Merkel is from East Germany, and West Germans think the same about Easterners as well. And isn't German citizenship very difficult to get if you aren't actually ethnically German?

Cultures are no more incompatible than music genres: There has and always will be crossover and evolving strains of collective expression and identity. It is well proven that we can be Germans and Arabs and Jews and endless combinations of cultures, as individuals and as neighbors. It's really nothing new: The song remains the same.

As commented above, the "failure of multiculturalism" is standard wedge politics in action. It's not a rational indictment of coexistence. It's nationalist chest-thumping, and even moderated by the lessons Germany's history, the segregationist impulse is a blatantly irrational rejection of our human destiny in an irreversibly-integrating world.

We can either thrive as individuals and societies in an ever more multi-cultural world, or we can pretend: Regressing socially into dysfunctional ignorance and denial over the superficialities of cultures and colors, which are relatively minor aspects of the common experiences and aspects of being human.

Let's keep our eyes on the big picture, and not fall for reactionary smoke and mirrors. We need never, and must not ever more choose monocultures for ourselves, for our friendships, or for our societies. One world is not a dystopic fantasy- it's an inevitability, and the business of disinformation, divisiveness and collective violence must be overcome and replaced by more worthwhile and rewarding interpersonal, local, and global behaviors. Learn to get along, or learn to fight.

Which side are you on?

Germany like the USA has some very real issues with immigration and unfortunately will not be dealt with as long as open, honest debate is not tolerated. That some of the anti-immigration rhetoric is clearly based on prejudice and racism is clear. It is also clear that some of it is not, but is due to the very real economic and social problems that come from absorbing so many at once. (Everyone here knows it just from the comments on our schools and English as a second language effecting test scores)

Personally, I think lumping everyone who opposes wholesale open immigration into the same group is just plain wrong and counter productive. As for the Christianity remark, it was stupid, but here it is again.
"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here," said the chancellor.
"Subsidising immigrants" isn't sufficient, Germany has the right to "make demands" on them, she added, such as mastering the language of Goethe and abandoning practices such as forced marriages."
Except for bringing Christianity into this, I don't see what was so wrong. Its nothing more than what we should expect from people wanting to live here.

Where we fall down is in supporting a system that exploits labor and purposely keeps the majority of the worlds population poor and without any other real options. But then, fixing this would make the wealthy nations admit that their standard of living is based upon exploitation.

We in the working class are just screwed.

...the country was being made "more stupid" by poorly educated and unproductive people who refuse to separate church and state. Forced marriage? Fine, if that's what your religion says. "The state" should not recognize it legally, but allow it.

Her definition of a successful multi-culturalism is that everyone should adopt German values, become Christian and speak German? Which German values? A pure white Christian nation? Hmmmm.

I doubt that there have been sincere efforts to welcome the stranger, to get past using them when convenient and then discarding them. One thing I have to say about Europe is that they have huge blind spots about their racism, which includes dull and unexamined assumptions of cultural superiority and massive forgetting of their colonial past.

Joe

I think that it is a reasonable thing to want immigrants to be able to speak German. So they should be given free classes, etc. Every effort should be made so that they can integrate.

Asking them to speak without an accent, however, is WAY over the top. I know russians and chinese who speak much better english than the locals. They will never lose their accent. I dont think they can. I love to hear their clear diction. They often speak in a correct way, but with the phrases in a different order from that which locals would put it. To not accept this would be very mean spirited.

Angela says some stupid things. "We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here,". She needs to be very clear about which christian values she is referring to. I would like to see a list of what are Christian values. If they are the ones that Christ taught (love and tolerance), then great. Of course, Christians, Jews and Moslems already share the old testament.

m156 wrote
"It's interesting how often those who will vehemently deny being racists themselves use the epithet "stupid" when someone is caught making a patently racist remark"

I assume he/she was responding to my post and I can only take offense at the veiled accusation of racism. Below is how I opened my post, where exactly do you find racism.

"Germany like the USA has some very real issues with immigration and unfortunately will not be dealt with as long as open, honest debate is not tolerated. That some of the anti-immigration rhetoric is clearly based on prejudice and racism is clear. It is also clear that some of it is not, but is due to the very real economic and social problems that come from absorbing so many at once. (Everyone here knows it just from the comments on our schools and English as a second language effecting test scores)

Personally, I think lumping everyone who opposes wholesale open immigration into the same group is just plain wrong and counter productive."

Seems you proved the above point quite nicely. True reform will NEVER happen as long as anyone who dares suggest that there are real problems with unfettered immigration is called racist.

Merkel has failed, that's all

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In July 1933 soon after Hitler came to power my family left Germany and immigrated to the Netherlands. Within one month I did not only speak Dutch, I could swear in Dutch as well as my buddies in the street where we lived even though my mother never learned to speak Dutch well. I learned the Dutch language fast because I did not want to be different from my buddies. Why demand that the German or Dutch or French Government must spend money to teach immigrants the major language of the country when the responsibility rests squarely with the families of the immigrants? The real problems are due to the fact that most of the German and Dutch people, not merely their leaders, did not want to have the immigrants live among them which resulted in the sprouting of "foreign ghettos" in these countries. So, don't blame Merkel, she is merely voicing what the overwhelming majority of Germans think. Incidentally, it is not only Turks and other Muslims that Germans dislike but also the Germanic immigrants from Russia.

German values? What values? The mass production of industrial size ovens and gas chambers during WW2? Fanatical and atrocious medical experiments on humans?

Christian values? What values? Slavery, subjugation of women, inquisition, eye-for-an-eye mentality, all condoned by the bible?

Merkel, drop dead.

Economics arose within the Christian Enlightenment theology propounding humanity's return to the earthly Paradise. This is to be achieved by conformity to the laws of nature discovered by science. Like Islam, assumed is a supplanting of all national communities by the human community. As Karl Marx recognized, engendered is the global commodification of labor, whereby labor can move freely according to demand.

Where this conception fails is the human inability to comprehend the infinity of experience. So being, humans seek the finite rules of shared community. Moving freely as commodified labor, they bring alien cultures into new environments, disrupting existing community members with alien behavior. Engendered is a backlash by existing community members. Anthropology being excluded from the economics and business "disciplines," this phenomenon takes economists and entrepreneurs by surprise.

As with Danish journalists, as well as the Swiss and French and German and Arizona public, however, the reaction is to espouse the Enlightenment ideal, while condemning the aliens as inferior. Here the Enlightenment ideal is embraced to foster business, while immigrants are displaced to foster national identity. Gobalization is an unstoppable force by which we send the barbarians packing. Contradictory, yes, but politically a winner.

Merkel’s use of religion to single out one group in society (her islamophobia) is a cover for further neoliberal attacks on the welfare state.

Her predecessor Helmut Kohl, also CDU, used the threat of a “flood of asylum seekers” in the 80’s and 90’s when voters talked too much about higher taxes, recession and unemployment. Racist groups obliged and set fire to homes for asylum seekers., killing several people. Some areas especially in bigger cities were declared no-go zones for foreigners.(too dangerous)

This summer, Sarrazin summarized the German version of islamophobia in his book focusing on muslims as the new threat claiming that adherence to a religion makes people unwilling (fanatical) or unable(with some claims of genetic stupidity) to integrate. According to this rationale, Catholics make worse citizens than Protestants, since the Catholic Church does not believe in equal rights for women, family planning and divorce.

Never seen so many dogs barking up the wrong tree. Maybe this helps:

This is an article in Hurriyet, a Turkish newspaper, where Bagis, a Turkish government minister, urges his countrymen who have emigrated to Germany quote I ask all my Turkish compatriots and all Germans of Turkish origin: Learn German. Adapt to the customs and conventions of your adopted country unquote.

http://tinyurl.com/33fwfqr

"We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here,"

An oxymoron if I ever heard one!

Oh, and I love the argument that in essence says: We are incapable of growing and becoming more tolerant, so YOU have to go.

""We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don't accept them don't have a place here."
--German Chancellor Angela Merkel

"The leader of genius must have the ability to make different opponents appear as if they belonged to one category."
--German Reichschancellor Adolph Hitler

EU aiding and abetting of American neo-liberal "free trade" capitalism combined with EU subservience to U.S. neo-conservative foreign policy is what has failed. Not the multi-culturalism of contemporary German society. Anymore than multi-culturalism failed in pre-Renaissance Spain for any other reason besides the sectarian jingoists and enforcers of the "Christian" Spanish Inquisition.

I am certainly a liberal, and consider myself both highly tolerant towards others' beliefs, and as racially neutral as a person with a distinct ethnicity can be.

That being said, is there no sympathy for the idea that many immigrants bring with them their own prejudices, their own cultural intolerances, their own bigtory? Does it sit comfortably with the liberals and progressives on this board that many of the multicultural traits that Europeans are against are related to these exact concerns? For example, are Americans OK with the idea that anyone who wants can wear an identity covering mask on their face at all times? No big deal right? Until everyone is doing it. Do we accept and want to uphold immigrants' right to circumcise their daughters as they approach puberty? How about forced arranged marriages? To girls under 13?

Like it or not, certain cultures embrace chauvanism within their societies... Are we as liberals supposed to embrace *all* multi-culturalism, even if that multi-culturalism serves to reverse so many of the hard fought victories that we are *still* fighting so hard to preserve?

This is not a black and white issue with only one side for compassionate folks on the left to take. Wake up and realize there is more nuance to it than that. We mustn't forget that multiculturalism is a 2-way street. Just as tolerant societies must be sensitive to the cultural distinctions of their immigrant populations, so must immigrants who come to tolerant societies learn to themselves embrace tolerance, and embrace the cultural norms into which they are entering – after all, why would they move into another country if they are inherently opposed to its traditions?

It has to go both ways and it rarely does. These monolithic and misdirected 'so-called liberal' screeds that recognize no role on the part of the immigrants themselves in making their assimilation harmonious are only serving to make the solutions more difficult to attain.

(please don't assume that I don't recognize the even bigger role that capitalist exploitation plays – but that has been addressed already).

–SS.