Politics and Current Affairs

Topic

I wonder who’ll be next week’s Prime Minister?

Replies

Christian wrote:

You don’t know many people with an immigration background, Arjan, do you?

BTW I ignored that comment, but it is completely wrong. There were 6 Morrocan kids in my class in primary school. (One of whom was expelled from the country as an adult, you can guess the reason) Also all my neighbors here are immigrants. Polish on the left, Iranian on the right, and Eritrean above me. I have a good relations with all of them. I also worked with many of them when I still had a job. In the town where I now live it is impossible to not be in contact with immigrants, every day.

 

Really in a nutshell the thing I’m trying to say is, I just think it’s evidently false to say that after three generations immigrants are all “fully assimilated” or “integrated” or even that this is feasible.  We’re into our third generation and there are clear differences, especially with the Morrocan group. It is quite a different culture, with many (not all of them, don’t misquote me) people who have fundamentally different opinions about many things that you would probably think are important. Different opinions can be fine, but we’ve also had people killed here for saying certain things about Islam, parents who killed their daughters because she was too “Westernized” etc

 

 

 

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Also all my neighbors here are immigrants. Polish on the left, Iranian on the right, and Eritrean above me. I have a good relations with all of them. I also worked with many of them when I still had a job.

Okay. So maybe you should look at these experiences more than at the cases that make national headlines.

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Really in a nutshell the thing I’m trying to say is, I just think it’s evidently false to say that after three generations immigrants are all “fully assimilated” or “integrated” or even that this is feasible.[…] It is quite a different culture, with many (not all of them, don’t misquote me) people who have fundamentally different opinions about many things that you would probably think are important.

It depends on what your understanding of integration. If you equate this with “full assimilation”, then no, that won’t happen. But it doesn’t need to. Not everybody has to enjoy sauerkraut and bratwurst and pray to Jesus to fully be part of German society.

As for it being a completely different culture, the same goes for me and someone living in a village deep in Bavaria, not to mention Sachsen-Anhalt. The idea of one coherent national culture is a mirage, it’s nonsense. There’s always a thousand different subcultures running in parallel, and these days some of them are influenced by ethnicity. (Well, actually, they always have been, but those ethnicities used to be a smaller number and geographically closer.)

Different opinions can be fine, but we’ve also had people killed here for saying certain things about Islam, parents who killed their daughters because she was too “Westernized” etc

And you have people getting killed for being gay, or being women, or out of jealousy, or because they ran into somebody with a psychosis. When it comes to migrants, we tend to attribute crimes to their being immigrants, and to the things that make them Other from us.

And once again, I am not saying that things like radical Salafism (imported to my city of Bonn from Saudi-Arabia, by the way) aren’t problematic; they are. And where there is ideologically motivated crime, or deliberate radicalisation, you have to fight that. (But that also goes for Christian extremism, and for right-wing radicalisation.)

But the best way of fighting the root causes in all of these cases – and I am including naziism here – is to invite everybody to participate in our society.

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Todd

Of course never did I say anything like “all immigrants are bad”, most are alright. And I don’t want to “close the borders” or something like that. But I take issue with this idea which is really a liberal idea I think, that everybody is in his heart of hearts already kind of a liberal, and will eventually (or in 3 generations) blend in when they move to a secular, liberal society, at least when we are nice enough to them. That’s underestimating conservative and tribal drives many people have.

 

BTW I don’t think this is the biggest issue we face, Putin and Trump and the fashy stuff in Europe is worse.