The so-called refugee “crisis” is a gigantic humanitarian catastrophe without precedence in the history of mankind. Sixty million fellow humans have been driven out of their home region. Most of them vegetate in gigantic camps without appropriate food and clothing; and most of them have been and will be vegetating like this forever, until their lives’ end, deprived of their freedom without having committed any crime. Some two million of these uprooted people have summoned sufficient energy, money and connections to the outside world to search asylum in other countries. Every day this army of uprooted people is complemented by as many as 43,000. Their number has quadrupled since 2010. The growth rate of this expulsion movement is still dynamically increasing.
Most of these refugees remain in their home country, but in a different province. Most of those who have to flee to a foreign country find refuge in neighbouring poor countries which are mostly labile themselves. Refuge champion is Turkey with 1.6 million refugees. However, while Turkey is a dynamically growing economic power which will be able to integrate the refugees in the long run, Jordan and Lebanon are facing an uncertain perspective, lacking significant resources. Lebanon has some 4.5 million inhabitants and now cares for more than one million refugees. It is quite unclear how this small country, shaken by civil wars, may cope with such an extreme burden without any help from outside.
Only a small part of the uprooted is making it to Europe. Most of those are young people, physically and mentally resilient and with financial resources. They are the privileged among the dispossessed and disenfranchised unfortunates. While Lebanon, Uganda, Chad or Jordan have to deal with millions of refugees, rich Europe is facing hundreds of thousands of expatriates. In principle this would be manageable – if it wasn’t for a number of factors which are currently incapacitating Europe:
Firstly, the political caste in Europe does not have the slightest idea of a concept how to react to the exodus. Some states are building walls again; other states are anarchically letting the streams of refugees flow towards the north. And the Federal Republic of Germany has immobilised itself by its lack of an immigration policy. Only those who apply for asylum, who are able to prove the status of being persecuted for a number of reasons, are allowed to immigrate for a longer period of time. In the strict interpretation of the law this applies only for a very limited number of persons. Similar to the US green card, Germany is also trying to attract highly qualified specialists whose expensive education has been paid for by another country, in most cases a Third World country. This allows the German economy to profit from their expertise without input. The German Foreign Office answers questions about immigration shortly and crisply: “Germany is not a classical immigration country which defines annual quota like the USA or Canada or Australia.” And now politics, media and also above all the economy are reacting to the tide of refugees as if a right to immigration to Germany existed: sermonizing is to be heard everywhere that the German population was ageing within the next decades so that it would be difficult for the coming generations to pay the pensions. And thus integrating a few million refugees into the work process would come handy. Even empty apartments are suddenly discovered everywhere. The regions which have just been cleared in East-Germany can be repopulated again, just like with the Huguenots, we are told.
Millions of traumatised people from foreign cultures with completely different customs and traditions are just right to fill gaps in the German demographic structure? Experts have their doubts about it – but even this obstacle could be overcome quite easily – if Germany had still a functioning social structure of consensus and smoothly interlocking cogwheels, like the Germany of the sixties or seventies. Now the society has been massively reconstructed, however – not to its advantage. Schröder’s policy Agenda 2010, the systematic ruining of the state budget, the withdrawal of politics from the proactive shaping of society, the paralysis of public and cooperative structures: All of these factors have caused the situation that the Herculean task of a renewed integration of millions of refugees cannot succeed. The harmonious interaction of social groups has become a fierce battle against each other, for resources are becoming increasingly scarce.
The merciless economisation of the actually existing market radicalism has driven millions of formal job holders into inner mental resignation. In addition – as the sociologist Heinz Bude recently explained once again in a readable essay – that millions of people veg out in low-wage jobs as “service proletariat”, without any hope of improving their own employment situation (in numbers: 900 to 1100 euros per month for a full time job). The sentence reads: life sentence to cleaning toilets, delivering parcels, dwelling in truck cabs far from the family in or levering the sick and elderly out of their beds. The serving proletarians join, as potential allies in a possible future class war, the educated academics who do not manage to sustainably secure their existance. Thus, in its social stratification, the Federal Republic of Germany has become somewhat equal to the United States of America. And it just takes a glimpse into the history books to realise how, since the mid 19th century, always new waves of immigration of ever different populations upset the already established workers in the US. Immigrants, now competitors, threatened the hard-won standard of living of those who were already there. In the repeatedly renewed reduction of wages by the oversupply of labor, the old residents regularly responded with pogroms and lynchings.
In Germany, the dispossessed and exploited of the service proletariat might soon respond in a similar way. The media - consciously or unconsciously – which remains to be seen – have worked in this direction: because for years the media have generated young people who, up to the age of 18 have already virtually consumed more than 36,000 murders in TV, movies and computer games (“FPS”) at least. If there was not one or the other social studies lesson at school, the impression from the virtual world would be exported into the real world that in the modern industrial society pure Stone Age logic would be reigning. Moreover certain tabloids are breed systematically the envy of demographic and occupational groups against each other, freely after Caesar’s recipe “divide and conquer”. And now we are getting to the point where the quantity of virtual violence threatens to turn into reality. When the union of train drivers in Germany carried out a rail strike that hit the railway users to the quick, a Facebook user demanded in his post to dispatch all train drivers in a train to the gas chambers. This hatred posting got 22,000 “Likes”, i.e., other Facebook users joined this demand. As environmental activists resisted the destruction of the landscape in the North Rhine-Westphalian municipality Garzweiler by lignite mining, they were bombarded with sadistic hatred emails: You should roll the train on the protesters, they should be put to sleep like the animals, etc. It turned out that the hate mails had been sent from employees of the energy company RWE which operates lignite mining. On a Monday demonstration by the Islamophobic movement Pegida in Dresden finally, two gallows were erected: one was, as could be read in the inscription, intented for the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the other for her deputy Gabriel.
The increasing isolation of the people when they feel threatened causes the adoption of a kind of paranoid personality disorder traits. This becomes especially dangerous and has the efffect of an accelerant when traumatized war refugees encounter insecure citizens. Targetted kindling of mistrust takes place, if all refugees are now generallx suspected of being child molesters, rapists or notorious shop thieves. Or that they “somehow” belong to the Islamic state IS. One should not disregard the fact that at least 99 percent of all violence victims of the IS are themselves Muslims . But for the owner of the website “Politically Incorrect” it seems to be clear: the Germans will soon be victims of IS-terror. That is what they are predicting for the the end of the year 2016:
“In naive Germany, there should be no problem for a fairly enthusiastic IS-fighter, to kill 20 to 30 people a day even with simple handguns – at least on the first day, if the attack is coordinated and carried out by surprise. Counting 250,000 men, that could well mean 4 to 5 million dead within 24 hours. Before the army could or would like to respond (or react), about ten millions could be killed relatively undisturbed alone within the first week – if there was enough amunition.”
But not only the political right spectrum is being mobilised. Since about 15 years the typical left milieu has been systematically subverted by mysterious forces which call themselves “antideutsch” (anti-German). The traditional left have been marginalised by a highly-professional scheme – an “antideutsch” team game. Now the “Antideutschs” toughen up on the so called “conspiracy theorists” and “right-wing populists”. Addressees are those individuals who dare to challenge the US politics and the Netanyahu government in Israel. This affects the Swiss historian Daniele Ganser, for instance. He ventured to confront the official tale of the Bush-government about the 9/11-background with opposing explanations approaches. Recently, when the Witten-Herdecke-university invited the Swiss historian for a lecture, the “Antideutschen” dispersed among the groups of “Jungsozialisten” (German Social Democratic Party youth organisation members), the “Junge Grüne” (German Green Party youth organisation members), the “Antifaschisten” (anti-fascists) and the “Piraten” (German Pirates Party), tried to force the university to take back Ganser’s invitation. The university did not comply. Facing the great amount of visitors to Ganser’s lecture the “Antideutschen” did no longer attempt to break up the event.
The “Antideutschen” have no backing in the population. For that reason they concentrate their activities point by point at German universities. The academic recruits who are to take over leading functions in our society are maltreated by some kind of sombre Old Testamentary doctrine of original sin: The Germans had lost their raison d’être, because they murdered six million Jews. In the language of the only left super-power German universities concrete walls flaunt the words: “No Border, No Nations” or in German “Deutschland verrecke!” (“Germany, snuff it!”) and “EU-Grenzen öffnen!” (“Open EU-borders!”).
The motive of delegitimising, i. e. depriving people of their right to integrity and dignity, always occurs, if abrupt encroachments on the possessions of certain groups of society or whole nations are taking place. Muslims in toto come under general suspicion of “Islamic State” terrorism, although they have to mourn the most of victims of the “Islamic State”. The inhabitants of the former GDR were collectively suspected of being agents of the so called STASI (national security service in the former GDR). Under the shock of this absolutely inappropriate insinuation the public-owned enterprises were requisitioned by western banks. The Swiss population is held liable for the immoral behaviour of Swiss big banking houses in order to take possession of the immense Swiss corporate assets in the long term.
Currently, masses of communal and citizens centers in German municipalities are being requisitioned in order to accommodate refugees there. Whoever opposes this undoing of social meeting places meets with the reproach of being xenophobic. “Home guards”, established by right-winged circles help to create a false picture of the citizens’ legitimate concerns. There is reason to suspect that once again Naomi Klein’s shock strategy is being applied. Naomi Klein describes the method used by market-radical dispossessors who exploit catastrophes like tsunamis and earthquakes to “rewrite” the destroyed regions like empty blackboards – according to their own market-radical plans. It could be observed for instance that in Sri Lanka, after the Tsunami the fishermen were driven out in order to fill the tropical dream beaches with touristic resorts. Another example is New Orleans, that was rebuilt after the hurricane Katrina according to market-radical plans. That is the pattern which might serve as a model to reorganize Germany’s social topography when after the refugee crisis Germany’s population will have fallen into a state of shock: to sustainably undermine the social connectedness by closing community centres and by an inevitably intransparent re-distribution of social welfare benefit.
We’ve come full circle. The question remains: Why is it that neither the German Government nor the EU develop an sensible concept how to deal with the ever increasing refugee stream in the long run? Millions of immigrants without any immigration legislation – that does not look like a competent crisis management.
Nothing is more urgent than a long term concept. We are compelled to develop such a concept if we do not want to sink down into a “Clash of Civilizations” such as conjured up by Samual Huntington. A concept might look as follows: (If there is a proposal, we have at least got something to talk about!) In a first step laws have to be passed to forbid the export of weapons. That would be the German Government’s business. After all it is Germany that is still the world’s fourth biggest arms exporter. In a second step those who caused the desaster have to pay recompensation. Similarly to the tobacco industry in the nineties of the last century. These reparation payments will be deposited on a fiduciary account at the International Development Bank (the IMF counterpart of the so-called BRIC-States). This money will serve to fund a Marshall Plan with which the destroyed countries will be reconstructed. Since it is to be expected that most refugees will gladly return into their warm home countries, they will be educated and trained already in their host countries in order to help reconstructing their native countries effectively. Last not least the Federal Government has to finally do its homework and drive forth a sensible immigration legislation. In it one could honestly and frankly formulate the criteria which have to be met if somebody wants to obtain the desired German passport. For it is common sense that one day the boat will be full to the brim. If Germany and its middle-European neighbours want to guarantee their populations a life in dignity in the long term they must by no means expose them to a Darwinist struggle for Survival of the Fittest. Chancellor Angela Merkel knows only too well why she refused to participate in the assault on Lybia in 2011, that violated international law. She knew that ruining the state order in Lybia was going to render any coordinated dealing with the refugee streams at Europe’s borders impossible. Why is it that today Ms Merkel has the refugees immigrate into the country without any rule. Is she exposed to any pressure of some kind, to act against better knowledge? •
* Hermann Ploppa lives in Marburg/Germany and is a journalist and author of several books. He wrote, among others, the books “Hitlers amerikanische Lehrer. Die Eliten der USA als Geburtshelfer des Nationalsozialismus” (Hitler’s American teachers. US elites as midwives of Nazism; 2008, ISBN 978-3-9812703-0-3) and “Die Macher hinter den Kulissen. Wie transatlantische Netzwerke heimlich die Demokratie unterwandern” (The string-pullers behind the scenes. How transatlantic networks are secretly subverting democracy; 2014, ISBN 978-3-939816-22-5). The readers of Current Concerns know Hermann Ploppa from an interview in Current Concerns No. 26 of 18 October 2015.
(Translation Current Concerns)
km. Europe currently seems to be concerned with only one question: How to deal with the millions of people from other continents, thronging to Europe? The question has significant dimensions, legal, economic and eco-political ones, as well.
In countries like Germany, to which most refugees within Europe want to come, changes are imminent that will make the country ungovernable. A common search for solutions is no longer possible. Positions in the country are polarized. Social peace is threatened by this polarization. Meanwhile there are countless theses and hypotheses about the causes, the contexts and the consequences of the refugee movements. Who can ever check out what is true and what is untrue?
The following is alarming: Hardly any of the many opinions is oriented versus the common good. Instead, the splitting into “good” and “evil” wherever you look. The choice of words has become very coarse; in case the words match thoughts and feelings and are followed by deeds, we should be very concerned.
Where are the voices, where are the forces that are looking for constructive solutions? What is the framework in which the search for such solutions becomes possible? Find below a proposal to make the following aspects the conditio sine qua non:
I do not intend to set up hypotheses about what political plans might be connected with the fact that millions of people are flooding into Europe. That’s not a priority. The results count. But these are not compulsory. The citizens themselves are to decide in the last; in case they want to and are allowed to.
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