German town near Hanover called Minden, where I spent Christmas with friends. I got into a discussion about the future of Germany and Europe should Turkey be admitted in the EU and confirmed a few things in my mind. One, most Germans are seriously against the entry of Turkey. I have not met one German yet that says this is good. But the reason given is usually economic and the example is the tens of millions annually in aid to the former DDR with no results. But probe a bit deeper and the group I was speaking revealed (as is typical) that as Germans, they vigorously cannot restrict immigration because of their fascist past.
It is the reason given why Germany must be as open as possible to all the thousands of Turkish and Third World Moslems who the Group of 8 said they know makes up the bulk of German immigration. But despite the example of Berlin, which was given by a gentleman who described being lost among a sea of unreadable Islamic signs in a suburb there, he continued to state that this was the cost of their past and framed the argument in economic terms not at all cultural. I won’t go into details about his views on Israel, but he blames a Sharon visit to the temple Mount a while back as the cause of the intifida. I told him that as I understood it, this “conflict” cannot be won by any agreements in the strictly diplomatic sense because it was an Islamic war of offensive jihad. He did finally say that the Arabs certainly appear to hate the Jews and nothing less than their removal from the region will do. As for the Islam’s violent past, he unleashed the “Crusades argument” to point out the evil past of Christianity.
Finally, gasps were heard when my friend announced to the group that I am against ALL Moslems and blame them for being terrorists. I am used to this sort of attack, but my friend caught me a bit off guard. I said that this was not true and only wished to control or restrict immigration of Third Worlders into Europe and America. One man took my example of Col. Moammar Quaddafi’s recent warning of Turkey as a Trojan horse and said, “are you saying ALL Moslems are Trojan horses?” I said “no but look at every region where a large percentage of them concentrate and what does that tell you?” He was not aware of Indonesia for example being predominantly Hindu before the first arrivals of Moslem traders, now it is the largest Moslem nation. Anyway, when pressed to explain what I would do to stop immigration, I said police the borders and the usual common sense things, that remark was not appreciated I think because Germans are so sensitive to any imagery of guard dogs, towers and anything associated with securing a border.
The kicker was when I pointed out what I had learned from others recently, that Minden, a postcard like hamlet, once characterized by thirty milk farms and two churches, one 1000 years old and the other 800 years old has a growing problem with immigration. A section of the city has become a dangerous enclave for what the local homeowners describe as Russian and Albanian newcomers that have brought with them the first gun battles, killings and robberies to this area. To that I was told that this was indeed true and that I was correct about immigration because they are witnessing the problems firsthand.
My impression of this experience is that people are not willing to reveal their true feeling about certain issues because they simply fear being branded intolerant. Even as their village is Balkanized these acquaintances were hell-bent on doing the multicultural posturing that they themselves refuse to reject.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2004 11:49 AM | Send