"German multicultural society has failed" - Merkel

[joea]

Might as well make my first political post after a long absence a hot topic.

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel: "lmmigrants should learn to speak German"
Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.
She said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate - including learning German.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559451

I say good for her, I support immigration and like learning about different culutres but the pendulum has gone too far to accepting everything. My folks were all for integrating and both speak fluent English and French (as they emigrated to Quebec before moving out to the West Coast). I speak pretty good French living here even though I am not Swiss and have picked up a bit of German as well. Most of all, while every society has some diversity of customs there has to be common principles that everyone abides by.

[tater]

"Melting pot" FTW.

"Multiculturalism" didn't need to be coined as a word when they already had the right word ready to use: "Balkanization."

Immigration should be a contract. The nation taking the immigrants promises to treat the newcomers fairly, and as valued members of society—they promise the immigrants that after the process is complete, they are no different than a family that has been there for centuries. In return, the immigrants have the responsibility to integrate themselves into that society as well as they can. If they have values that are fundamentally at odds with that nation, they should in good faith not bother immigrating there. If it is found that a significant % of applicants from a certain country fail to integrate acceptably, then the quotas from those states should be slashed (and the applicants vetted for factors that improve their chances of integration), or even cut to zero.

[SteamWake]

Only now they realize this??

Whats that saying about closing the barn door after the horses have left?

[Oberon]

I wondered when someone would post about this...this is going to be a long thread, so I should imagine the time to get a pot of tea on the boil is now.

I suspect that Germany will face a lot of flak for this statement, and the Nazi card will be played very early on, if it hasn't been played already. However, the simple truth of the matter is...IMHO anyway...she's right. It's a very rare case that two or more cultures can exist side by side without one trying to dominate the other. It takes a brave person to speak out against the crowd of those who are determined to make it work even to the point of condemning anyone who says that it cannot, however will this lone voice in the EU crowd of multiculturalists be heard? I doubt it, and it will be washed away in the next German election, however I suspect that it will be just the first voice as we approach the balancing point. We had one gentleman, many years ago, called Enoch Powell, who made a speech which has become quite famous, and which I reckon will get some more air time before the century is out, and it was dubbed the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, the full text of it is below:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3...od-speech.html

Naturally, this speech was jumped upon by the far-right and as such has oft been derided by those who would distance themselves from such people in the wake of National Socialist Germany and the Second World War. It is a hot speech, and anyone who quotes from it or aligns themselves with it is often derided and/or forced to resign because in 'modern society' you are dictated that you must believe in multi-culturalism or you are a denounced as racist and/or right-wing.
Where will it all end? No-one can possibly know, but perhaps there will be Rivers of blood...

[August]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Only now they realize this?

Teddy Roosevelt had the right idea:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.

But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all.

We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...

We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

[Schroeder]

I was actually pretty surprised that any German politician would have the guts to say that out loud (though it wasn't until Mr. Sarrazin wrote a controversial book about that topic that sparked the discussion about this in Germany). I hope it's more than just rhetoric this time and that something is really done about that problem, but I'm actually not holding my breath.

[Skybird]

One has to see that in the current situational context. In Germany, we have had a series of book releases in the past months, namely "Das Ende der Geduld" by a judge for youth crimes reporting about the pointlessness of current criminological and legal sanctions against the very intense crime rates and brutality amongst Arab and Turkish juveniles (the judge meanwhile has commited suicide), the debate about former Federal Bank director Thilo Sarrazin's book "Deutschland schafft sich ab" where he fires a full broadside of official federal statistics illustrating that Muslim migratiuon causes Germany more problems than gains, and a general debate about the increasingly growing problem of mobbing, violence and discrimination against German students at public schools with sufficient numbers of Muslim/Araba/Turkish kids so that they can form dominating subgroups and gangs that terrorise German boys and girls and even teachers.

This debate has led to alarming signs of self-censorship that certain political and ideological groups demand in order to "solve" these problems by making it a collective obligation to ignore them and to beautify them. However, it seems a majpoirty of Germans i no longer buying it, having opposed and spoken out against politician's usual habit to nice-talk these porblems, inmstead giving immense support to Islam-critics and migration-critics. You also have to know that different to several other Wetsern nations, Germany alloed un discriminated migration, not selecting in advance what kind of specialists and educated people it could need, and what not. This led to most migrants coming to Germany not becasue they have educational specialisation to offer, but to participate in the enjoying of the benefits and sopcial caretaking of the German social system (statistics show this very clearly.) Sarrazin has won enomous popularity with his book (becoming the best sold non-fictional bestseller in Germany after the war!), and now politicians of the former conservative parties (that has moved massiovely away from conservatism in the Merkel-years in an attempt to win the left voters) see that people threaten to leave them standing alone in the rain. So they now try to gain back a stand in the shift of public opinion by first having chracater-assassinated Sarrazin, which did not work too well, and now leaving him alone and using his statements for their own causes. It is obvious that "multikulti" in Germany has failed with regard to Muslim parallel-societies that have formed up instead of integrating. Whether or not these new slogans by Merkel and Seehofer are something more than just lip-confessions born by mere opportunism, remains to be seen.

That the debate on Muslim migration alreadsy is mixed with a debate oin migration in general, is not helpful. Both groups do not compare, we have no problems with migration in general, only with that fromMuslim countries, namely Araba countries and - dominating - Turkey. Turkey on it'S behalf has understood that the winds are chnaging too. Just two years ago, EWrdoighan has publicly demanded in Cologne that Turks in Germany should stay Turkish and should reject integration, now all of a sudden he and Gül pick new words, saying that Turks should integrate, and now should learn German fluidly and without accent (what two years ago they had called a crime against humanity). They realise that they are in danger of loosing influence, since Germany jast has started at three universities to offer courses to educate and qualiufy German-raised Imams (so far they are being sent in by the Turkish ministry of religion and do not speak German in most cases, nor do they know the country, and Gewrman authorities do not control at all who it is that they are letting in).

That the debate on seeking asylum also is not kept separate from that on Muslim migration and lacking will to integrate in Germany, also is not helpful, nor is it that the political left and the islamophile appeasers once again try to gag the disucssion, and using the rethorical overkill weapon of accusing everybody critical of these things of right-winged extremism, Nazism and racism. What these people want is a German, pro-islamic Jacobin tyranny, regulating strictly what is a,llowed not only to say, but to think. The witch-hunting against Sarrazin has represented such an excess that so far is beyond any example in German history.

70-80% of Germans, so say polls from this year, are strictly against EU-membership of Turkey. One half up to two thirds consider Islam to be a threat and incompatible with the value system of the German constitution.

Europe-wide, there seem to have started a ciounter-movement against the leftistg opinion tyranny of welcoming Islam at all cost, no mmater how high. In several European countries, citizenS initiatives have formed up, forming a front against any more mosqeues and more Muslim migrants. Conservative small parties that are critical of Islam, also some right-.wionged poarties, have scored in national elections and now sit in parliaments. In Holland, meanwhile, the state attorney has skipped all chrages against Geert Wilders, which to rtaise was not his idea anyway, but a rule by a former court's judge who ordered the current trail, overruling a former setence to free Wilders of all the hilarious charges. If the current court follows the state attorney's demand, Wilders will be cleaned of all charges that mistake criticism of a religion with hate crime. On German radio, I heared some useful idiot from some pro-Islamic organisation in Holland already pointing out that freeing Wilders would violate the new EU laws that have been explcitly designed to protect Islam from any form of criticism and questions, and that one would then file a case on the crime of hate speech against Wilders directly at a European court. Actually, this Islamic activist is correct, any Dutch decision to end the Wilders case would villate EU laws indeed - which only shows how inane and totally brain-damaged these EU laws are.

Germany is no racist country, and it is no antri-migration country. A new advertisement over here reads : "our chancellor is female, our foreign minister is gay, our minister of health is Vietnamese". One could add one of our minister presidents is Scottish, and several Turks are holding high offices in the established parties, both on national level and on level of federal states.

I, and most of us, welcome migrants fro other countries - if they are willing to fully integrate instead of sticking to their own cults and habits, and if they have something to offer that our economy needs. We do not welcome people that are unedaucted, do not want to learn and do not want to integrate and instead want to stick with, if not even spread Islam. We need specialised talents. We do not need and can noit afford anymore even more loads of social wellfare-benefitters that represent the social low class even in their own coutnries, and that stay to be that in Germany - at the cost of the community. And that is what the statistics tell us, that is what what differs migrants from China, Japan, Korea, from migrants from Turkey, Albania, Afghanistan. Yes, there are some Turks hwho became successful businessmen and employers. But these example of success and integration and good will towards Germany, are not the rule amongst Turks - they are the rare exception. And that is what is part of the problem.

[SteamWake]

What you dont seem to get is that 'extreme' Muslims do not want to 'intergrate' into whatever culture they are currently in.

In fact quite the opposite they wish for YOU to intergrate into their culture and embrace Sharia law. There is no room for comprimise in their point of view.

[tater]

The PEW study on US Muslims concluded (their headline) that US muslims were "mostly middle class, and mostly mainstream." They were of course completely wrong in the headline. By "mostly mainstream" they apparently decided that if 51%+ of respondents had the "right" (meaning typical American opinion) answer they were therefore mostly mainstream. The problem is that they had only slight majority opinions on ideas where the US population at large has nearly unanimous opinion—like what they think of bin laden, for example. In order to judge vs the population at large, they need a control study that looks at the population at large.

My take is that many do integrate, but many (too many) do not. It would be very useful for INS to study integration as a function of country of origin (since simply using religion is unconstitutional). Religion can be A factor, but not THE factor (same as race may be used as A factor and still avoid quota charges). Look at all immigrants, and set some integration norms. If people from a certain country don't integrate, close immigration from that country, or radically cut the quota, and vet every applicant. In this case you'd be looking for secularists trying to escape their repressive societies, probably.

[Jimbuna]

That was one brave statement to make and one I suspect the majority of German nationals subscribe to.....perhaps replicated throughout most of the western world

[krashkart]

Interesting times ahead.

[Alex]

And France is in the same state. With the exception that no one in here got Merkel's balls (erm) to express his ideas that way.
UTTER shame on our politics.

I wish there was more than the mediterranean/Gibraltar between Africa and western Europe, and more than a few radical countries (when it comes to immigration) between the Middle East and us.

[nikimcbee]

Might as well make my first political post after a long absence a hot topic.

Welcome back

Now just to get our dopes in office to realize that

[Rockstar]

Granted one immediately thinks of the past when we read about things like this. But does it really mean the past will come back to haunt us once again? I bet big money it will not as most Germans are ashamed to be German and are all too willing hate themselves for the sins of their fathers. There just doesn’t seem to exist a culture where a nationalist movement could take off. Oh there might be a some civil unrest between Germans and Turks in the near future. But most likely the good Germans will just debate and complain beyond measure, but in the end nothing will be done and the Fatherland will just fade away with just a small reminder when the name is changed to Germanistan.

[gimpy117]

I think the main problem is that Muslims want to move away from the turmoil and strife THEY have created, But do not feel as if they should have to change one bit in their new country. Actually, quite the opposite, they feel the new place should change to accommodate them. With all the strife these Muslims have caused in Europe, This statement from Germany does not come as a surprise.

I go to Western Michigan University In the U.S.A, recently, I've seen more and more women with their faces covered in burqua style garb. I can't say I'm too happy about it. It stands as a symbol for oppression of women; something that we in America have worked to end for so long. I would suppose that this all comes with a hint of xenophobia, but then again, the whole idea of coming to america is adopting our culture, not the other way around. I would actually support a ban of the burqua here in the US. too. It's clearly against our freedoms for a man to expect his significant other to wear one.