Angela Merkel Says German Multicultural Society Has Failed

The most tragic thing about this comment is that the humour is scarcely separable from the real opinions other commentators have been expressing. I don't want to generalise about the German people at large, but it's really ironic that there's such an avoidance of talking about Nazi Germany but such clear racism.

It's like there's a significant portion of Germans that want to be racist, but also want to play the victim and... justify it through that? Or something? I have no fucking clue. Poor show, Germany. You're good for some things, though.

edited 19th Oct '10 8:35:49 AM by MadassAlex

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

Yeah, the "lets just let the immigrants flow in, lay back, and do nothing to intigrate them" approach is certainly made of pure fail. It was the result of a massive political screw up and ideological kneejerk reactions:

The right refused to see immigrants as anything else than temporary guest workers and thus never felt the need for any measures to integrate them into the German society or make them feel welcome.

The left had build up so much historically driven national and cultural selfhate since the 60s that they wanted to protect and shelter the immigrants from the country/culture that they hated so much, furthering their ghettoisation. Yes, really. There are/were many serious left wingers who equated teaching immigrants accent free German with promoting racial hate and Nazism. This, unfortunatly, made the left wing parties, especially the greens, huge stumbeling blocks on this whole issue for a time.

So we got into this mess because no party was willing to pull thier heads out of their collective asses and shove thier prejudices and shitty ideology aside to work on the problem. As usual with politics.

ninja'd

Uh-huh.

...

Say, is there also a Firefox plugin to ignore Tropers on the froums? I only know of the one for Chrome...

edited 19th Oct '10 8:31:29 AM by DasAuto

Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF Debris

I said "like" because I don't believe that's true. That said, I've heard a lot about European racism of late — often from European natives themselves angry at how their friends and coworkers are victims of implicit racism. I also have significant investment in seeing Germany flourish as a truly multicultural nation — being of Germanic blood myself and only a generation removed from Europe.

I'd consider that remark borderline inflammatory, too. I don't want to make this somewhere where I go to get snarky with anyone in particular and I daresay you don't either, so let's keep comments relevant.

edited 19th Oct '10 8:51:17 AM by MadassAlex

Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch

It's hard for me to comment on how Germany's multiculturalism has "failed" when I don't know or hear much about it in international news. As far as I can tell, France is the one with major problems. Britain has a few crazy people in it mixed in with a large mass of quite normal and well integrated people.

I don't see anything wrong with multiculturalism. If you're getting ghettoisation the fault is not the immigrants, it only occurs if they don't feel welcome or have no way have interacting with the rest of society. Multiculturalism, when properly implemented, assimilates the people in question more readily than assimilation policies and that is the most ironic part. The harder you push people, the more they push back.

Tangential to the topic: rumour has it, that some recent poll gave a result that some 10% of Germans would like an iron fist leader. Eh heh heh

[Beat]

Wait, why am I laughing.

"Atheism is the religion whose followers are easiest to troll"

While the problems don't seem big enough for international news, they exist. And why wait until the problems are as big as in France until we start talking about it? Suppressing debate is certianly never the way.

I don't buy that claim. You sound like you are just reciting ideology. And even if I would the problem is still that the "proper implementation" didn't happened to begin with.

ninja'd

10% of every country seems to want a dictator. It's like a reverse version of Sturgeon's Law. Even here on the forums some people seem to be in favour of some kind of one party state or dictatorship or some such. Eco dictatorship, "philospher king" with absolute power, an AI that controls all government and makes laws, hive mind that overturns individualism, etc.. You name it, we have whackos who support it.

It's quite frightening, actually. I was going to make an IJBM about it.

edited 19th Oct '10 9:28:36 AM by DasAuto

Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF Debris

I could cite some examples if you like, the Conversos in Spain for example? This might be during the 16th century, but just demanding that people conform doesn't tend to work.

Well if I sound like I'm espousing ideology I am not. I'm talking from first hand experience in my geographic location. My country largely has no problems overall either. High employment rate, almost everyone is able to speak at least one of the two official languages and all contribute significantly to the tax base and they have a much lower rate in participation in the welfare system. There are very few ghettos and over the past 15 years in the big anti-racism drive, the ghettos that did used to exist have all been eliminated and turned into big commercial areas where I see people of all colours going there now.

The problems are so few that we can actually start looking at minority vs minority racism.

It's not like we would demand them to convert from thier religion and forbid their language from being spoken. Just make them learn the local language, have them send thier children to school every day and teach them some respect to the local laws is not too much to ask, especially when they ever want their children to have a job.

ninja'd

@ 33

Cool story, Bro Good to hear that it all worked in your country, but I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all solution.

edited 19th Oct '10 9:50:10 AM by DasAuto

Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF Debris

Then why not do what Denmark does, give free lessons in the local language to people who've come to work in your country?

As is, when do people who are often doing mimimum wage jobs going to find the money to do language courses? And I must kind of admit how many people don't send their kids to school? Secondary to that are you dismissing home scholling from that?

Yeah, as Das Auto said nice Godwin.

I have to admit I'm a little bit amused at the cluelessness of people about the context of that statement.
[edit]
If you earn insufficient money for the integration course in Germany, it's free if you ask for it. Otherwise it costs 1 euro per hour, with 645 hours total, and you get half of it back if you succeed in the final test.
Source

edited 19th Oct '10 10:03:20 AM by Uchuujinsan

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

^^ Free language courses are on the way AFAIK. The German government certainly is to blame for a part of the problem due to inaction (and trying to keep the debate down because they were afraid of the shitstorm).

Btw I think we suffer from a case of Personal Dictionary in this thread. When Merkel says that the multicultural society has failed she means that the current approach towards a multicultural society in Germany has failed, which it has.

edited 19th Oct '10 10:00:40 AM by DasAuto

Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF Debris

Well, Your Mileage May Vary, living in Munich I don't see many problems. Though Munich in general is obviously relatively rich, which might be an influence... I think the biggest problems are in Berlin.

edited 19th Oct '10 10:01:42 AM by Uchuujinsan

Pour y voir clair, il suffit souvent de changer la direction de son regard www.xkcd.com/386/

I think you (and this is a generic you, not aimed at Das Auto) need to try and make people interact with other areas more easily, by giving language training, encouraging interactions between differnt groups and just in general taking some ideas from everywhere and seeing what works.

All in all, well I just think that multiculturalism means adapting your own culture to encourage to people to stay and keep there own culture, as well as expecting people to do things your way in terms of laws and rights for people.

edited 19th Oct '10 10:12:55 AM by JosefBugman

^^Everything is better down south. It's because of the lower unemployment rates, the stronger identity and there is simply more tax money to throw around and solve problems with.

edited 19th Oct '10 10:08:47 AM by DasAuto

Now if you excuse me, Starfleet is about to award the Christopher Pike Medal to my dick. — SF Debris

QFT.

What Merkel tries to sell here as "multiculturalism" is the complete lack of any form of coherent politic agenda towards integration and immigration in Germany. It basically went form "They will leave eventually" to " There is no problem" to "The problem will solve itself". Well it didn't.

This whole thing pretty much happened several years ago here in the Netherlands as well, if you replace 'Merkel' with 'Verdonk'. And they were both pretty much right; something went terribly wrong, which is why society looks more like a patchwork then a knitted scarf.

Merkel may not have said it too well, but she does have a point. Its one thing to preserve the cultures and traditions of the cultures living within a society. It is another thing entirely for two groups of people within a country to speak a different language, attend different schools and live in different neighbourhoods.

Respecting the beliefs and identities of minorities is important, but you mustn't get two different factions growing up within a state. That just leads to the kind of racism being espoused by the ethnic Germans, as well as the kind of extremism from homegrown terrorists... if Merkel is wise, this is the balance she will try to restore... and I think she is looking towards doing.

Using the term "Christian values" was stupid. But on matters like forced marriage and education, she is, frankly, correct. The fact that Merkel said that Islam is a part of Germany should clue you up that she is not some mindless bigot. She is the leader of her country, and must weigh up the balance between respecting individuality of cultures and encouraging national unity as best she can.

As for the other comments, it does seem there is a worrying amount of ignorance towards the Islamic community in Germany... but once again, I doubt very much that holding multiculturalism as gospel has helped this... Germany has expertly landed itself in the very situation the policy makers years back were trying to avoid.

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Personally I was impressed by the fact that Merkel actually admitted that they failed. Not just failed, but completely.

American politicians never do that. It's always just excuses and scapegoating.

My other signature is a Gundam.

I've heard dozens of American politicians telling the public that certain policies have failed completely.

Of course, these were the policies of the other party.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

^ Haha. I should've included that point. No one will say THEY failed.

Scapegoats as usual.

My other signature is a Gundam.

See, here, that's pretty damning. I've been reading the New Testament (it's very funny: it's like reading the Warhammer40k sourcebooks for the first time, after reading about it on the internet, commenting extensively on it, trading memes of it, writing fanfics about it... then getting to read the originals... Surely The Bible is the most Memetic Mutation book EVER). And I'd say that many of the values there have been abandoned by modern society as immoral, while many others overlap heavily with Islamic equivalents. So it's not christian values that will distinguish those guys from Muslims, just saying. Most of the values that make Islam (the seriously, regourously, honestly practiced edition, not the erzatz versions most alledged Muslims practice around the world) unacceptable to modern society are eminently post-christian, and I wouldn't say some current-day Islamic countries are very different from a warmer, sunnier Victorian Britain.

edited 20th Oct '10 9:29:13 AM by RawPower

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

I was more referring to Rottweiler's eagerness to "protect christian europe from Muslim invaders" than any projection of the political future of Germany.

Multiculturalism in Germany hasn't been without problems, I won't deny that. The problem is that the far right has hijacked the discourse, so you can't say "there's a problem with immigration" without it taking the meaning "there should be less immigrants". My view is that there needs to be better integration and less marginalization. And it would be a good idea to try screen out radicals, but one must be wary that it doesn't come across as persecution of all islam, or even all people of muslim countries.

the statement above is false

^

I used to be murderously irritated by this attitutde. But then I thought a bit and realized the cultures I come from have the same attitude towards the West, which is corrupting their Islamic values and taking their youth away and corrupting their socity with cheap materialism and liberal bias and dangerous freedoms and improper behaviour and God-fearing good old boys should refrain from following the stupid tendencies of those drug-consuming sexual degenerates who kill their babies at a whim and divorce all the time.

...

Does the Deep South count as "Western Civilization"?

Hey, does this exist? Where? I want one!

Also, Das Auto, could you please quit it with the smug tone and the talking-down to people? We are interesting in hosting a cool, civil forum, and belittling people does little to advance that cause.

Yeah, I think it was pretty awesome fo her too. though, frankly, the USA have one of the worst cases I know of "Politics Is The Mind-Killer". It's really all a matter of segregation and Blues And Greens...

edited 20th Oct '10 10:05:59 AM by RawPower

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?