Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democrats (CDU), Merkel said allowing people of different cultural backgrounds to live side by side without integrating had not worked in a country that is home to some four million Muslims.
“This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed,” Merkel told the meeting in Potsdam, south of Berlin.
Merkel faces pressure from within her CDU to take a tougher line on immigrants who don’t show a willingness to adapt to German society and her comments appeared intended to pacify her critics.
It is one thing for Merkel to express some misgivings to save her political fortunes. It is another thing to change the law to end immigration until the flood of arrivals can be assimilated. Or change the law to send as many of the refugees as possible (the ones with no right to stay permanently in Europe) back home.
It is unlikely that Merkel will do either of those things.
Merkel had plenty of warning. Even back in 2015, a majority of Germans said they were scared or alarmed about the refugee influx, according to a Der Spiegel article at the time.
Hungary’s Nobel Prize-winning writer, the late Imre Kertész, wrote in 2014: “Muslims are flooding Europe to later conquer, or, in other terms, destroy it; about how Europe manages all this, on suicidal liberalism and brainless democracy; democracy and suffrage for chimpanzees. This is always what it concludes to: the civilisation arrives at an overbred condition in which it is not only unable but also unwilling to protect itself; when, seemingly mindlessly, it worships its own enemies…”
Sadly, it seems to be too late for Germany to set a different course. At least it can serve as an instructive example for the rest of the world.
Zerohedge links to this Reuters article:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-merkel-immigration/merkel-says-german-multiculturalism-has-failed-idUSTRE69F1K320101016
It is one thing for Merkel to express some misgivings to save her political fortunes. It is another thing to change the law to end immigration until the flood of arrivals can be assimilated. Or change the law to send as many of the refugees as possible (the ones with no right to stay permanently in Europe) back home.
It is unlikely that Merkel will do either of those things.
Merkel had plenty of warning. Even back in 2015, a majority of Germans said they were scared or alarmed about the refugee influx, according to a Der Spiegel article at the time.
Hungary’s Nobel Prize-winning writer, the late Imre Kertész, wrote in 2014: “Muslims are flooding Europe to later conquer, or, in other terms, destroy it; about how Europe manages all this, on suicidal liberalism and brainless democracy; democracy and suffrage for chimpanzees. This is always what it concludes to: the civilisation arrives at an overbred condition in which it is not only unable but also unwilling to protect itself; when, seemingly mindlessly, it worships its own enemies…”
Sadly, it seems to be too late for Germany to set a different course. At least it can serve as an instructive example for the rest of the world.