Merkel: German multiculturalism has failed

Former German central banker Thilo Sarrazin was forced to resign over a book he wrote in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.
B92

It was madam Merkel who said Sarrazin's remarks were "completely unacceptable" and urged the Bundesbank to act and sack him from the bank's board.Now the chickens are coming back to roost.

It's clear the immigration that Merkel talks about is from islamic countries.Her remarks also demolishes Merkel's and the EU's naive self-deception about moderate
islam.

There is not such a religion called moderate islam.There's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet.

The Western mind-set — that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away — is delusional. The EU has been trying to appease Islam with
free for all immigration
but we are heading for a
terrible confrontation between fascist Islam and the new political parties gaining power in europe who will step in when the Eurocrats fail to do so… This is the beginning of a challenge with no possible compromise.

In restropect iam glad by Merkel's admission that multiculturism is dead and burried.

Luckily you have created Kosovo and Bosnia as a true multicultural societies. You should come and learn how its possible to live together in harmony and peace.

"Merkel: German multiculturalism has failed"

And this is surprising for a people who once wanted to create a pure Aryan race for themselves?

As they say, old habits die hard .......

The hypocrites from the EU are acknowledging their failed immigration experiment, yet still want to impose it on others, as in N. Kosovo and Bosnia. The new EU foreign policy towards none member state is, "Why should you have it better than us?".

Germany is very good at destroying multicultural states but a failure at building them.

I think people here are assuming that multiculturalism is the same as immigration. It’s not. Chancellor Merkel wasn’t talking about immigration per say. She was referring to the notion that immigrants could retain all aspects of their culture, language or religion, without absorbing any German language/culture/customs, and yet become fully integrated members of the German society. Multiculturalism sought to promote equality as it avoided any idea that “my religion/culture/language is better than yours”. Multiculturalism sought to place all on an equal footing. So there are clearly good intentions with this policy.

However, what Merkel was saying is nothing new. She is saying that if immigrants cannot integrate they will have no chance of equality. If they cannot participate in democratic process dues to language barriers or barriers caused by culture or religion, then the immigrants will remain marginal in society, and not integrated within society. This places integration as the key objective. The move from multiculturalism to integrationalsim is already policy in many countries – France, UK, USA, Australia to name but a few. It is supported by immigrant groups who see for themselves that when people cannot integrate; they cannot prosper. In the UK, the leader of the conservative party (part of the ruling coalition) in the upper house is a Muslim woman born in Pakistan but raised in UK and who supports integration. She says integration helped her to prosper. Whatever you think of his politics, Obama in USA is a beneficiary of integration – the child of an African father who prospered by integrating with the host culture. Integration does not mean abandoning ones own language/culture/religion. But it does require an expectation to work within the framework of the host language/culture/religion.

So please, no more immigrant bashing. Germany is not looking to close down immigration; merely to enable more integrated and prosperous lives for those who have already immigrated and for those who seek immigrate there in the future (including, I daresay, some from the Balkans).

Peace and respect to all

GRUK

It's a bit of an exaggeration and of course completely ignores the laissez faire attitude of such countries towards immigrants for decades.

For a long time said governments ignored polygamy for decades (france for example) practiced by immigrants, women were kept at home and didn't/weren't allowed to learn the language of the country, teenagers are still being taken 'on holiday' only to be married off and never return to school (UK) etc.. Merkel and these people are being deeply disingenous and hypocritical. Blame starts at home.

wau.what a change!

This is true with all western countries, because of their liberal immigration policies of the past. All I can say is, you reap what you sow. Now, you have to live with these policies, Frau Merkel, or start deporting, like the French. Or, just learn to enjoy hummus and baklava. They go well with bier.

Minor cultural point (picking up on an earlier posting):

You can only go back to square one - there is no square zero!

This derives from early radio commentary of football, where they issued a grid in the newspapers. A back pass could be back to either square one or square two (or seven or eight at the other end of the field).

so thats meen multicultural europe-national state :0-1? end of E.U. ? germany break the dream ??? blue comunism is ending?

Well, actually Merkel and her CDU/CSU failed to create a multicultural society in Germany.

interest declaration , the first mooooove for Deutchland to breakaway from E.U. ??? wait and see

"Merkel: German multiculturalism has failed"

And this is surprising for a people who once wanted to create a pure Aryan race for themselves?

As they say, old habits die hard .......
(lowe, 17 October 2010 16:25)

Has nothing to do with it. The "Aryan" thing is luckily dead ad buried, except the few idiots (see their Serbian "colleagues" recently active in Genoa, totally unrepresentative for Serbia).

I would rather say: as bad things in Serbia do look sometimes - the current president there and also Josipovic in Croatia are above the average low-life in many other countries. Looks for me, Germany has now below-average luck with that lady.

This is less a compliment to Josipovic and Tadic, it is more a critic towards their colleagues.

"If there is no fish season, the crayfish is a fish than"

But sure, no one speaks now about the FDJ past. Everyone knows, Ms. Merkel was a daughter of a pastor and was at big disadvantage.

OMG, she was prosecuted so hard, she had to meet her future husband in St. Petersburg (than-Leningrad) where both spent Summer as interns, paid by the State. The life was sometimes very hard in DDR. Not a great fan of their regime, but who had OK results in the school could get such "prosecution" relatively easily. Sure, Ms. Merkel is VERY smart. I do not mean at the same time, she is VERY honest tough, that is a very rare find in a politician.

"There is not such a religion called moderate islam.There's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet. "


-- There is not such a religion called a moderate religion.There's really only one dogma for all religions, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet.


There fixed it for you. It applies to all religions.

Multiculturalism works extremely well in communities where good jobs ( = meaningful, creative job opportunities allowing decent living, not necessary RICH jobs!) are abundant.

Multiculturalism does not work in communities plagued by lack of such jobs... or even worse, ANY jobs.

This applies to small communities as a company (or even family!) and large communities as a country.

Now, Ms. Merkel - you want to tell us, Germany as a country is a failure? It is somewhat of big overstatement and if it would be the case (luckily, it's not!) - than who should to resign over that failure?

OK, so Germany is not a failure. But than... such statements should come from a "Wendehals". So we are again back to the square zero. What you did for the country? Am I right to recall, you were asking for "mehr Überwachung" communicating with your STASI superiors at the time you were a local FDJ activist? Yikes...

IUPM

Hypocrites are those who act differently from what they preach. Now as they will act similarly, they will stop being hypocrites.

to Probabis:

The immigration issue has nothing to do with the the contrast between the EU and the constituting member states as nations. I believe you agree that most problems immigrants pose are not coming from another member state, but from outside Europe, with completely different habits and values, with complete rejection of the values of the host society.

Rest assured, Merkel did not target Portuguese or Polish "immigrant" scientists refusing to colletc their garbage selectively in differently coloured garbage bags. The problem is deeper rooted, from outside Europe.

"The hypocrites from the EU are acknowledging their failed immigration experiment, yet still want to impose it on others, as in N. Kosovo and Bosnia. The new EU foreign policy towards none member state is, "Why should you have it better than us?"."
(IUPM, 17 October 2010 17:19)

Who immigrated to Bosnia or Northern Kosovo? "Immigration is the introduction of new people into a habitat or population"

Ataman's got a point about the relationship between the need for workers and the tolerance of foreigners - it's obvious enough here in the U.S., at least.

An interesting point: Merkel said that it was the refusal to integrate that was the problem, not the shear number of foreigners in the country, and called for restrictions on Turkish and Arabic immigrants. Nothing about the equally-Muslim citizens of Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo. I'm not sure whether this is because, as speakers of an Indoeuropean language they learn German more easily, or because as fellow-Europeans they are simply more acceptable in a European society.

Another point from the same article - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed - Germany continues to need an additional 400,000 skilled workers a year and is considering easing restrictions for such people.

With the new insurance legislation making health care available to just about everybody for the first time, we'll be needing more doctors in the U.S., too (hint).

Amer,

Yes, of course I was having companies of Silicon valley in my mind I was working for. If I would refuse to work with one of my bosses because he had Slovak background while parts of my family are from Hungary - everyone would think, I need a doctor.

During a professional meeting with chip specialists originally from Egypt I had a 30-minute political discussion about Middle East. We came laughing to a common ground over a tea during the 30 minutes and continued with the serious and difficult stuff (SATA interface), leaving the easy one (Palestinian problem) to the idiots in posh chairs, black limousines and salary much higher than ours.

They are sure idiots because they can't solve the problem in last 70 years what we solved in 30 minutes. I wonder, what these idiots would do with my SATA or now USB problems.

Otherwise old habits die hard, Merkel is a good FDJ girl, she has no objections about brother countries ;-)

(BTW: Berlin is a huge Vietnamese city, talking about an other brother country - and that nation is not mentioned either).

No one in FDJ was talking about Turkey being a brother country. As usual she is trying to flow with the stream and at the same time not to curse her past very much.

Very-very "politically correct" and smart girl.

In any case, everyone here can relax, neither Albanians nor Serbs are affected. Not even Russians or Ukrainians or Poles (all fall well in the "brother country" category, so we are done with them).

Just the base message is wrong, that's the problem. And even bigger problem is that job question.

Probabis

Believe me, I know the Dublin Treaty more than I need to, thanks to my studies and my profession. I still think (although I am not German) that the problem in Germany is not those few hundreds, or couple of thousands Roma campers, coming from inside EU. The same goes for France, the deportation of those shady characters is a makeshift action to send a message to those representing the real probem in that collapsing "multicultural" French society. Similarly, I do not think that the rioters are discontent Romanian nurses or Estonian waiters working in Paris...

to mr HURZ : read dublin agreement about emigrants , lets remember declaration of mr Sarkozy about roma E.U. CITIZENS, thats the meening lets start with outside emigrants and finish with inside emiigrants, yes i agree with you interest society our nazi society , first tuesday of octomber european council have vote low anyone who is expresing his contrary opinion in public against majority he is considering extremist so we all here(in the near future1-2 years from now) when we will expess our contrary opinion to the majority we will be considered extremist so bye bye comments on b92 or other commments , thats the values of the host society NAMED blue communism/NAZI . i strongly suggest to reconsider and reevaluate youre opinion

maybe, i think that the problem in germany are the germans which they are trying to playback re-write re-type the "old germany" and they will loose for 3thrd time , lets play back history... , where are you from??

Luckily you have created Kosovo and Bosnia as a true multicultural societies. You should come and learn how its possible to live together in harmony and peace.

"There is not such a religion called moderate islam.There's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet. "


-- There is not such a religion called a moderate religion.There's really only one dogma for all religions, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet.


There fixed it for you. It applies to all religions.

maybe, i think that the problem in germany are the germans which they are trying to playback re-write re-type the "old germany" and they will loose for 3thrd time , lets play back history... , where are you from??

Multiculturalism works extremely well in communities where good jobs ( = meaningful, creative job opportunities allowing decent living, not necessary RICH jobs!) are abundant.

Multiculturalism does not work in communities plagued by lack of such jobs... or even worse, ANY jobs.

This applies to small communities as a company (or even family!) and large communities as a country.

Now, Ms. Merkel - you want to tell us, Germany as a country is a failure? It is somewhat of big overstatement and if it would be the case (luckily, it's not!) - than who should to resign over that failure?

OK, so Germany is not a failure. But than... such statements should come from a "Wendehals". So we are again back to the square zero. What you did for the country? Am I right to recall, you were asking for "mehr Überwachung" communicating with your STASI superiors at the time you were a local FDJ activist? Yikes...

Germany is very good at destroying multicultural states but a failure at building them.

"Merkel: German multiculturalism has failed"

And this is surprising for a people who once wanted to create a pure Aryan race for themselves?

As they say, old habits die hard .......

This is true with all western countries, because of their liberal immigration policies of the past. All I can say is, you reap what you sow. Now, you have to live with these policies, Frau Merkel, or start deporting, like the French. Or, just learn to enjoy hummus and baklava. They go well with bier.

The hypocrites from the EU are acknowledging their failed immigration experiment, yet still want to impose it on others, as in N. Kosovo and Bosnia. The new EU foreign policy towards none member state is, "Why should you have it better than us?".

wau.what a change!

"Merkel: German multiculturalism has failed"

And this is surprising for a people who once wanted to create a pure Aryan race for themselves?

As they say, old habits die hard .......
(lowe, 17 October 2010 16:25)

Has nothing to do with it. The "Aryan" thing is luckily dead ad buried, except the few idiots (see their Serbian "colleagues" recently active in Genoa, totally unrepresentative for Serbia).

I would rather say: as bad things in Serbia do look sometimes - the current president there and also Josipovic in Croatia are above the average low-life in many other countries. Looks for me, Germany has now below-average luck with that lady.

This is less a compliment to Josipovic and Tadic, it is more a critic towards their colleagues.

"If there is no fish season, the crayfish is a fish than"

But sure, no one speaks now about the FDJ past. Everyone knows, Ms. Merkel was a daughter of a pastor and was at big disadvantage.

OMG, she was prosecuted so hard, she had to meet her future husband in St. Petersburg (than-Leningrad) where both spent Summer as interns, paid by the State. The life was sometimes very hard in DDR. Not a great fan of their regime, but who had OK results in the school could get such "prosecution" relatively easily. Sure, Ms. Merkel is VERY smart. I do not mean at the same time, she is VERY honest tough, that is a very rare find in a politician.

Former German central banker Thilo Sarrazin was forced to resign over a book he wrote in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society.
B92

It was madam Merkel who said Sarrazin's remarks were "completely unacceptable" and urged the Bundesbank to act and sack him from the bank's board.Now the chickens are coming back to roost.

It's clear the immigration that Merkel talks about is from islamic countries.Her remarks also demolishes Merkel's and the EU's naive self-deception about moderate
islam.

There is not such a religion called moderate islam.There's really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God and whose main aim is to expand on every corner of this planet.

The Western mind-set — that if we respect them, they’re going to respect us, that if we indulge and appease and condone and so on, the problem will go away — is delusional. The EU has been trying to appease Islam with
free for all immigration
but we are heading for a
terrible confrontation between fascist Islam and the new political parties gaining power in europe who will step in when the Eurocrats fail to do so… This is the beginning of a challenge with no possible compromise.

In restropect iam glad by Merkel's admission that multiculturism is dead and burried.

"The hypocrites from the EU are acknowledging their failed immigration experiment, yet still want to impose it on others, as in N. Kosovo and Bosnia. The new EU foreign policy towards none member state is, "Why should you have it better than us?"."
(IUPM, 17 October 2010 17:19)

Who immigrated to Bosnia or Northern Kosovo? "Immigration is the introduction of new people into a habitat or population"

interest declaration , the first mooooove for Deutchland to breakaway from E.U. ??? wait and see

Well, actually Merkel and her CDU/CSU failed to create a multicultural society in Germany.

It's a bit of an exaggeration and of course completely ignores the laissez faire attitude of such countries towards immigrants for decades.

For a long time said governments ignored polygamy for decades (france for example) practiced by immigrants, women were kept at home and didn't/weren't allowed to learn the language of the country, teenagers are still being taken 'on holiday' only to be married off and never return to school (UK) etc.. Merkel and these people are being deeply disingenous and hypocritical. Blame starts at home.

IUPM

Hypocrites are those who act differently from what they preach. Now as they will act similarly, they will stop being hypocrites.

to Probabis:

The immigration issue has nothing to do with the the contrast between the EU and the constituting member states as nations. I believe you agree that most problems immigrants pose are not coming from another member state, but from outside Europe, with completely different habits and values, with complete rejection of the values of the host society.

Rest assured, Merkel did not target Portuguese or Polish "immigrant" scientists refusing to colletc their garbage selectively in differently coloured garbage bags. The problem is deeper rooted, from outside Europe.

Amer,

Yes, of course I was having companies of Silicon valley in my mind I was working for. If I would refuse to work with one of my bosses because he had Slovak background while parts of my family are from Hungary - everyone would think, I need a doctor.

During a professional meeting with chip specialists originally from Egypt I had a 30-minute political discussion about Middle East. We came laughing to a common ground over a tea during the 30 minutes and continued with the serious and difficult stuff (SATA interface), leaving the easy one (Palestinian problem) to the idiots in posh chairs, black limousines and salary much higher than ours.

They are sure idiots because they can't solve the problem in last 70 years what we solved in 30 minutes. I wonder, what these idiots would do with my SATA or now USB problems.

Otherwise old habits die hard, Merkel is a good FDJ girl, she has no objections about brother countries ;-)

(BTW: Berlin is a huge Vietnamese city, talking about an other brother country - and that nation is not mentioned either).

No one in FDJ was talking about Turkey being a brother country. As usual she is trying to flow with the stream and at the same time not to curse her past very much.

Very-very "politically correct" and smart girl.

In any case, everyone here can relax, neither Albanians nor Serbs are affected. Not even Russians or Ukrainians or Poles (all fall well in the "brother country" category, so we are done with them).

Just the base message is wrong, that's the problem. And even bigger problem is that job question.

to mr HURZ : read dublin agreement about emigrants , lets remember declaration of mr Sarkozy about roma E.U. CITIZENS, thats the meening lets start with outside emigrants and finish with inside emiigrants, yes i agree with you interest society our nazi society , first tuesday of octomber european council have vote low anyone who is expresing his contrary opinion in public against majority he is considering extremist so we all here(in the near future1-2 years from now) when we will expess our contrary opinion to the majority we will be considered extremist so bye bye comments on b92 or other commments , thats the values of the host society NAMED blue communism/NAZI . i strongly suggest to reconsider and reevaluate youre opinion

so thats meen multicultural europe-national state :0-1? end of E.U. ? germany break the dream ??? blue comunism is ending?

Minor cultural point (picking up on an earlier posting):

You can only go back to square one - there is no square zero!

This derives from early radio commentary of football, where they issued a grid in the newspapers. A back pass could be back to either square one or square two (or seven or eight at the other end of the field).

Ataman's got a point about the relationship between the need for workers and the tolerance of foreigners - it's obvious enough here in the U.S., at least.

An interesting point: Merkel said that it was the refusal to integrate that was the problem, not the shear number of foreigners in the country, and called for restrictions on Turkish and Arabic immigrants. Nothing about the equally-Muslim citizens of Bosnia, Albania, and Kosovo. I'm not sure whether this is because, as speakers of an Indoeuropean language they learn German more easily, or because as fellow-Europeans they are simply more acceptable in a European society.

Another point from the same article - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/17/angela-merkel-german-multiculturalism-failed - Germany continues to need an additional 400,000 skilled workers a year and is considering easing restrictions for such people.

With the new insurance legislation making health care available to just about everybody for the first time, we'll be needing more doctors in the U.S., too (hint).

Probabis

Believe me, I know the Dublin Treaty more than I need to, thanks to my studies and my profession. I still think (although I am not German) that the problem in Germany is not those few hundreds, or couple of thousands Roma campers, coming from inside EU. The same goes for France, the deportation of those shady characters is a makeshift action to send a message to those representing the real probem in that collapsing "multicultural" French society. Similarly, I do not think that the rioters are discontent Romanian nurses or Estonian waiters working in Paris...

I think people here are assuming that multiculturalism is the same as immigration. It’s not. Chancellor Merkel wasn’t talking about immigration per say. She was referring to the notion that immigrants could retain all aspects of their culture, language or religion, without absorbing any German language/culture/customs, and yet become fully integrated members of the German society. Multiculturalism sought to promote equality as it avoided any idea that “my religion/culture/language is better than yours”. Multiculturalism sought to place all on an equal footing. So there are clearly good intentions with this policy.

However, what Merkel was saying is nothing new. She is saying that if immigrants cannot integrate they will have no chance of equality. If they cannot participate in democratic process dues to language barriers or barriers caused by culture or religion, then the immigrants will remain marginal in society, and not integrated within society. This places integration as the key objective. The move from multiculturalism to integrationalsim is already policy in many countries – France, UK, USA, Australia to name but a few. It is supported by immigrant groups who see for themselves that when people cannot integrate; they cannot prosper. In the UK, the leader of the conservative party (part of the ruling coalition) in the upper house is a Muslim woman born in Pakistan but raised in UK and who supports integration. She says integration helped her to prosper. Whatever you think of his politics, Obama in USA is a beneficiary of integration – the child of an African father who prospered by integrating with the host culture. Integration does not mean abandoning ones own language/culture/religion. But it does require an expectation to work within the framework of the host language/culture/religion.

So please, no more immigrant bashing. Germany is not looking to close down immigration; merely to enable more integrated and prosperous lives for those who have already immigrated and for those who seek immigrate there in the future (including, I daresay, some from the Balkans).

Peace and respect to all

GRUK