Richard Landes knows France…
…and he wonders which way it will turn, now that the Charlie Hebdo massacre has gotten its attention:
…[W]hen mainstream news journalists, whose publications have been notably silent on these critical issues for 15 years, suddenly extol Charlie Hebdo as “fellow journalists” and heroes of free speech it rings hollow…
Can France listen to the story its Jews have to tell? Can even those who agree with Valls really contemplate seriously what’s happening to Jews in France? Can they hear in Netanyahu’s call on the French Jews to come to Israel, not primarily the insult to national honor that it undoubtedly is, but a rebuke, however tactlessly expressed, that should promote some self-reflection about what France has done that he would even think of making such an appeal? Can they see in the Israeli burials of the victims at Hypercacher, not the discarding of a French identity, but the desire to be buried where their graves will not be desecrated? Will Jews continue to be allowed to bear witness, or will some members of the French intelligentsia turn eagerly once again to the “alter-juifs,” the asajews, who feel they show their greatness of soul by publicly promoting a war narrative that targets their own people?
Was this an historic day in which France found its national will to resist? Or will it be the largest selfie in history, a sad tale of nearly uninterrupted and, too often, undeserved self-admiration?…
As an observer and critic of the French intelligentsia for the last 15 years, I’m not too sanguine. In principle, it’s hard to imagine a civilization committing suicide from vanity; from the ground here in France, it’s not so inconceivable.
I don’t know France the way Richard Landes does. In fact, I barely could be said to know it at all. But I, likewise, am not too sanguine. I’m basing that on what I know of leftist and pro-Palestinian thought, and how deeply entrenched and widespread it has become—and not just in France, either.
I hope we’re both being too pessimistic.
Well, if the reluctance of France to own up to its role in deportation of Jews in WWII is any example, then there is reason to be pessimistic.
Suicide from vanity? Oh no, France did a lot more than that, they actively imported in their rapist invasion re colonialists.
Can they hear in Netanyahu’s call on the French Jews to come to Israel, not primarily the insult to national honor that it undoubtedly is, but a rebuke, however tactlessly expressed, that should promote some self-reflection about what France has done that he would even think of making such an appeal?
Perhaps Prof. Landes feels differently about this. Personally, I saw Mr. Netanyahu’s call — and yes, it was tactless — not as an attempt to insult or rebuke a nation, but rather, to save Jewish lives before any more were lost. As anyone who’s ever been on the wrong end of a holdup could tell you, there’s a time for tact, and a time for doing what you have to do to stay alive.
Netanyahu had to say it, sooner or later… and, in my opinion, he was not willing to wait for any more French Jews to be murdered before saying it.
In re France — my wife and I visited Paris for a couple of weeks in 2008. We had just read Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” together, and we had wondered how long France would remain France. We noticed some disturbing trends, such as how very few young French children we saw. (Whenever we saw a family with more than two young children, the family was inevitably Muslim.)
France, you felt guilty, and rightfully so, for the way you treated your Jewish countrymen after Dreyfus and after Vichy. You attempted to show how enlightened you were by welcoming in Muslim immigrants by the millions. And now they are threatening… the same Jewish countrymen, whose mistreatment you were trying to atone.
This does not speak well for you. Valls is right — if you will not protect your Jewish citizens, then France will no longer be France… not because France must have Jews, but because you will have broken the most solemn promise you ever made, to the French people who had already been betrayed by you.
Jews everywhere in the West, and in the US, have been left, right and center in the progressive multiculturalist movements for open borders and more third worlders. Who votes a straight Dem ticket to rival blacks? Who has been telling us all that any resistance to the third world deluge amounts to being knuckle-dragging racist, nativist nazis?
Expecting these fleeing Jews to “stiffen the resistance” is about as clever as imagining that California progressives re-locating to Texas for jobs and salaries will abandon the ideologies that turned the places they flee into third world dumps.
My sympathy meter for French Jews who voted socialist and cried about Front National being racist now fleeing the hell they willingly and gleefully helped building is firmly pegged at zero.
g6loq:
Jews do NOT “vote a straight Democratic ticket to rival blacks.” Although they still are predominantly Democratic, the percentages are nowhere near as high as with black voters. See this and this.
and, b-t-w, for the record, 75% of French Jews survived WWII. Elsewhere in Europe 40% or less:
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/h-statistics.htm
There has been some -belated-recognition of the French’s efforts at sheltering their compatriots:
http://tinyurl.com/23yj8xv
The Right chases its tail correcting the factual errors, as if the facts have ANY impact on The Left. We’ve been correcting the record for decades. Does The Left control more or less of America since we began this exercise? Should we keep doing what we have done while The Left has come to dominate more and more of society or should we finally recognize The Left cannot be deterred by facts. The so-called moderates are only low-info Gomers that substitute social signlas for facts. Since 99% of their info comes from leftist media all they know is leftist dogma.
Is there any way yelling “eat a sandwich” at an anorexic will cure them? No, but that doesn’t stop us from endlessly documenting recipes and nutritional facts when the problem is our opponent has a mental short-circuit and they see blubber in the mirror no matter how skeletal they become.
We discuss facts because we prefer that to confrontation and battle. Winning battle is the only way to improve things…
The French, like the rest of Europe, continues is lemming like march to oblivion.
When a country decides to lay down and die there isn’t much that can be done about it other than to cover the body.
History will be a harsh judge of the 20th century liberal intellectual elite who propagated this tragedy.
g6loq:
Different countries during WWII were occupied by Germany in different ways. French occupation was nothing like Poland occupation, for example. For the most part France was very compliant in rounding up its Jews, without all that much pressure from the Nazis at all. It is a shameful history.
See this [emphasis mine]:
There’s more. Who saved the remaining Jews of France? Mussolini, that’s who:
See also this.
Let’s not stop with France.
Look at what the official response in Germany is to the PEGIDA movement, from Merkel on down to the Interior Minister. PEGIDA is the German equivalent of the Tea Party here in the USA, an entirely peaceful protest. The German government in effect tells PEGIDA to shut up and get used to it, No you cannot get a permit to protest, make way for the muzzies and their mosques,, etc. The German government! By Germans and of Germans, but not for Germans.
The Jews are indeed part of the problem. They always need others to stand up for them, even while they make it difficult with their apparently congenital leftist inclinations. Even in Israel a large % are not part of the solution.
It is truly appalling for us to see these disasters, foreign and domestic, occur and evolve before our eyes. It is like the Black Plague; it is here and we are infected.
Neocon: 75%! Ok!
Let it be. There are all kinds of narratives easily put forward given these murky times.
It is 75%!
And it was about 1.4 christian in the camps for each Jews. These christian folks were not in these Socialist hell pits because they sat on their hand.
Zoom forward, USA 2015, they voted 70/80% Obama – TWICE. This will have to be resolved within the community …
skeneogden: Yup!
Look into the Swedish situation.
Attempts at social engineering never end well.
There’ll be a reaction and it be bloody:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOSrnjcvh24&spfreload=10
It’ll be very bloody. The left is petulant and Islam is triumphalist, not a good mix.
g6loq:
Most Jews in the US are secular—they are Jewish in terms of ethnicity, but are not religious at all. Those secular Jews are the ones on the left. Religious Jews tend to be much more on the right.
There were not 1.4 Christians in death camps in ratio to each Jew there. The Jews were the ones targeted for death, in the main.
That said, the Nazis treated Slavic people abominably, and had even worse plans for them if the war had continued long enough.
Before Newton there was Galileo and before him Aristotle, who correctly held that an object at rest remained at rest unless acted upon by a sufficiently large outside force.
I suspect that the same dynamic applies to societies. If correct, then France will not ‘change’ until the threat becomes sufficiently serious that the majority can no longer maintain their denial as to the source and nature of the threat.
Neither Charlie Hebdo’s satirical cartoonists nor the Jews of France form the majority. The outside force of Islamic jihadists is not yet threatening enough because only a ongoing threat to the majority will suffice. It will take a campaign of terrorist attacks to form a new public perception of the nature of the threat.
The same incidentally is true of America’s liberals and its low-info citizens. The deeper the denial, the greater the eventual confrontation with reality.
Neocon: I said:”in the camps” didn’t say they were targeted for death.
I read you entries. Fine work. I couldn’t write/research that well. So, I read your blog.
There is no victimhood at large. You know that because of your line of work.
The WWII events didn’t come out of nowhere … Look into the Socialistic mucking about in the 1917- 1930 time frame and look into the players…
1968, Paris, my WWII bemedaled Mom and Dad were bemoaning the fact that most of the prominent Socialist agitators were Jewish… Cohn-Bendit and al…. Going on to these days.
The methodology of the left since WWII has been Gramsci inspired, one-slice-at-the time action. The methods were fine tuned by the Frankfurt School who essentially moved to California just before the war. That is what has been going on.
Yes, secular Jews. They’re very intent and very, very busy … I can’t explain, I can’t change but these days I very carefully avoid the contamination
because … of what is coming. I was told by my folks that it is very difficult to keep your thinking and principles straight when events starts. As they will. Those US secular Jews are a problem in the aggregate. That can only be resolved from within the Jewish community. We know the names.
Spengler just wrote a piece which I think germane to this conversation:
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2015/01/21/election-envy-the-europeans-and-the-jews/
It is going to be tough. I keep fit, I am now very careful with my associations, I prepare. It won’t be a walk in the park. Islamic infiltration is a huge addition to the Socialist problem.
The US secular Jews are not helping …
French vanity is something to behold. My mentor in math was a visiting professor in Sorbonna and had seen an advertisment there warning students that they should not take mathematical proofs in German journals at a face value and should not repeat them at exams, because not everything admissible as a mathematical proof in Germany (or in any foreign country as well) is considered valid in France. This is not exactly as having their own arithmetics, but having their own definition of mathematical proof is not that far from it.
Don Carlos,
The Pegidos movement is not as black and white as you think. Yahoo reported this week that one of the two leaders was just kicked out because they found pictures of him in a Hitler uniform. It seems that some real neo-Nazis are trying to use the anti-immigration issue to gain some sort of power. The latest surge in protestors tells me that lots of people are just searching for a way to express their anxiety without really checking out what they are supporting. Also these groups started in the east, where a lot of people have never really acknowledged that they too were part of Hitler’s atrocities.
I think what is happening now is that more decent people are starting to realize their valid concerns have been silenced by the multiculti leftists and greens. I also think that sensible politicians are starting to realize they have to ask more of the Turks who live here, some of whom are actually pretty secular but have remained quiet. Some of them have been influenced by imams who have rather recently come from Turkey. Erdogan has also made some speeches that are inflammatory.
There are also Germans calling attention to the problems in the large Turkish areas in cities like Cologne and Berlin. And there is the Turkish-born sociologist Necla Kelek, who is describing the cultural differences between Turks and Germans, especially in the way children are raised. There are definitely some politicians here who are trying to gives these people voices and work with more secular Turks to change attitudes in their communities and to counter the frustration of young people caught between two worlds.
Unfortunately, most people don’t really know about this. They get their news from all the do-gooders they see on TV. There have been numerous counter-protests to Pegida. I think most don’t want to be caught between neo-Nazis and unlimited immigration. But they will have to do more homework on the cultural differences between groups so they can talk about the situation maningfully.
We visit France every 2 to 3 years. We have long term friends in La Rochelle, the rural area of Agen, and Lorraine; all differnt regions in a country far more diverse than most Americans recognize. Birds of a feather do flock together, but we do not believe our French friends are not outliers, and they are all deeply concerned that their culture and their way of life is under attack on 2 fronts: islamic immigration and the welfare and regulatory state that stifles the economy. I will not give up on France any more than I will give up on my compatriots in flyover country.
Btw, there is a prominent monument at the La Rochelle train station that lists the names of Jews sent eastward to the camps. Our friends in La Rochelle lost family members in the resistance to the gestopo. They have not forgotten.
They have not forgotten …
Fulfilling a promise made to his mother when he was a child and she was losing her battle against cancer, Jacques Besnainou tells her story as a “hidden” child in France during World War II. He chronicles the struggles and survival of two families: his mother’s and his mother-in-law’s.
Both lived through a terrifying ordeal provoked by the willful blindness of a government gone mad. And both were rescued thanks to the miraculous intervention of courageous people who listened to their conscience and challenged the established order, often at the expense of their own lives. In 1940, about 330,000 Jews lived in France and three-quarters survived thanks to the exemplary altruism of ordinary French people. This book pays homage to them:
http://tinyurl.com/lyftt43
2015: Obama – TWICE!
Nothing learned, everything forgotten …
Netanyahu had to say it, sooner or later… and, in my opinion, he was not willing to wait for any more French Jews to be murdered before saying it.
Doesn’t really matter what he was saying, Israel has been taking in French transfers for a long time, even before last year.
He’s talking about a situation that is already true. He’s basically talking to his future citizens that he knows is going to come no matter what.
The Pegidos movement is not as black and white as you think. Yahoo reported this week that one of the two leaders was just kicked out because they found pictures of him in a Hitler uniform.
One of the British royals were also in a costume of that sort. What’s the point behind the idea exactly?
This is like the “Dick Cheney is shaking hands with oil baron thus Iraq is a war for oil” kind of logic, isn’t it.
If you believe Bat Ye’or’s well researched and documented book “Eurabia,” the massive invasion of Europe by millions of inassimilable Muslims was deliberately agreed to and facilitated by the EU, the French, especially DeGaulle, and by various intellectuals starting in 1967, as part of an agreement to allow and facilitate such massive “immigration” in return for cheap Muslim oil and low cost workers.
Now that the Muslim population of France has, as a result, reached a reported 10%, it appears that their strong-arming their way into an ever greater share of the public square–to the diminishment of the space occupied by native Frenchmen and “unbelievers”–seems to be irreversible and accelerating.
Absent a French Revolution level upheaval, in appears that a mostly supine, fearful, and timid, politically correct France will simply be steamrollered by violent and aggressive, in your face Muslims, who will first dominate, then eventually rule France. Moreover, it looks like the same process will play out in many, if not most, of the countries of Europe, with us not far behind if we are not extremely careful.
The Jews of France are the canaries in the coal mine here, and their increasing rush for the exits is a decidedly bad sign, as a huge amount of intellectual capital flees France.
To quote the late Robert Heinlein:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded – here and there, now and then – are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
I like what Germany’s Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said about the Pegida guy:
Anyone in politics who poses as Hitler is either a total idiot or a Nazi. Reasonable people do not follow idiots, and decent people don’t follow Nazis.
Opposing an alien presence in your society that refuses to assimilate does not a xenophobe make. No society and/or culture will survive if it allows aliens to refuse to assimilate. I get a slow burn every time I encounter a government agency asking me to press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish, or 3 for other.
Ymarsakar,
It was obvious that Prince Harry did it as a joke. This guy is leading protests. And there are real neo-Nazi groups, mostly small, in Germany. I’ve never been worried about them gaining any following, but this is the kind of issue is they will try to use. There are far more knowledgeable and reputable types who have been raising these issues.
Expat and Ann:
You should exercise more care before condemning. Anyone who cites news from Yahoo is frankly a bit up in the air. Anyone who does not know the German authorities themselves have organized the anti-PEGIDA demos, and have refused PEGIDA permission to assemble peacefully in Dresden is poorly informed. Anyone who quotes German Vice-Chancellor’s anti-PEGIDA remarks will also quote Harry Reid’s anti-Tea Party remarks as meaningful.
I encourage the less than well-informed to read up on PEGIDA’s positions and policies before condemning a grass-roots movement because one guy did something stupid.
The dude did not “pose” as Hitler to the multitudes. One photo appeared simultaneously in multiple German media–no orchestration there, none. The media released it. The German Chancellor of Vice condemns all PEGIDAns, in their tens of thousands, as idiots or nazis. His US equivalents called us Tea Baggers and terrorists, the IRS sabotaged the popular upstirrings, probably cost Romney the election, remember any of that?
c6loq:
Are you seriously suggesting that Nazi anti-Semitism came because there were a lot of Jewish socialists? I hope you are not being that simplistic.
“There is no victimhood at large”? Again, I’m not sure what you mean by that, but if you mean what I suspect you might mean, it is an ignorant comment.
I’ll leave it at that, because perhaps I’m misunderstanding your point, which is rather cryptic.
You quote that 3/4 of the Jews of France survived “thanks to the exemplary altruism of ordinary French people.”
No, that’s not what happened. Certainly, there were many cases of hidden Jews and brave French people. But there was a very real differential between the Jews that lived and those who were killed: the vast majority of the dead were Jews who had come more recently to France in the 30s, fleeing for their lives from other countries of Europe. France sacrificed them willingly.
Wolla Dalbo:
Bat Ye’or’s dead wrong. De Gaulle was absolutely against Moooslime immigration: [one source]
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/153069
Birth rate discrepancy were his main reason for spinning off Algeria.
Now the worse case scenario has happened: soft invasion. There is no telling the outcome … Likely it’ll be bloody …
I blame the voters ….
Anyone in politics who poses as Hitler is either a total idiot or a Nazi. Reasonable people do not follow idiots, and decent people don’t follow Nazis.
You’re trying to differentiate socialism and the Left’s progress from the Nazis, correct? That’s what they are doing, so why not.
It was obvious that Prince Harry did it as a joke. This guy is leading protests.
No such thing as the obvious in this war. It’s mostly about deception and propaganda time.
The Left’s modus operandi is concentrated on Alinsky types rules. Freezing opponents and separating them from their allies. That’s why they have been able to hijack and conquer as much of Western civilization as they have, because people buy it. It’s not always the case, but people keep buying it. Usually because the Every Man lacks the time, resources, or motivation to do their own intel analysis of the various factions and their true natures.
And there are real neo-Nazi groups, mostly small, in Germany.
I’ve heard of them, but there are white KKK White Camelia knights and racial supremacists in the US too. They used to be allies as well, when the Democrat aristocrats funded and staffed the KKK. Things change over time, however. The Nazis act as a sufficient boogeyman to Europe, but I doubt that’s an accurate description of what is really going on now. To foreigners, the Republicans probably look like the party of slavery, irregardless of history.
It’s why foreigners despise the Republicans, even though they have only visited the US… maybe. That’s one heck of a reputation there, for trading in slaves that were never traded.
neo-neocon:
Correct, the Vichy regime dragnet was specifically targeting foreign jews … French born jews were also deported. Again, 75% survived.
Aside: You might want to explore the FDR admin/Vichy regime relationship. Admiral Leahy specifically. Not pretty.
There is no victimhood at large. I blame the voters.
Note, I referenced the 1917-1930’s era. Lots of mucking about by all kinds of people. Before the Nazi camps there were Gulags and … the Holodomor. We know the names.
In the States the Jewish establishment mucked about big time. Look up Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise and Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook) a man who had much difficulties countering the morons of the times. He too was called ignorant and worse …
2015: nothing learned despite the huge volume of info available. I blame the voters…
The key word is: TWICE!
North American Jews have been very aggressive re-writting the history of the Shoa. The victims were abandoned to their fate at the times. [period]
As I stated, it is problem within the community … You’re a psy, you’re better intellectually equipped to understand and maybe, maybe neutralize the States side grandiloquent self-haters…
Read Pam Geller’s blog. She’s the new Hillel Kook.
Over and out ….
There are far more knowledgeable and reputable types who have been raising these issues.
What people consider knowledgeable and reputable types in the US can’t even predict that Hussein Obola would be evil in 2008 like the rest of us did. They can’t even pay attention to the Democrat slavery of blacks in modern 21st century or recognize the roots of Democrat slavery and political mastery in the past. And that’s for so called American intellectuals.
European intellectuals are not going to be superior concerning their own affairs. They don’t know their own history, they just think they do. And in some respects, Americans don’t know the true history of America either. They don’t know what happened on Thanksgiving. They don’t know why the South rebelled, why General Lee fought for the South even though he hated slavery, or why the Democrats decided compromise with Lincoln was forbidden.
There is still room for debate and controversy on that. Without realizing the truth of what really happened in their past, without looking face on the truth of the Hitler-Stalin alliance, how are they going to figure out which faction is dangerous or not?
The blacks in the US think Lincoln was a Democrat, I doubt the European sheep will have better discrimination on the matter of history and truth. Welfare hurts the soul.
Yet more on Pegida’s now gone leader:
Morgenpost reporters dug further into the Pegida leader’s Facebook account and found a Ku-Klux-Klan demotivator poster (“Three K’s a Day Keeps the Minorities Away”)
Ann: what is your point? One guy’s poor jokes take down a movement of many? Kind of like MLK’s fabled rampant adultery taking down the civil rights movement, no?
Don Carlos,
Yes! The western msm distorts everything that does not fit their leftist narrative. As I have stated elsewhere, failure to insist that immigrants assimilate is to surrender your culture to the ‘barbarian’ horde. Stand up and be counted or doom your great granchildern to sharia. And no, that is not hyperbole. The enemy admits that is their goal. They proudly claim they will out breed the nations they infest.
There is much to joke about the KKK as it was the terrorist arm of the Democ.rat party and they spent much time lynching republican … We know the name, we see through the narrative …
I blame the voters…
Ann and expat don’t live in the US so their media input is foreign. That’s what I take away from the style. That doesn’t necessarily cripple an intel analyst’s abilities, since the internet frees them of such, but it is very limiting.
Trying to judge US capabilities from a foreign propaganda point of view, is problematic. Trying to judge the European’s own status quo by looking at their own propaganda, is also problematic.
The truth is not a high priority. If it was, Sweden wouldn’t be covering up their Muslim rape invasion force they wanted to get in. Does any of this make sense? I don’t think it has to make sense. It’s war, after all.
Basically, the Left is winning because people think their victories mean that Pegida’s leader is X, because he’s been disappeared. The thing is… what makes you think the Left won’t disappear you in Europe right now, when it works on high level political leaders? Hrm? You aren’t protected by US Dominion forces or US Pax Americana, you realize that, right. This is not US politics, even if it was about politics. This is European control right now.
The Christian Democrats, Merkel, and the SDP, the socialist German party, are in a grand coalition.
CDU I think it was, gets votes primarily from West Germany, meaning the free market areas under Allied control. SDP is usually an East German phenomenon.
I notice how people like to talk about neo Nazis in Germany, but don’t usually talk about the East German Stasi secret police. Given that many of the Stasi force disappeared and reintegrated into German culture, I would be personally worried about them and their socialist/communist masters more. In the long run, those psychopaths are a lot better organized.
German politics has been kind of funny ever since East and West united. The fact that they are using neo Nazis as an excuse to hunt down dissidents, is kind of ironic. If they were using the Stasi excuse, Merkel would get into trouble with the SDP. How Merkel’s Christians Democrats can share power with the SDP for this long, that’s another funny question.
Just what have the German socialists been doing during this time?
Correction. SPD
Specifically http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democratic_Party_of_Germany
Social Democratic Party, SPD… get it? German wording.
Btw, Ann’s Vice Chancellor? SPD is led by Sigmar Gabriel. Grand Coalition puts him as the Vice Chancellor… get it?
Get what that means? That’s like Hussein Obola being Romney or Bush’s vice president or sec treasurer, almost.
Ymarsakar,
I certainly do not get all my information from one source in Germany. I am also aware of the parties and positions of German politicians, and I think Sigmar Gabriel is an idiot. However, there are some who see the situation pretty clearly. Are you aware that Otto Schilly, the former SPD minister of the interior who praised John Ashcroft for his work in coordinating security policies in the West post 9/11? The people who have actual responsibility for such things and who actually see the intelligence reports are not so naive.
Also, as the Pegida movent started, I began to wonder how much the leftists in the East were supporting it. The SPD did not arise in the East. It’s strong areas are places in the north like Hamburg and Westphalia, and there it is much a union-supporting group. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, SPD, is the one who pushed Carter to station missiles along the East West border to counter the Russian missiles. It was the leftie peaceniks who hated him. It was also the rise of the Greens that made coalition building so difficult in Germany. They are the worst multicultis in Germany, and the do overestimate the dangers from Neo-Nazis. Unfortunately, much of the media merely echoes their program, be it multiculti, pro Hans Blix, or anti-GMO.
However the CDU has some clear-thinking politicians like Sché¤uble and Bosbach, who have seriously been following the rise of radicals. I have no problem with them wanting to counter an East movement. They have to keep the politics in mind because if they loose power, the nuts take over. It was the CDU that put the brakes on taking Turkey into the EU, and they managed to do it in a way that didn’t push uninformed voters into the other camp. There are many fronts on which they have to fight, from bailing out Greece to restraining Putin. It’s a tough line to tread and impossible to follow without missteps. Their previous ally, the FDP, has totally lost it after it went the coolness path with gay (translate “cool”) Guido Westerwelle, who demanded the job of foreign minister because he thought it was his legacy even though he had no clue about foreign affairs. You also have to remember that it was Merkel who stopped Obama’s campaign speech at the Brandenburg Gate, and she was practically the only politician that didn’t drool over him. The smart ones in the CDU are more aware of the real world than any other party. Unfortunately, they can be tumbled if the opposition parties join together. This would, of course, give the Left party some seats in government.
You seem to think that Pegida is the main way to stop the jihad. I don’t. I think it is a possible way to destroy any coherent government in Germany. Once you get a crowd frothing at the bit, it’s a bit difficult to determine who will grab the reins. The fact that this movement is coming from the East, doesn’t reassure me.
Ymarsakar, expat:
the Scandinavians went full multi-kulti for some reasons. This piece bring PEGIDA into the context:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/5140/norway-islam-multiculturalism
It is all over but for the shouting. Polish your steel helmets ….. Several Charles Martel will reveal themselves. It has happened before …
Parker:
French leftist societal engineers going a bridge too far:
http://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2015/01/forcing-diversity-on-rural-france.html
You seem to think that Pegida is the main way to stop the jihad.
I didn’t cover that in any fashion. What I was replying to was the belief that Pegida is a neo nazi group or that there’s some kind of threat to the German politic body that there is symbols of the nazis somewhere related.
Unfortunately, they can be tumbled if the opposition parties join together. This would, of course, give the Left party some seats in government.
From an American point of view, Merkel is a better person to negotiate with concerning American interests than say, the previous anti American SDP leaders during 2003.
However, if we’re looking at the plight of the German or European people, Merke’s interest in immigration to bolster their economy and promoting immigration for votes to avoid being ousted by the other parties, is not good enough.
Germany has a thing against the Nazis or the neo Nazis, going out of their way to outlaw certain things even. Thus if Merkel is going on that bandwagon, it’s not that they think there’s a threat from the Nazis, it’s that they think if Merkel doesn’t go against the Nazis, the national socialists in the SDP will take power instead. That’s basically what your argument leads to, when you highlight the real political situation there.
If Merkel is doing what she does because she might otherwise lost her control of the portfolio, because the Grand Coalition collapses, then that has little to do with ensuring the safety of Germany from an Islamic invasion. It also has little to do with suppressing extremists and Nazis.
The FDP got voted out of their parliament or whatever it is they call it. There’s still a representative, somewhere, but I don’t think it counts for coalition building purposes in acquiring a majority for the PM. I wasn’t questioning Merkel’s reason for gaining a majority, her options were limited. However, a Grand Coalition of that nature has a kind of cost, in terms of political compromises.
The last time I saw a demographic map, like the blue/red split in the US, was more than 10 years ago. However, during that time it got real obvious that the majorities preferred the SPD in former Eastern block territories while the CDU had a significant advantage in the opposite. As with US politics, the loyalty of the people determines how far a political party can get in a region. In cities that are primarily Democrat owned, Republican control is non existent, such as in Detroit or New Orleans. Even if the overall state is less corrupt or more Republican split, the local policies are controlled by the one with the dominant power structure.
In the US, they use gun laws and the IRS and the ATF and police swat raids to disappear people, legally or not. In Germany, the laws against nazis and racism against immigrants, looks to be about as effective. That’s why the Nazis are their boogeymen. Although as I said, I would be more personally concerned about the Stasi and the SPD.
Merkel is not going to be able to stop the SPD by replacing Germans with Islamic Jihadists, no matter what the polls say. Sweden, Norway, France, and Britain with their rape capital sex slave cities have already tried that. It doesn’t seem to be working.
Ymarsakar,
I think there is a difference between normal immigration and accepting asylum seekers. I believe much of the outrage has to do with accepting masses of people from Syria requesting asylum. It also has to do with EU policies and people from Africa using Italy as a point of entry and then having freedom to move anywhere within the EU. It also has to do with towns having to fund housing and other things for asylum seekers. It is a very muddled picture that the government has been unable to breakdown into rational segments with rational answers to the general population. The utopian ideas of the EU fanatics are very hard to combat and are to some extent shared by some CDU supporters. We have the white guilt phenomenon; they have the Nazi guilt problem.