Report: The enfant terrible of non-fiction German literature is back. Thilo Sarrazin’s latest book examines the “big mistakes” in current German and EU politics – but his provocative statements no longer surprise anyone.
The most recent tome written by divisive German author Thilo Sarrazin has hit the shelves this week, and critics have been quick to dismiss it. The book, titled “Wunschdenken” (Wishful Thinking), builds on the controversy surrounding his 2010 explosive work, “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany does away with itself).
German newspaper “Bild” had a heyday over the publication, declaring “Sarrazin is at it again.” Others in the German press were more critical: The political magazine “Spiegel” accused the economist and former politician of being egocentric and spreading “cold aggression with a scientific veneer.” The daily “Süddeutsche Zeitung” degraded his work to a mix of “cute, terrible and good.”
Sarrazin is apparently settling a number of accounts in his new book: The 71-year-old author seems to have created a 400-page-long list of reasons why Germany’s government is failing to address key issues. Sarrazin alleges that “Germany’s future is highly contingent upon hot topics like immigration, demographic changes and education – but not equality, gender politics or any debate on climate change.”
His conclusion: Germany has started to waste away its affluence and level of education as well as its cultural heritage. And who is to blame? Sarrazin accuses unequivocally Chancellor Angela Merkel as the main perpetrator behind all the ailments he observes.
Sarrazin believes that Merkel’s approach to the refugee crisis was a fundamentally wrong move. He goes as far as referring to Merkel’s “crude refugee and immigration policy” as the “biggest mistake in German politics since the end of World War II.” Sarrazin also accuses Merkel of putting the nation as well as the European Union under increased risk.
He seems to take particular issue with the increasing number of Muslim migrants arriving in Germany. Sarrazin looks at these developments as an experiment that is bound to fail. He postulates that the majority of asylum seekers arrived from the Middle East and Africa with a low standard of education.
“Their cultural and cognitive profiles are similar to those of the Muslims who already are in Europe. Therefore, it is to be expected that their development in terms of education, integration into the work force, dependency on government assistance, criminality and susceptibility to fundamentalism will follow similar patterns as those who are already here,” he writes.
Sarrazin’s outlook is a gloomy one, accompanied by dystopian statistics: If one million refugees continued to come to Germany each year (as they did in 2015), their numbers would skyrocket to 134 million people by 2050 – his figures include family reunions and offspring.
The author admits that this is an unlikely scenario, but insists that such numbers exemplify how easy it would be to apparently lose control over Germany’s immigration issues. “Gaining back full control over our borders (…) will become an existential issue for our culture and the survival of our society,” he writes.
When Sarrazin first published his theories in 2010, his party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), investigated whether he should be expelled because of his views, but it was decided that he could remain a member of the center-left party. Although he does not discuss the case directly in his latest book, he does express animosity towards established political values.
“If, as a German politician, you believe that everyone in the world should have the same rights according to Germany’s Basic Law and should be allowed to expect the same services from the welfare state as soon as they cross the German border, your immigration and refugee policies will be different than those of a politician, who truly chooses to work for the best interest of the German population.” Sarrazin fails, however, to specify who may or may not be included in his interpretation of the term “German population.”
… Six years ago, Thilo Sarrazin inflamed the country with his first publication on his views on immigration, “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (Germany does away with itself), where he specifically targeted migrants from Muslim countries. Two other books followed in 2012 and 2014. The once so media-savvy Thilo Sarrazin is now beyond his peak: His views on immigration policies are so well known that this book will fail to attract as much attention.
COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER:
* Sarrazin has been superseded by the first real Right post 1945 party in Germany, Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD).
If Donald Trump is successful in America, it will have repercussions in Europe.
During a Trump Presidency, AfD will emerge as the main German opposition party to the usual CDU-SPD grand coalition.
* Someone who is fluent in English and German should write book summaries of Sarrazin’s books in English and sell them online. I’m surprised someone hasn’t done so already.
* If the British electorate votes to leave the EU in next month’s referendum – a prospect that cannot be dismissed out of hand – then, I think, that Austria will be the next nation to leave the EU, possibly followed by others.
Austria, contra to that that daft ‘Schengen arrangement’ has already started to *fortify* its border with Italy, notably the Brenner Pass, in anticipation of a huge loucust-wave of Afro/Asian ‘migrants’ out of Italy, that, surely, will come sooner rather than later. Austria also seems set to elect an explicitly anti-immigrationist president today.
I’ve always found it hard to believe that a people as famously sensible, fastidious and as hard harder as the Austrians could stomach the shit headed EU mandated mass immigration madness that we see today. People who keep the streets of Vienna SL clean that, proverbially, ‘you can eat your dinner off them’ are unlikely to tolerate the metaphorical – and literal – en masse defecation of the unwashed hordes on their doorstep.
On another note. Germany’s relationship with the old ‘mittel Europa’ – the former Austrian Empire more or less, is surely the best, most important, most strategic and mist valuable relationship it has. Why sacrifice it for the sake of unprincipled, mendacious, worthless, Pakistani/Bangladeshi faker/frauds?
* Almost everyday hundreds of Africans seeking a better life are towed to Italy. If this is kept up the Coliseum will be transformed into a giant accommodation centre. As it is they are defecating in parks and urinating in fountains. Pretty soon tourists will strike Italy off and it will become a Nigerian Shantytown albeit with statues and crumbly cathedrals instead of Shebeens.
* Thilo Sarrazin’s list of the Principles of Political Correctness is very well thought out, IMO. He prefaced it with, “I think the list describes the truth but it takes some irony or humor to understand it fully. The problem lies not in any single item on this list but in their combination and rigid application to political thinking.”
1. Inequality is bad, equality is good.
2. Secondary virtues like industriousness, precision and punctuality are of no particular value. Competition is morally questionable (except in sports) because it promotes inequality.
3. The rich should feel guilty. Exception: Rich people who have earned their money as athletes or pop stars.
4. Different conditions of life have nothing to do with people’s choices but with the circumstances they are in.
5. All cultures are of equal rank and value. Especially the values und ways of life of the Christian occident and Western industrialised nations should not enjoy any preference. Those who think differently are provincial and xenophobic.
6. Islam is a religion of peace. Those who see any problems with immigration from Islamic countries are guilty of Islamophobia. This is nearly as bad as antisemitism.
7. Western industrialised nations carry the main responsibility for poverty and backwardness in other parts of the world.
8. Men and women have no natural differences, except for the physical signs of their sex.
9. Human abilities depend mainly on training and educations; inherited differences play hardly any role.
10. There are no differences between peoples and races, except for their physical appearance.
11. The nation state is an outdated model. National identities and peculiarities have no particular value. The national element as such is rather bad; it is at any rate not worth preserving. The future belongs to the world society.
12. All people in the world do not only have equal rights, they are in fact equal. They should at least all be eligible for the benefits of the German welfare state.
13. Children are an entirely private affair. Immigration takes care of the labour market and of any other demographic problems.
