§ Because Germany had committed genocide, it was impregnated with
self-hatred and a rejection of its own identity. Germany turned to European
construction and tried to define itself as European, in order not to call
itself German.
§ A gradual replacement of the non-Muslim population with a Muslim
population is taking place. Forty percent of children under five and born in
Germany today have foreign roots.
§ The demographer Michael Paulwitz wrote a year ago that unless the
current trends are reversed, Germans will become a minority in their own
country, possibly in fifteen to twenty years.
Germany's federal elections were supposed
to lead to the triumph of Angela Merkel. Their results were rather
different from what was anticipated. Merkel's "victory" looks like a
disaster: the Christian Democratic Alliance (CDU-CSU) won 33% of the vote -- 9%
less than four years ago, its worst result since 1949. The Social Democratic
Party (SPD), which governed the country with Merkel during the last four years,
lost more than 5%, and fell from 25.7 % to 20% of the vote -- the worst result in its history.
Alternative for Germany (AfD), a conservative nationalist party born in 2013,
obtained 12.6%, and will enter in the Bundestag for the first time. Die Linke,
the Marxist left, received 9%. As neither the SPD nor Die Linke will
participate in the next government, and as AfD is radically opposed to the
policies pursued by Merkel, she has only two possible partners: the libertarian
Free Democratic Party and The Greens: both of whose positions on most subjects
seem incompatible.
Angela Merkel will remain Chancellor, but
by default, and mostly because there was no other real choice: six months ago, two-thirds of the German
population wanted her to be replaced. Only 8% wanted her to remain in her post.
Martin Schultz, former President of the European Parliament, who was the SPD
candidate, did not offer anything different and led a lackluster campaign.
If Merkel succeeds in forming a
coalition, it will be a precarious and unstable assemblage that will keep
Germany on the verge of paralysis and make the country the sick man of 21st
century Europe.
Germany actually already is a sick
country, and Angela Merkel is part of the sickness.
In 1945, Germany was in ruins. It rebuilt
itself and gradually became Europe's leading economic power. While regaining
strength, it did not assert itself politically and remained discreet, humble,
repentant, silently shameful. Because of its role in the war, it was reluctant
to recreate an army when NATO powers asked it to rebuild one; instead, it
adopted a general position of appeasement that led to "Ostpolitik", a policy of rapprochement
with the communist East and the Soviet Union.
Because nationalism had led to National
Socialism, Germany rejected any form of nationalism.
Because Germany had committed genocide, it was impregnated with self-hatred and
a rejection of its own
identity.
Germany turned to European construction
and tried to define itself as European in order not to call itself
German.
This process lasted until the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the reunification of the country. Reunification was widely
perceived in Germany as the fruit of humility and discretion.
Angela Merkel, who had seemed to embody a
successfully reunified Germany, inherited this process when she became
Chancellor in 2005.
Malfunctions had already begun to
surface. The German economy remained prosperous, but poverty was increasing (in
2005, 17% of Germans were officially poor and earned half of the national
average income) and the number of working poor
was growing.
The birth rate was extremely low. It had started
to decline in 1967, and rapidly fell to 1.5 children per woman. The population,
in general, was aging.
Germany began to bring in Turkish migrants
to compensate for the lack of manpower. By 2000, the number of migrants had
reached 3.5 million.
Importing Muslim migrants also brought a
slow Islamization of the country. In the main cities, mosques were built.
Koranic schools were opened. Islam was integrated
into public school curricula.
Merkel constantly sought consensus and worked with the Social Democrats
for eight of the twelve years she spent as the head of the government.
Germans seemed to accept this arrangement
until she decided to open the borders of Germany to a huge wave of refugees and
migrants from the Middle East in August 2015. More than 1.5 million unvetted people
entered the country; most were young men entitled to family reunification.
Claims that refugees would assimilate
without major problems started colliding with reality. Rapes multiplied. Violence escalated.
In 2016, almost half the crimes in Berlin
were committed by recent migrants to the country Jihadist networks took shape.
Terrorist acts started to take place. Muslim anti-Semitism led to attacks on synagogues.
The costs of welfare rose
sharply.
Merkel expressed no regret. She
did not even have second thoughts after the elections: she said that if she had to
open the borders of the country again, she would do it. She tried to impose her decisions on
immigration on the reluctant European countries of Hungary, the Czech Republic
and Poland. She is still trying.
Shame is still present in the minds of
million of Germans, but fading away. A few years ago, a survey showed almost 70% of Germans were
angered at still being held responsible today for crimes against Jews. Roughly
25% of people surveyed agreed with the statement: "Many Jews try to use
Germany's Third Reich past to their advantage". Recent polls shows that
between one-third and one-half of Germans view Israel as the political
equivalent of Nazi Germany. The German government now regularly pretends to give lessons
on morality to Israel, but never criticizes terrorist leaders such as Mahmoud
Abbas.
Germany remains in a position of
appeasing, securing and strengthening economic ties with rogue regimes such as Iran. The German army is
so ill-equipped that during exercises instead of weapons, it uses broomsticks. Polls show
that the German population now think that the main danger
to world peace does not come from Iran or North Korea, but from the United
States. Germany is today the most anti-American
country in the Western world . Stern, Germany's most popular news weekly
magazine, recently put on its cover an image of Donald Trump performing a Nazi
salute while draped in the American flag.
Economic efficiency is low. The German
economy is essentially an industrial economy and not adapted to the
digital age. Investment in GDP has declined; innovative activity is weak; productivity
stagnates. Since 2008, annual productivity growth has
been only 0.5%. The planned closure of German nuclear power plants in the name
of "protecting the climate" raises wholesale electricity prices,
while German households and businesses bear the financial burden of paying
among the highest electricity costs
in the developed world. Unskilled immigrants from the Muslim world cannot
replace skilled Germans who retire or pass away. The number of poor people
continues to increase. The capacity
for receiving immigrants has reached its limits; living conditions in many
shelters have become substandard: floors are not cleaned regularly and are soiled for days with
blood, urine, feces, and invasion of cockroaches are frequent. The German
Commissioner for Immigration recently said that only a quarter to a third of
the refugees who settled in Germany could enter the labor market. The others
will have to rely on government benefits for the rest of their lives.
Diseases that were nearly eradicated,
such as tuberculosis, made a comeback. Vaccines did
not exist as Europeans had stopped making them.
The median age in Germany is now 46.8. A gradual
replacement of the non-Muslim population with a Muslim population is taking
place. Forty percent of children
under five, born in Germany, have foreign roots. Since 2005, the population of
new arrivals has increased by 24%, while the native population has
decreased by 5%.
Demographers say that unless the current
trends are reversed, Germans will become a minority in
their own country, possibly in fifteen to twenty years.
Nothing at the moment indicates that the
trends will reverse.
Most of the German press is permeated
with political correctness. Newspapers and magazines support multiculturalism,
and do not talk about the most urgent problems facing the country: anemic
economic growth, population ageing, and Islamization. Many journalists, professors
and writers say that German culture
does not exist. When books criticizing Islam may become best sellers, their
authors are immediately demonized. Deutschland schafft sich ab
("Germany Abolishes Itself") was an enormous success in 2010, but its
author, Thilo Sarrazin, was immediately treated as a "racist" and pushed
towards the margin of all political debates. Rolf Peter Sieferle, a former
counselor of Angela Merkel, wrote several articles describing the self-destruction
of Germany. "A society that can no longer make the difference between
itself and the forces that dissolve it lives morally beyond its means," he said in 2015.
Insulted and rejected by those with whom he used to work, he committed suicide in
September 2016. A collection of his notes was published after his death, Finis
Germaniae ("The End of Germany").
The Alternative for Germany (AfD)
political party promises to "shake
off the Bundestag". The 12.6% of the vote it received will undoubtedly
give it a voice. Its leaders are treated by the media and other political
parties as the incarnation of the devil. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel warned against the entry
of "real Nazis" into the parliament . A leader of the far-left Die
Linke party asked: "Have we not
learnt the lessons from the war?". Jewish leaders are scared: Dr. Josef
Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said that AfD uses
strategies generally used by aspiring "fascist dictatorships."
The AfD party is not Nazi, however. Its
members rather seem to fear that Germany and Germans will disappear under the
weight of Islam. The Nazis were anti-Semitic, militarist, socialist, and
desired to conquer. The AfD is not anti-Semitic, not militarist, not socialist,
and does not want to conquer other countries. Jewish leaders in Germany are
frightened because they think that if the AfD is hostile to one minority, the
Muslims, it could grow hostile to other minorities. They are probably wrong.
There is no comparison between Muslims and Jews. The AfD has strongly supported
Israel's right to exist and Israel's right to has to fight the Islamic threat
against it.
Some AfD members have made controversial statements
about German soldiers, and about the Holocaust Memorial in
Berlin.
At the same time, the AfD is currently
Germany's most pro-Israeli party.
It is also the only party that clearly foresees the very real
risk of Germany sliding towards an Islamic sunset.
Is it possible for Germany to recover? We
shall see. What is at stake here, however, is far more than Germany.
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Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the
University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
