European Politics
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@no-quarter I agree it could go badly. I’ve been travelling to that particular area for the last 20 years or so, and there is no shortage of people, mostly men, who have a real axe to grind with the rest of the world. They HATE the “Wessis”, who they blame for taking away their jobs and their dignity, for paying them salaries below the equivalent in the West, for imposing Wessi bosses on them, for thinking they are better than the Ossis. It’s a regional inferiority complex that really didn’t need much to kick off, and the feeling of the locals is that the immigrant problems are a pretext at best.
My wife is embarrassed by this. It’s almost like if the sequential shames of Fascism then Communism weren’t enough they now have to watch the cycle repeat itself. Outsiders like us can point to any causal factor we like, blaming it on Muslims, Wessi political correctness or anything else, but for them it’s just a humiliation from inside. Just like, as said in other threads, there is a generation in the UK who think Communism is cool, in Saxony it’s Fascism that the cool kids rally round, because hey, how anti-establishment is that! Morons.
I’m not saying that the huge wave of immigration hasn’t caused problems, because it demonstrably has. But not so much in Saxony; it’s problems lie elsewhere. Germany is a very diverse country: people in Bavaria can’t even understand the Saxon dialect. You can’t just generalise and say that the issues seen in Cologne are in any way similar to those in Leipzig.
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@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
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@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
But isn’t that exactly the argument used to suppress Molyneux and Southern - don’t want to rile up the Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action etc? I don’t agree with the decision to let all these people in in the way they were, but I think we can all agree that the German government believed they were doing the right thing. That being so they can’t let the potential actions of thugs derail what the rule of law, in the same way that Auckland Council or the Victoria state government shouldn’t let it happen there either.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
You are trying to suppress a neo nazi underbelly.. dont go far left/open borders and give them a cause.
But isn’t that exactly the argument used to suppress Molyneux and Southern - don’t want to rile up the Tamaki Anti-Fascist Action etc? I don’t agree with the decision to let all these people in in the way they were, but I think we can all agree that the German government believed they were doing the right thing. That being so they can’t let the potential actions of thugs derail what the rule of law, in the same way that Auckland Council or the Victoria state government shouldn’t let it happen there either.
Doesn't everyone always believe they are doing the right thing? Didnt the Nazis think they were the doing the right thing? Didn't the communists?
You also seem to have missed my point, I am saying that youbreed these sort of issues if you put a lid on dissent for so long that conversations cannot be had.
As for thugs ruling, isnt that what has been happening to pressure govts to be more liberal? Mob rule has been condoned for a long time. -
@baron-silas-greenback I can’t disagree with any of that BSG. I guess my point is we can’t take what we are being told at face value even if (maybe especially if) it accords with what we want to see. There is so much wrong with having let in god knows how many people into a western democracy without planning or even monitoring the after effects. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions that mesh with our own politics just because the Neo-Nazis know what buttons to push, just like we shouldn’t believe what the media are portraying either. Treat everything with suspicion I reckon.
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@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
Totally agree that there have been some shocking problems in the East since the fall of the Wall. Iirc refugee accommodation has been set on fire and there have been numerous acts of violence against foreigners (as an aside the racism towards the foreign guest workers kind of ridicules the notion that everyone was equal under the glorious communist community). The problem is that Merkel must have known letting in 1 million undocumented migrants was going to destabilise an already fragile situation. She also must have known that letting such an enormous number of young men into the country would have consequences for German women. Preventing Germans from now expressing an opinion about this madness is making things even worse.
Surely Merkal knew this would happen or is she really that blind? Or as a childless politician is she more concerned with her legacy of being deemed a saint rather than the future of her country and the citizens she represents?
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@jc said in European Politics:
@baron-silas-greenback I can’t disagree with any of that BSG. I guess my point is we can’t take what we are being told at face value even if (maybe especially if) it accords with what we want to see. There is so much wrong with having let in god knows how many people into a western democracy without planning or even monitoring the after effects. But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions that mesh with our own politics just because the Neo-Nazis know what buttons to push, just like we shouldn’t believe what the media are portraying either. Treat everything with suspicion I reckon.
Agreed. It s also dangerous to side with nasty people just because they are protesting something you also don't like. I agree with what the neo nazis are protesting, but I dont suport them, because they would take us down a very ugly path, they are extremists.
I just wish the media and others took the same atttiude with ANTIFA. They just as scum as the neo nazis. -
@jc said in European Politics:
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history.
That's a valid point for people who forget she is an Ossi herself, the daughter of a Lutheran Minister.
@jc said in European Politics:
I’m not saying that the huge wave of immigration hasn’t caused problems, because it demonstrably has. But not so much in Saxony; it’s problems lie elsewhere. Germany is a very diverse country: people in Bavaria can’t even understand the Saxon dialect. You can’t just generalise and say that the issues seen in Cologne are in any way similar to those in Leipzig.
I have a friend who grew up in Munich (still lives in Bavaria) and is unbelievably contemptuous of your typical Berliners (well, anyone North really).
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@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
No I think Merkel saw her chance to go down in history as a saint and took it.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you are being wildly to generous towards her. if she as half as decent as you say, she would have thought about her own people as well. She clearly did not. She is not a decent person, she is an arrogant one. She was arrogant because she assumed she knew best, consultation and a thoughtful process was not required. She decided as leader, she was going to restructure the whole demographic of her country. What the fuck is that??? Humility? she could have taken it to the polls, told people straight up that she wanted over a million young Muslim men to enter the country, maybe drip feed them and see how they assimilate... nah fuck that she just KNEW it would all work. How exactly?
Fuck Merkel and her arrogance in causing turmoil and grief in her own country. She needs to wear the consequences of her hubris and not hide behind somer sort of higher moral standard.. essentially you are saying she is not guilty.. due to being such a better person than everyone else. She is not. -
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
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The criticism of her shortsightedness and ignorance of recent history is a valid one. After all, the prevailing belief was the Turks would eventually go home once Germany no longer required their labour.
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@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you are being wildly to generous towards her. if she as half as decent as you say, she would have thought about her own people as well. She clearly did not. She is not a decent person, she is an arrogant one. She was arrogant because she assumed she knew best, consultation and a thoughtful process was not required. She decided as leader, she was going to restructure the whole demographic of her country. What the fuck is that??? Humility? she could have taken it to the polls, told people straight up that she wanted over a million young Muslim men to enter the country, maybe drip feed them and see how they assimilate... nah fuck that she just KNEW it would all work. How exactly?
Fuck Merkel and her arrogance in causing turmoil and grief in her own country. She needs to wear the consequences of her hubris and not hide behind somer sort of higher moral standard.. essentially you are saying she is not guilty.. due to being such a better person than everyone else. She is not.I’m not saying she’s a better person. Personally I could give a toss about her religion or anybody else’s. All I’m saying is her motivations are not what RS was saying. It’s not because she wanted to be seen as some sort of saint, it’s because at the end of the day she’s a conviction politician, and whether or not we agree with those convictions, they are what drive her.
I’ll also point out that Germany had an election at the same time as we did. She didn’t get a clear majority ( who ever does over there) but she’s still the Chancellor. So she did go to the polls with it -belatedly - and yet she’s still there. Given the chance to give her the arse the German electorate didn’t. No, I don’t understand it either.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
Reconcile how she can claim multiculturalism has failed and then let in 1 million Arabs. Surely if she's all about seeing the goodness in everyone then she would have never made those comments in the first place.
How has she not been dishonourable in all this? Faced with the magnitude of her massive fuck up she is now prohibiting anyone from criticising it. She basically even instructed Mark Zuckerberg to do so. If she was honourable she would have admitted she made a mistake. You think that's going to happen?
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@jc said in European Politics:
@baron-silas-greenback said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you are being wildly to generous towards her. if she as half as decent as you say, she would have thought about her own people as well. She clearly did not. She is not a decent person, she is an arrogant one. She was arrogant because she assumed she knew best, consultation and a thoughtful process was not required. She decided as leader, she was going to restructure the whole demographic of her country. What the fuck is that??? Humility? she could have taken it to the polls, told people straight up that she wanted over a million young Muslim men to enter the country, maybe drip feed them and see how they assimilate... nah fuck that she just KNEW it would all work. How exactly?
Fuck Merkel and her arrogance in causing turmoil and grief in her own country. She needs to wear the consequences of her hubris and not hide behind somer sort of higher moral standard.. essentially you are saying she is not guilty.. due to being such a better person than everyone else. She is not.I’m not saying she’s a better person. Personally I could give a toss about her religion or anybody else’s. All I’m saying is her motivations are not what RS was saying. It’s not because she wanted to be seen as some sort of saint, it’s because at the end of the day she’s a conviction politician, and whether or not we agree with those convictions, they are what drive her.
I’ll also point out that Germany had an election at the same time as we did. She didn’t get a clear majority ( who ever does over there) but she’s still the Chancellor. So she did go to the polls with it -belatedly - and yet she’s still there. Given the chance to give her the arse the German electorate didn’t. No, I don’t understand it either.
Few things here. Conviction politicians don't criticise something and then completely flip like she did.
Secondly, her party suffered an 8.6% swing against it and the AfD got nearly 6 million votes. Hardly a ringing endorsement of her policy and it's not like the German voters had much of an alternative considering the other mainstream parties were on board.
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@jc said in European Politics:
My wife was born and grew up in Chemnitz. Her parents still live there. They tell a very different story. They are uncomfortable with the number of incomers for sure but they are used to a city in which foreigners were rare.
My father in law says that in the last few days there have been hundreds of hard right young men flooding into town and they are very scared. The Leipzig/ Dresden/ Chemnitz triangle has had a problem with neo-Nazis since the wall came down (my wife’s 1st cousin was married to one for years) and even before that intimidation of the Vietnamese and Cuban “Gastarbeiter” was commonplace. He’s pretty clear that most of the people in these rallies are not locals, and rather they are from all over Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg who have been spoiling for this fight for decades.
BTW, anybody who thinks Merkel, for all her faults, doesn’t care about this area of Germany knows nothing about modern German history. (Edit: those were my FiL’s words, not mine)
Thanks JC, good to have some even closer local knowledge. I wonder what their definition of far right or Nazi is? I've been advised that can apply to anyone who is part of any organisation that questions mass migration and this same definition is what is pushed in the media.
Did he say how he knew these men were far-right, Nazis or visitors? I'm sure it is entirely possible but that sure looked like a huge amount of people and from the close up videos I've been able to watch they hardly look like extremists..don't get me wrong they sounded like them being passionate Germans and all but I don't speak the language.
Have they also talked about migrant crime over there? I think it was Chemnitz that had that 7yo raped in a park by a migrant a couple years back back with a number of incidents since, that sort of thing would easily rile the masses regardless of how rare it might be.
As for Merkel. I don't understand why she completely changed her tune in a few short years, the start of the below vid shows a couple speeches she gave on this issue a few years back.
This to me proves that its not even good intentions that are driving her. One could easily argue that she is ultimately responsible for thousands of innocent deaths due to her open border death lottery.
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@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
Reconcile how she can claim multiculturalism has failed and then let in 1 million Arabs. Surely if she's all about seeing the goodness in everyone then she would have never made those comments in the first place.
How has she not been dishonourable in all this? Faced with the magnitude of her massive fuck up she is now prohibiting anyone from criticising it. She basically even instructed Mark Zuckerberg to do so. If she was honourable she would have admitted she made a mistake. You think that's going to happen?
But she said it failed after she let the people in. She didn’t think it had failed beforehand. As I said, a catastrophically wrong decision followed by a correct observation afterwards. That doesn’t need reconciling, it’s what I would expect from someone who fucked up.
Yes, she fucked up. I’d be interested to see any evidence for a prohibition on reporting it though, given that such a prohibition would breach German and European law. If you are saying that media are avoiding reporting it, yeah I buy that, because ours probably would too. But she doesn’t have the power to restrict reporting.
Germany has strong - too strong- online hate speech laws but freedom of the press is guaranteed by the German constitution. And at the last election there was significant free and open press coverage of the immigration issues in the Chemnitz Freie Presse so I’m sure it was covered elsewhere in Germany too.
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@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
Reconcile how she can claim multiculturalism has failed and then let in 1 million Arabs. Surely if she's all about seeing the goodness in everyone then she would have never made those comments in the first place.
How has she not been dishonourable in all this? Faced with the magnitude of her massive fuck up she is now prohibiting anyone from criticising it. She basically even instructed Mark Zuckerberg to do so. If she was honourable she would have admitted she made a mistake. You think that's going to happen?
But she said it failed after she let the people in. She didn’t think it had failed beforehand. As I said, a catastrophically wrong decision followed by a correct observation afterwards. That doesn’t need reconciling, it’s what I would expect from someone who fucked up.
Yes, she fucked up. I’d be interested to see any evidence for a prohibition on reporting it though, given that such a prohibition would breach German and European law. If you are saying that media are avoiding reporting it, yeah I buy that, because ours probably would too. But she doesn’t have the power to restrict reporting.
Germany has strong - too strong- online hate speech laws but freedom of the press is guaranteed by the German constitution. And at the last election there was significant free and open press coverage of the immigration issues in the Chemnitz Freie Presse so I’m sure it was covered elsewhere in Germany too.
No she held the opposite view BEFORE she made her arrogant move.
She is not remotely a conviction politician. -
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel said in European Politics:
@jc said in European Politics:
@rancid-schnitzel There’s no doubt by now that it was a bad idea. But I think it’s probably unfair to Merkel to characterise it in terms of her not caring. She’s a devout Christian, to such an extent that she risked her liberty and maybe her life to help bring down the Communists. She saw it as her duty before God to try and end what she saw as an inhumanity. That’s no different to what drove her to let in “refugees”, and from her perspective the ability to absorb large numbers of incomers probably wasn’t anything like as big a problem as moving 11million Ossis into the GDR. Even the integration probably wasn’t that big a deal to her, it’s not as if everyone in the East integrated seamlessly either.
All her mistakes stem from believing that people are fundamentally decent and that some behaviours are self-evidently immoral so nobody will go there if you treat them well. I reckon she believes in a Christian God so much that she can’t see that Judeo-Christian values are now a minority belief system and getting weaker by the day. I don’t think it crossed her mind that many of the people she was letting in have nothing but contempt for what she believes in.
Her blindspot isn’t her arrogance, it’s her decency. She thought it was innate and she was wrong. God only knows if she has learned from this though.
I think you give her far too much credit. She's a politician and has been Chancellor for over a decade. Anyone with half a brain could see the consequences regardless of their religious convictions. It should also be noted that Merkel made a rather controversial speech not that long ago about how multiculturalism had failed in Germany. How do you reconcile that with then letting in hundreds of thousands of undocumented Arabs?
What’s to reconcile? I didn’t agree with the decision to let them in then and I still don’t now.
As for her speech, she was right. Multiculturalism has failed. But she only realised it too late, the barbarians were already through the gate. That doesn’t make her dishonourable, just catastrophically wrong.
Reconcile how she can claim multiculturalism has failed and then let in 1 million Arabs. Surely if she's all about seeing the goodness in everyone then she would have never made those comments in the first place.
How has she not been dishonourable in all this? Faced with the magnitude of her massive fuck up she is now prohibiting anyone from criticising it. She basically even instructed Mark Zuckerberg to do so. If she was honourable she would have admitted she made a mistake. You think that's going to happen?
But she said it failed after she let the people in. She didn’t think it had failed beforehand. As I said, a catastrophically wrong decision followed by a correct observation afterwards. That doesn’t need reconciling, it’s what I would expect from someone who fucked up.
Yes, she fucked up. I’d be interested to see any evidence for a prohibition on reporting it though, given that such a prohibition would breach German and European law. If you are saying that media are avoiding reporting it, yeah I buy that, because ours probably would too. But she doesn’t have the power to restrict reporting.
Germany has strong - too strong- online hate speech laws but freedom of the press is guaranteed by the German constitution. And at the last election there was significant free and open press coverage of the immigration issues in the Chemnitz Freie Presse so I’m sure it was covered elsewhere in Germany too.
She most certainly did say that years before opening the borders. Look it up. There are videos of it. I remember talking to a Venezuelan living in Germany who was seriously pissed off about it. Conviction politician my arse.
Prohibiting anyone is obviously hyperbole, my apologies, but good luck trying to make a comment about it on social media. Merkel has also been very strident about prohibiting anything that could be construed as criticism of this policy online. Why would she be doing that if she was a conviction politician? Maybe she learned a few tricks from her time in East Germany?