{"id":94530,"date":"2016-05-01T08:57:53","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T16:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94530"},"modified":"2016-05-01T09:10:25","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T17:10:25","slug":"thilo-sarrazins-new-book-a-case-of-wishful-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=94530","title":{"rendered":"Thilo Sarrazin’s new book: a case of wishful thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Report<\/a>: The enfant terrible of non-fiction German literature is back. Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s latest book examines the \u201cbig mistakes\u201d in current German and EU politics \u2013 but his provocative statements no longer surprise anyone.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cWunschdenken\u201d (Wishful Thinking), builds on the controversy surrounding his 2010 explosive work, \u201cDeutschland schafft sich ab\u201d (Germany does away with itself).<\/p>\n

German newspaper \u201cBild\u201d had a heyday over the publication, declaring \u201cSarrazin is at it again.\u201d Others in the German press were more critical: The political magazine \u201cSpiegel\u201d accused the economist and former politician of being egocentric and spreading \u201ccold aggression with a scientific veneer.\u201d The daily \u201cS\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung\u201d degraded his work to a mix of \u201ccute, terrible and good.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s government is failing to address key issues. Sarrazin alleges that \u201cGermany\u2019s future is highly contingent upon hot topics like immigration, demographic changes and education \u2013 but not equality, gender politics or any debate on climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Sarrazin believes that Merkel\u2019s approach to the refugee crisis was a fundamentally wrong move. He goes as far as referring to Merkel\u2019s \u201ccrude refugee and immigration policy\u201d as the \u201cbiggest mistake in German politics since the end of World War II.\u201d Sarrazin also accuses Merkel of putting the nation as well as the European Union under increased risk.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir 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,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

Sarrazin\u2019s 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 \u2013 his figures include family reunions and offspring.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s immigration issues. \u201cGaining back full control over our borders (\u2026) will become an existential issue for our culture and the survival of our society,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf, as a German politician, you believe that everyone in the world should have the same rights according to Germany\u2019s 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.\u201d Sarrazin fails, however, to specify who may or may not be included in his interpretation of the term \u201cGerman population.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026 Six years ago, Thilo Sarrazin inflamed the country with his first publication on his views on immigration, \u201cDeutschland schafft sich ab\u201d (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.<\/p>\n

COMMENTS TO STEVE SAILER<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* Sarrazin has been superseded by the first real Right post 1945 party in Germany, Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD).<\/p>\n

If Donald Trump is successful in America, it will have repercussions in Europe.<\/p>\n

During a Trump Presidency, AfD will emerge as the main German opposition party to the usual CDU-SPD grand coalition.<\/p>\n

* Someone who is fluent in English and German should write book summaries of Sarrazin\u2019s books in English and sell them online. I\u2019m surprised someone hasn\u2019t done so already.<\/p>\n

* If the British electorate votes to leave the EU in next month\u2019s referendum \u2013 a prospect that cannot be dismissed out of hand \u2013 then, I think, that Austria will be the next nation to leave the EU, possibly followed by others.
\nAustria, contra to that that daft \u2018Schengen arrangement\u2019 has already started to *fortify* its border with Italy, notably the Brenner Pass, in anticipation of a huge loucust-wave of Afro\/Asian \u2018migrants\u2019 out of Italy, that, surely, will come sooner rather than later. Austria also seems set to elect an explicitly anti-immigrationist president today.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve 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, \u2018you can eat your dinner off them\u2019 are unlikely to tolerate the metaphorical \u2013 and literal \u2013 en masse defecation of the unwashed hordes on their doorstep.<\/p>\n

On another note. Germany\u2019s relationship with the old \u2018mittel Europa\u2019 \u2013 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?<\/p>\n

* 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.<\/p>\n

* Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s list of the Principles of Political Correctness is very well thought out, IMO. He prefaced it with, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

1.\tInequality is bad, equality is good.<\/p>\n

2.\tSecondary virtues like industriousness, precision and punctuality are of no particular value. Competition is morally questionable (except in sports) because it promotes inequality.<\/p>\n

3.\tThe rich should feel guilty. Exception: Rich people who have earned their money as athletes or pop stars.<\/p>\n

4.\tDifferent conditions of life have nothing to do with people\u2019s choices but with the circumstances they are in.<\/p>\n

5.\tAll 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.<\/p>\n

6.\tIslam 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.<\/p>\n

7.\tWestern industrialised nations carry the main responsibility for poverty and backwardness in other parts of the world.<\/p>\n

8.\tMen and women have no natural differences, except for the physical signs of their sex.<\/p>\n

9.\tHuman abilities depend mainly on training and educations; inherited differences play hardly any role.<\/p>\n

10.\tThere are no differences between peoples and races, except for their physical appearance.<\/p>\n

11.\tThe 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.<\/p>\n

12.\tAll 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.<\/p>\n

13.\tChildren are an entirely private affair. Immigration takes care of the labour market and of any other demographic problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Report: The enfant terrible of non-fiction German literature is back. Thilo Sarrazin\u2019s latest book examines the \u201cbig mistakes\u201d in current German and EU politics \u2013 but his provocative statements no longer surprise anyone. The most recent tome written by divisive … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13633,161,139,29671],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany","category-immigration","category-islam","category-pc"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94530"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94538,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94530\/revisions\/94538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}