In 2010, Thilo Sarrazin's book Germany Liquidates Itself The economist was cursed, his work was tried to be swept under the carpet, but they could not silence him, and time increasingly vindicates him.
Angela Merkel failed in the migration crisis, and this will go down in the history books as the biggest mistake of her chancellorship - this was the conclusion of former German Social Democratic politician Thilo Sarrazin in a volume published three years ago, in which several authors assessed the legacy of the Merkel era.
The book was published in Hungarian in 2022 under the title Merkel – Sixteen years of chancellorship critical balance – edited by MCC Press. The conclusion of the work involving social scientists, communication specialists, sociologists, historians, journalists and economists is that Angela Merkel's 16-year rule (she was chancellor from 2005 to 2021) left behind problems that will cause serious problems for Germany for a very long time to come.
We will soon find out what the former German chancellor's answer is, because his political memoir will be published in more than thirty countries at the end of November. In it, he will certainly cover the migration crisis that erupted in 2015 and the background of German policy decisions. In any case, Sarrazin accused Merkel of making the debate on migration policy impossible and of failing to develop a strategic assessment of the situation during her chancellorship.
When events accelerated and spiraled out of control in 2015, Merkel reacted headlong
he announced.
Germany is liquidating itself on the altar of migration
It is a fact that migration and refugee issues determine the development of German politics today, even after Merkel. The results of the regional elections held recently - the radical right and left became stronger - can be partly attributed to the fact that the current German government coalition could not really deal with immigration and its consequences (e.g. increased migration-related crime). At the same time, society's role as a policy-forming pressure exerter has already reached the point where, even if the results are questionable, strict border controls and restrictive measures have already been decided in Germany.
According to Sarrazin, Germany wasted years, but he didn't sound the alarm after 2015, but before. His well-received work entitled Germany Liquidates Itself was published in 2010, in which he supported with data that in the longer term
citizens of German origin and culture become a minority in their own country.
Sarrazin, born in 1945, could not easily be labeled a far-right, although in the end he got it. Between 2002 and 2009, he was Berlin's economic senator and then a member of the board of directors of the German Federal Bank when his book was published. As a result, he received unrelenting attacks, and was eventually banished from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and from German public life. Nevertheless, Germany liquidates itself became a huge success, it was first published in 25,000 copies, but the first edition quickly evaporated. By 2021, 1.5 million copies had been sold, and a total of 650,000 of Sarrazin's next five books (also surrounded by great controversy) were sold.
In the foreword to the new 2021 edition, Sarrazin wrote that the numbers and data he presents are inevitably dated, but his fundamental claims and analysis remain valid and his book is more relevant than ever.
Considering the focus of Hungarian politics, more precisely the focus of government policy, it is surprising that Germany liquidates itself only this year, it was published in Hungarian by Századvég at the beginning of the year (a later book by Sarrazin, Ellenséges power takeover, was already published by Századvég in 2019, this work led for exclusion from the SPD).
Source: X/@BloodyM97080257
China is one step ahead
Sarrazin has put a respectable and substantial work on the table fourteen years ago: he strongly criticized the consequences of the German immigration policy, he dealt in detail with the integration problems related to migrants of non-European origin and different cultures. It covered the issues of education, employment, social benefits, crime, religious fundamentalism and terrorism, and even examined women's rights in relation to different cultural attitudes. He supported all of this with an enormous amount of figures, tables, and traceable sources.
Among his most important findings was that the German people are not only aging, but essentially shrinking to nothing. In addition to demographic aging, it led to a decline in cognitive competencies, which together threaten the efficiency and competitiveness of the German economy in the long term, and relatedly, the maintenance of living standards. In relation to migration, he saw the problem in the fact that the majority of immigrants coming to the country come from the Middle East and Africa, whose academic performance and qualifications do not exceed the German average. He explained this by saying that these aspects are determined by the immigrants' culture of origin (he specifically described the Muslim influence as a negative effect), meaning that migration cannot effectively remedy the economic problems caused by demographic aging.
In his 2021 review, Sarrazin warned that East Asia is increasingly surpassing the West in terms of cognitive competencies, and that these
not good prospects for the future of economic and scientific competition with a rising China.
In simpler terms, as long as the West is dumbed down, and even immigration cannot change this, and even presents it with unsolved problems, China will invest in knowledge and innovation.
The author also showed insight in the way he revealed the background of the development of parallel societies. He pointed out that the integration of Muslim immigrants is hindered by their cultural isolation. But in addition to religious and different cultural reasons, the main obstacle to integration is precisely the attractiveness of the German social state. A low willingness to learn and use the German language in private life are further obstacles, as are low educational attainment, adherence to hierarchical family structures, continuous family reunification, and an attitude of marrying only one's own nationality and Muslims.
Two futures for Germany
German society was shaken by a brutal knife attack in August, before this year's regional elections. A Syrian immigrant who had his asylum application rejected stabbed three people to death and injured eight others in Solingen. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. This was not the first serious crime and terrorist act with a migration background in recent years. According to Sarrazin, immigration-based crime should not be trivialized, and he also added that the cultural influence of the Islamic religion is the most dangerous for immigrants coming to Germany and Europe.
In the new edition of his book, he explained that group-specific crime, especially violent acts, increases in direct proportion to the proportion of male members of the given group, its young average age and lack of labor market integration.
According to this, the tendency of foreigners to commit crimes in Germany is generally well above average. This is especially true for immigrants and their descendants who come from the Islamic culture.
Sarrazin discussed his proposed solutions at length and in detail. One of his propositions - which has been represented by the Orbán governments since 2015 - is that
a clear distinction must be made between humanitarian assistance and immigration.
The author's view is that the humanitarian goals should be fulfilled by the political asylum provided to the genuine political refugees and the support provided to the war refugees on their own continents, close to their country of origin, and the development aid should be organized accordingly. The measures to promote integration outlined by him have several elements: first of all, he came up with fine-tuned proposals for family, social and educational policies, he would tighten the teaching of the German language, make the acquisition of citizenship subject to stricter language requirements, and impose restrictive conditions on the family reunification of immigrants.
For me, it is important that Europe preserves its cultural identity as the European West, and Germany as a German-speaking European country, united with the surrounding French, Dutch, Danes, Poles and others, but nevertheless with a German tradition. (…) I don't want us to become strangers in our own country, not even at the regional level.
However, Sarrazin also stated that the Europe of nation states is secular, democratic and pays attention to human rights. At the end of his book, the author flashed two visions of the future for Germany.
• One is a nightmare scenario, at the "end" of which the majority Muslims in Germany demand a new national flag: a black background with the red crescent moon and gold stars (the German tricolor: black, red, gold).
• The other is an alternative: Germany stops population decline and encourages immigrants to integrate (with the measures already listed).
"Politics must act urgently. The possibilities and starting points are given, and I hope this book contributes to all of that."
He rejected the charge of racism
In the foreword to the new German edition of Germany liquidates itself in 2021, Sarrazin also addressed the attacks launched against him, according to which the accusation of racism had and still has a political function:
My critics wanted and still want to express their indignation at the fact that I brought up the genetic, cultural and religious factors that affect people as an argument at all, that I systematically analyzed their effects, and did not submit to the prevailing ideology that from birth, education and it can be shaped at will through society, just like a blank sheet of paper or a shapeless block of material.
The author argued (referring to scientific research) that a person's origin, the influence of his inherited characteristics, and his cultural and religious socialization are not at all indifferent to the composition and development of society. In terms of managing society as a whole, for example in terms of immigration, education or health policy, "it is also very important to monitor group differences and based on them, to proactively determine the objectives of public policy".
Sarrazin did not dispute it at all, and he also underlined that he agrees that anyone who classifies people as worthless or prone to crime based on their origin or skin color is a racist.
It took a long time for the Hungarian edition of Germany to liquidate itself to arrive in bookstores, but it deserves attention because it is not only addressed to Germany, but also to the whole of Europe. His problem statements, analyses, opinions and foresights, as well as his proposed solutions are compatible with the questions and dilemmas of the present, but Thilo Sarrazin's book is a large-scale work suitable for a minimum discussion.
Markus Söder, the president of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the prime minister of Bavaria, urged the transformation of the migration policy in the past few days. In an interview with the Bavarian newspaper Augsburger Allgemeine, he said that German is barely spoken in some school classrooms and that many people now do not feel at home in Germany, while some of the refugees are responsible for violent attacks such as the knife attacks in Mannheim and Solingen. Markus Söder also spoke about the need for institutional guarantees so that Germany can decide on who can come to the country. His proposals include limiting the right to asylum and limiting the number of asylum seekers to 100,000 per year. In recent years, the Orbán government has come up with just such proposals, but it has mostly received international political attacks.
Featured image: Florian Gaertner / Imago
