COMMUNIQUÉ by Robert Carle
A Grand Illusion
The Short Life of German Multiculturalism
Journalists at the 2010 World Cup touted the German national team as a showcase for the success of European multiculturalism. Eleven of the 23 players on the German national team in Johannesburg were of immigrant descent. Rob Hughes of the New York Times called the German national team a “league of many nations.” Canadian Doug Saunders reported that in Berlin’s Turkish ghettos, nearly every shop and apartment was wrapped in the red, black, and gold flag of Germany, and every kid’s face was painted with national colors.
The star of the team was 21-year-old Mesut Özil, a third-generation Turkish German who grew up playing soccer amid boarded-up shops and derelict apartment buildings in the working-class city of Gelsenkirchen. FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) nominated Özil for a Golden Globe award, which is given to the tournament’s best player. Back in Germany, Özil received the Bambi Award for being an example of successful integration into German society.
Enthusiasm Curbed
In the months following the World Cup, however, enthusiasm for German multiculturalism seemed to collapse. In August 2010, senior Bundesbank official Thilo Sarrazin published a taboo-breaking blockbuster, Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Abolishes Itself), that savaged Germany’s multicultural project. The book has sold nearly two million copies, making it postwar Europe’s best-selling political book.
Sarrazin writes that Muslims in Germany are four times as likely as the German population to be living on unemployment benefits and that 30 percent of them have no school diploma. He asserts that Muslims in Germany are characterized by “above average fertility; special segregation in ghettos; above average religiosity; and above average criminality.” “I do not desire that the land of my grandchildren be largely Muslim,” he goes on, “where women wear headscarves, and the daily rhythm is governed by the prayer call of the muezzin.”
The policies Sarrazinadvocates—including tighter control of immigration, German-language tests for newcomers, and compulsory citizenship for long-term residents—are quite mainstream. But he breaches German etiquette when he writes that “[Muslims], with their frequently lower-than-average intelligence, are having a higher than normal number of children. This makes us, on the average, stupider.” This prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel to accuse Sarrazin of showing “contempt for entire groups within our society,” and Social Democratic Party leader Sigmar Gabriel started proceedings to expel him from the party.
But Sarrazin’s book received an outpouring of support from the German public. Polls showed that over half of all Germans agreed with his views on immigration. German-Turkish sociologist Necla Kelek said that Sarrazin addressed “bitter truths.” Matthias Matussek of Der Spiegel wrote that he expressed the “anger of people who are sick and tired of being confronted with pre-Enlightenment elements.” Emails sent to Sigmar Gabriel ran nine to one in Sarrazin’s favor.
Failure & Nativism
This support for Sarrazin prompted Merkel to embrace culturally conservative perspectives that have been rare in German politics since World War II. On October 16, 2010, Merkel received a standing ovation when she called multiculturalism an “utter failure” and said that Germany required too little of its four million Muslim immigrants, though she qualified these statements by saying that Germans needed to accept mosques as part of their landscape and that Germany must continue to welcome skilled foreign workers.
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