Ross Douthat writes in the New York Times:
ON New Year’s Eve, in the shadow of Cologne’s cathedral, crowds of North African and Middle Eastern men accosted women out for the night’s festivities. They surrounded them, groped them, robbed them. Two women were reportedly raped.
Though there were similar incidents from Hamburg to Helsinki, the authorities at first played down the assaults, lest they prove inconvenient for Angela Merkel’s policy of mass asylum for refugees.
That delay has now cost Cologne’s police chief his job. But the German government still seems more concerned about policing restless natives — most recently through a deal with Facebook and Google to restrict anti-immigrant postings — than with policing migration. Just last week Merkel rejected a proposal to cap refugee admissions (which topped one million last year) at 200,000 in 2016.
The underlying controversy here is not a new one. For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europe’s generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans’ wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent.
The conservatives have made important points about the difficulty of assimilation, the threat of radicalization, and the likelihood of Paris-style and Cologne-style violence in European cities.
But they have also trafficked in more apocalyptic predictions — fears of a “Eurabia,” of mass Islamification — that were somewhat harder to credit. Until recently, Europe’s assimilation challenge looked unpleasant but not insurmountable, and the likelihood of Yugoslavian-style balkanization relatively remote.
With the current migration, though, we’re in uncharted territory. The issue isn’t just that immigrants are arriving in the hundreds of thousands rather than the tens of thousands. It’s that a huge proportion of them are teenage and twentysomething men.
Comments posted at NYTimes.com:
* Finally a realistic article in the NYT about the invasion that is taking over Europe. Forget it, Europe is lost. Our aim now should be to watch out so it doesn’t happen to us.
* Andrea Merkel’s “humanitarian arrogance” is mind boggling. She invites “no-limits” wave of refugees to Europe and then takes on the dictatorial task of distributing the masses of uncontrolled you men amongst her fellow European countries. Why should Hungary, Austria, Macedonia etc accept the consequences of her disastrous decision to have a million people from an incompatible cultural background move into small towns where they would be in the majority, and most likely stay amongst their own instead of being integrated? Even the German police in internal memos admits that they are powerless when confronting this massive wave of young men with no documents proving where they came from. The solution being discussed right now is hiring more police in Germany, Austria and Sweden and increasing video surveillance in public areas. Who wanted that? Not the population of these places. This is one person’s attempt to look strong and make up for the past sins of the Nazi era.
* So the left is saying that Muslim immigrants are free to rape at will, yet they were ready to execute white fraternity boys over unproven accusations.
* You’re absolutely right, and most of the people in Germany think exactly the same. On New Year’s Eve Arabian and North-African immigrants committed sexual crimes all around Germany, not only in Cologne. The German administration failed to handle it, but the most disappointing and alarming is what mass media did: denying, appeasing, and of course morally teaching. And it wasn’t the first time something like that happened. There are a lot of reports of girls and young women who were harassed and accosted by young male immigrants. But you only read about on Facebook or Twitter.
Many of Germans even of my age around 40 think about leaving Germany. You think Germany is on the brink? We’re already one step further; we’re already falling.
* Of course it means closing the borders for the time being. I agree wholeheartedly. There is something seriously wrong with Merkel’s mindset. She has put her entire country at risk. And if the German people pay a heavy price for her gross failure as leader of Germany, then I can only hope that justice prevails and that her self-righteous posture – at the expense of her nation – will cost her dearly, too. What she has done is monstrous.
The fact that the bulk of the asylum seekers are young men speaks volumes about their devotion to family, particularly their female family and the nation they abandoned, And there is no reason to believe that they will hold any more regard for Germany, her female citizens, her customs or her laws, as demonstrated in Cologne. Germany now has a tiger by the tail. At the very least, I hope Merkel pays the political price.
* I’ve never found myself in the position of agreeing with Mr. Douthat before, but his blinders-free assessment of the risks and dangers that the influx of refugees is bringing to Europe is absolutely accurate. Its not politically correct to say so, but the core values of Islam are not compatible with the Enlightenment based ones of western civilisation. Period. I have traveled extensively in the Islamic world, and if they’re many things I admire about this faith and its culture, it still essentially espouses a harsh medieval vintage set of laws and values that are not compatible with modern western life. The liberal fallacy is the relativism that attempts to place Islamic values on the same pedestal as western ones. This is dangerous nonsense, and if you don’t understand what I’m saying, just try imagining the Islamic countries offering state-funded refuge to hundreds of thousands of Christians fleeing from a civil war in Europe.
* Thank you NY time for bringing up what is also really concerning beside the horrible sex assualts at NYE across Europe: It is the breakdown of democracy in Germany with increasing limitations to free speech of press and public and controlled misinformation of the citizens. Merkel abuses since her selection this law issues after 2nd world war to prevent ongoing and upcoming nationalism in Germany to underline her power. Poeple in Germany are already brainwashed and society force you to indifferentiate welcoming of everything, if not,you are blamed as racist. So many years after Hitler and so many new generations borned after 2nd world war, Germany still feels guilty. But we need to face that each raped german women won’t bring back any murdered jew. We cannot change the history.
Thank you for this sentence:
“It means giving up the fond illusion that Germany’s past sins can be absolved with a reckless humanitarianism in the present.”
but that also takes in responsibilty all international press which like to remind and link Germany to Nazi all the time again, which makes it more difficult to build healthy german self-confident which is crucial for stabile democracy.
* There is no doubt that Germany and other EU countries must deny asylum to young males or they will have a repeat of new year’s eve in Cologne in every EU city which was naive enough to accept refugees without foreseeing the problems ahead.
Despite photographer and journalists’ effort to portray the tramp of refugees through the EU as being composed of woman and children, any viewer watching this parade could see for themselves that the bulk of the migrants were young males.
The various sob stories in major newspapers of the women and children on the march conveniently overlooked the fact that the majority were young males. Our press did us a disservice by lying to us about who were making the journey to Europe.
It would be best to declare young males, economic migrants, deny them asylum and deport them. Do not give them refugee status and forget the cries of Human Rights Organization who seem to care very little what happened to the women, deport them even if that means sending them back to Syria or Iraq. The point is they should not be allowed to wander free in the EU, raping and robbing young women. SHed no tears for these young males = they are not worth it.
* I have been waiting for an honest assessment like this one since I first saw the masses of young Muslim men crossing Europe! Most were claiming to be Syrians but without any real documents and without being registered, while Andrea Merkel actively suppressed information about the huge gender disparity and the lack of cooperation from many of the refugees. The trouble, rapes, tribal infights, traditional conflicts between different religions etc. inside the migrant camps and on the trail had been documented early on by small local newspapers in Greece, Hungary and their neighbors, but was willfully ignored by the German government, possibly to avoid an early panic and disrupt the propaganda of photogenic “Willkommen”-groups who were being overwhelmed with demands for their volunteering work immediately. Merkel’s “no limits” invitation to continue this madness has to stop, and I am happy to see that even the NYTimes, after stalling for months, has finally come to see the dangers of this uncontrolled migration of young men, many of which have no concept of or respect for Western values. I grew up over there, and the disrespect shown by the hordes of young men to the police, the women, and the culture is astounding and makes me sad.
* Merkel acted in a very rash, arrogant manner. She proceeded as the owner of Germany and Europe. Instead of consulting with the European “partners” she went full steam ahead. When the policy failed then she demanded that Europe act with solidarity and take in refugees numbers that her policy recklessly created. She obviously did not think through the problem of allowing a million people from different culture unwilling to adept and to compromise; she was thinking of the labor pool and now she created a mess for Germany and Europe. Hopefully, more sober minds will take over and replace this wrecking ball named Merkel.
* I am German and only can underline your observations on the current situation in Germany/Europe, caused by one person alone, the “Woman of the year”. We are facing a situation, were German press/media deliver ONLY the government ponit of view (Migrants are positive, there are no terrorists, the rapes and robberies are just cultural orginalities of the “refugees” (sorry, what is mass rape by arabs other than terror?). Any other thoughts get supressed (also by facebook etc), any dissent is blamed as “Nazi”-origin.
The terrorists of Paris in Nov, and also the most current two days ago, were “refugees” moving from Germany to their targets. (Reminds me to M. Atta, who also came from Hamburg). I hope, that governments from EU and US accuse Merkel at an international court for constant abetting terrorists, providing them with nice an comforatble rest zones in Germany, supported with tax money. (BTW: Tax money is also misused to pay left-radical demonstrants (ANTIFA) to desturb the anti-islamic Pegida demonstrations).
I fear, that we soon will be facing riots and even worse, a destabilisation of Europe, due to the incompetence and arrogance of the German govenrment (fully supported by the left-wing opposition), while more than 80% of German citizens do not support this way. The pressure in the pot is close to explosion.
* The truth is that almost no respected newspaper in Germany would dare to publish such a comment. Many of the statements in this comment are considered far-right populism in Germany, and anybody who publicly discusses such concerns will be villainized and banned from public discourse promptly.
* I’ve lived my whole life in Sweden and considered it a safe country where you can walk outside and not have to constantly look over your shoulder. That is not the case anymore. Streets, malls and trains that are flooded with people who do not speak Swedish, who are rude, disrespectful. Men who openly accost women, teenagers who walk in packs, trying to scare people. These are the so-called refugees that we have been forced to take in without asking what we want. I also see these so-called refugees with new iPhones, speaking so loudly that they’ve been asked to leave the bus/train that they are on and refusing. I see them saying they’re refugees and they can’t pay for a train ticket while they clutch their iPhone in one hand and with their slicked back hair and leather jackets. The massive amounts of men that have arrived who openly leer at every woman and the women who walk with their 8+ kids and one in the belly, shopping all day. The man who was arrested for a group rape but was released because he refused to give his DOB and proclaimed to be a minor. The men who savagely butchered two innocent people in Ikea. The man who raped/tortured a woman on the train and later left her posed in the woods, with a large rock on top of her. These men were all refugees. I challenge you to visit Europe, visit Sweden. Let me know if you feel safe here daytime. Let me know if you recognize what country you are in. This is a country I want to flee from. Maybe I’ve become the refugee.
* Where are the German men? Are they so emasculated by political correctness that they are afraid to protect their women from Muslim rapists? Why are German men allowing thamselves to be castrated by Merkel and the female mayor of Cologne? For God’s sake grow a pair, round up the thugs and throw them out.
* First of all it is nice to be able to inform yourself via the internet and if you are able to speak other languages you can even read news from other countries. Because of this in these days i prefer to read news from abroad. I had to go that way, because, i´m german and live in Berlin, you cannot believe anything what the media or any of the politicians in my country are saying. If you criticize the mass immigration in a rational kind of way, you are being called a “hetzer (engl. agitator i believe), nazi or the like even though your arguments are as responsible as you could imagine. I am 30 years now and have ever since i am allowed to vote in elections voted for the green party (which split up from the social democrats in the 80s) and am stunned how incompetent and naive the politicians, opposition and coalition are when i see this mess worsen by every day.
Because of the fact that the german press needed 4 days to inform the country about the sex attacks after many people talked about it on Facebook, the fact that police stations have strict orders that the police is not allowed to speak about refugee crimes through the hole country because it could be political delicate and could play into the hands of the right party afd (alternative für deutschland) i feel like now i´m living in a country which behaves very similar to the misinformation and story telling manners of the eastern german former communist republic of germany.
* These are the first sensible words I’ve seen on this subject.
Too little, too late.
The Roman Empire failed when it abrogated centuries-old policies to allow uncontrolled immigration of barbarians.
* The sexual assault against the women in Cologne pressed the pause and think about it more thoroughly buttons especially for Merkel who has been tone deaf all throughout.
The Politico article that Douthat referenced made compelling points about paying attention to gender ratios and the % of the refugee population against that of the host country’s by age subsets instead of looking at it as a whole.
Its turning out that the devil is in the details and Angela Merkel’s hurried policy has not thought it through. And it shows.
* The Euro fools have permitted their idiot Prog elites to lead them down the disastrous path of Multiculturalism and other self destructive Leftist policies and in doing so have been relegated to victim class collateral damage in the march to imaginary Utopia. The barbarians are inside the gates. This is only the beginning. Europe and European culture are toast.
* It is horrifying to contemplate the rivers of blood that will be spilled as a result of the U.S. and Europe’s long history of manipulation and exploitation of the Middle Eastern people, the majority of whome follow the equally exploitative and manipulative Muslim religion. There are mountains of accountability on both sides, but now there can be no peaceful resolution to the conflict created as a result. It is not hard to imagine a war, that will last far longer than any before it, consuming the lives of countless innocent souls. Blood does not wash away blood.
* Indeed Mr. Douthat, Angela Merkel must go. She made an epic blunder by opening the floodgates. I didn’t think that the chickens would come home to roost quite as quickly as they have, with this appalling incident in Cologne, but now we have gotten a taste of what lies ahead for Germany. Hopefully this rampage will bring Europe to its senses, and there will be forceful action to stop this invasion.
*
I considered myself a liberal and I am sympathetic to the plight of people escaping wars and our humanitarian duty to help them. However, I also think the liberals are burying their heads in the sand thinking only of humanitarianism for the refugees and ignore the high probability of consequences as described here by Douthat whom I usually disagree with.
History have shown that, especially in large number, people do not adapt and assimilate easily, let alone quickly. The small enclaves of Muslim communities around Europe illustrate this well. Even in the land of immigrants, we still have so called China town, or clusters of Korean Vietnamese, Cuban, Hispanics, Middle Eastern communities, etc. in our cities. Islam in particular, has been slow in catching up with modernism and pluralism that is necessary and crucial for ensuring peace in our very diverse world.
This is a particularly precarious time of disenchantment of increased disparity of wealth and disappearing middle class. Disenfranchised people, Muslims or non-Muslims, or lost young people, I think are more susceptible to being manipulated and hook on to the delusional version of Islam spin by ISIS. To point this out is not being Islamaphobic or xenophobic, but simply being realistic.
* Why has it not been considered what is done in the UAE countries, where they issue only temporary work permits but not citizenship or even residence? They do not have to be either totally shut out or be awarded full citizenship.
* I have lived in France since 1972 so you can believe me when I say that I know what is happening here. France, since the end of the French/Algerian war has been inundated with north Africans so now we are on the third generation. These people have never adapted or as the French government now says assimilated (realizing the mistakes that were made) to the French way of life. In many parts of France (Marseille is the perfect example) you would think that you are in Algiers. Couscous instead of Boeuf Bourguignon. Since the Arab Spring thousands of people from Muslim countries have been entering Europe illegally… The figures published are wrong and you can be sure that around 2 million have entered just this year. To think that these people are going to ‘become Europeans’ is either naive or extremely stupid. What Frau Merkel has done by inviting these people in, many European are already qualifying as the genocide of the Europeans. All of these people should have been sent to Muslim countries and there are enough of them. The truth is that neither Saudi Arabia nor any of the Gulf States want millions of refugees but they sure do welcome rich tourists. When Marine Le Pen said last April that of the migrants coming in around 75% of them were young men (who should be back in their own countries fighting) she was insulted, but right..All this has done is endanger the European populations. In 732 Charles Martel kicked them out of France, could it happen again?
* If these migrants were the children of educated professionals from Aleppo and Damascus, this migration might have had good as well as bad consequences. They could actually have educated themselves, found jobs, and have been productive members of society. But these are largely the teen-aged offspring of semi-literate farmers from Syria’s rural Sunni belt. They are hundreds of years behind Europe developmentally. They are not suitable marriage partners for European women. But to keep them from raping European women, they will have to be allowed to bring in brides from rural Middle-Eastern countries, who will replicate Salafist islam in the heart of Europe. And generous European welfare benefits will generate a Salafist population explosion.
Sigmar Gabriel and the Social Democrats who effectively dominate the German ruling coalition (despite Merkel’s nominally being the head) must put aside the partisan advantage they get from overwhelmingly winning the Muslim vote, and act together with the Christian Democrats to protect their country, rather than their own political fortunes, by cutting off any aid to those rejected for asylum, and imprisoning those who do not go back to where they came from. If those rejected for asylum are allowed to stay simply because their country of origin does not welcome them back with open arms, it will be the end of Germany as a safe country.
