Category Archives: Germany

SPD mayor applauds neo-Nazis, says they should be elected to parliament

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hans PŸschelA politician in Germany’s main centre-left party has sparked outcry within his Social Democrats (SPD) by coming to the defence of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), who have been compared to the Nazis.

Hans Pueschel, a longstanding SPD mayor of Krauschwitz, a village of some 560 people in eastern Germany, published a letter in defence of the NPD after attending one of their rallies and said he agreed with much of what they said.

Fears have arisen that Germany could see the rise of an extreme right party since SPD politician and ex-central banker Thilo Sarrazin became a bestselling author and earned widespread backing for a slew of remarks about Muslim immigrants.

Pueschel said that like Sarrazin, the NPD were addressing issues which had been ignored for too long in Germany, arguing that the state was doing too much to help immigrant families who refused to integrate and failing to look after its own people.

“I want them to get into parliament so that the parties in the centre get a fire lit under their backsides. Otherwise nothing will get done,” Pueschel told Reuters, looking ahead to a state vote in his home state of Saxony-Anhalt next year.

Katrin Budde, head of the SPD in Saxony-Anhalt, where the party rules in coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), said Pueschel’s actions were helping to make neo-Nazi views acceptable in Germany. “We saw where all that led in the Weimar Republic,” she told MDR radio, referring to the period before the Nazis took power.

Pueschel, who is head of his local church council, said he spent 1½ hours at an NPD rally earlier this month, and found much to agree with in the speeches they heard. “I barely encountered one sentence that I couldn’t have signed up to myself,” he wrote in an open letter which a local newspaper refused to publish and is now on the NPD’s website.

“I don’t think Sarrazin has had a negative impact on support for the SPD, more likely a positive one. And it’s the same here. I stand by what I said,” he said.

Reuters, 16 November 2010

Wilders accuses Merkel of copying him

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders says German Chancellor Angela Merkel is copying his politics. In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel, the anti-Islam MP said Chancellor Merkel is scared that a charismatic figure, like himself, who can attract 20 percent of the vote, will emerge in Germany.

“That is a threat to the traditional parties,” says Mr Wilders. “That is why she is trying to copy us; Merkel declared the multicultural society a failure.” The controversial politician criticised a pattern he also sees in the Netherlands; he thinks the political elite is in disarray. As an example he pointed out that CSU leader Horst Seehofer says he does not want any more Turkish or Arabic immigrants.

RNW, 7 November 2010

German Muslim leader calls for stand against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aiman MazyekA prominent German Muslim leader expressed serious concern over the growing anti-Islam hysteria in his country, fuelled by right-wing populist politicians and the media.

Meeting with the Berlin-based foreign press Wednesday evening, the chairman of the Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek said, “I am concerned about the situation which we are facing.” He pointed out the animosity towards Muslims was “the fastest growing form of racism” in Germany. Mazyek said Islam bashing had become “socially acceptable,” even in German intellectual circles.

He added it was “frightening” to note that most Germans would support restricting the religious freedom of Muslims, according to a recent survey released by the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation, affiliated to the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Mazyek warned that this hysterical anti-Islam debate would “ultimately damage Germany.” He criticized the nation’s media for not seriously questions some of the baseless assertions made about Islam. The official emphasized that it was “the duty of German society as a whole to confront this form of racism.”

The activist lamented the fact that German Muslims were facing “daily discrimination and hostility.” He referred to examples of an ongoing wave of anti-Muslim violence, including the recent brutal murder of an Iraqi Muslim by two neo-Nazis in the eastern city of Leipzig and the series of “almost monthly attacks against mosques” throughout the country. Mazyek said he had also received death threats and hate mail from right-wing populists.

He urged the government to address the challenge of Islamophobia before its gets out of control.

IRNA, 4 November 2010

Minister accuses Muslims of hostility towards Germans (so Muslims aren’t Germans?)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

German Family Minister Kristina Schroeder on Tuesday criticized Muslim youths for displaying hostility towards Germans.

“Such abuse is unfortunately commonplace amongst youths in certain areas – in the school yard, but also in the underground,” Schroeder told daily tabloid Bild. “We are dealing with fundamentally hostile attitudes towards other groups – particularly against Germans and Christians,” the minister continued, adding, “We need to act as decisively against this as against xenophobia.”

Her comments come amid a fierce debate currently taking place in Germany about the integration of the country’s 4 million Muslims, the majority of whom are of Turkish origin.

DPA, 2 November 2010

At last, a party for Germany that ‘stands up against Islamization’ – Daniel Pipes is thrilled

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Ren Stadtkewitz FreiheitDaniel Pipes files an enthusiastic report from the founding conference of René Stadtkewitz’s right-wing Freedom Party:

“The new party, whose slogan is ‘The party for more freedom and democracy’, speaks candidly about Islam, Islamism, Islamic law, and Islamization. Starting with the insight that ‘Islam is not just a religion but also a political ideology with its own legal system’, the party calls for scrutiny of imams, mosques, and Islamic schools and for a review of Islamic organizations to ensure their compliance with German laws, and condemns efforts to build a parallel legal structure based on sharia. Its analysis forcefully concludes: ‘We oppose with all our force the Islamization of our country’.”

Better still, from Pipes’ standpoint, “Freiheit robustly supports Israel, calling it ‘the only democratic state in the Middle East. It therefore is the outpost of the Western world in the Arab theater’.”

Pipes notes: “Germany is conspicuously behind most European countries with large Muslim populations in not having spawned a party that stands up against Islamization. That’s not for lack of trying; previous attempts petered out. Late 2010 might be an auspicious moment to launch such a party, given the massive controversy in Germany over the Thilo Sarrazin book ruing the immigration of Muslims, followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel announcing that multiculturalism has ‘utterly failed’. A change in mood appears underway.”

Still, with only “50-plus attendees” at it’s inaugural meeting, the Freedom Party has some way to go yet.

National Review Online, 2 November 2010

CSU conference calls for ‘sanctions’ against migrants who oppose integration

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Horst SeehoferThe Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) voted to take a tough stance against immigrants who fail to integrate into German society at a party conference in Munich on Saturday.

Included in a new seven-point plan were proposals for “unspecified sanctions for parents who hinder their children from integrating into the German way of life or who themselves decline to integrate by learning German”.

The plan, which stipulates that permanent residents must accept a “leading” role for German culture in society, was approved unanimously.

Speaking at the conference, party leader Horst Seehofer denied claims that he was pandering to the extreme right following controversy over his call for an end to immigration from alien cultures – in particular from Islamic countries.

“If what I say is radically right wing, then two-thirds of the population is radically right wing,” Seehofer said. “We should not be timid about saying that we stand for German culture taking a leading role.”

German values were “based on Christianity and rooted in Judaism,” Seehofer added. “They are not informed by Islam and that must remain the case.”

Deutsche Welle, 31 October 2010

See also “Sarrazin wants ‘terms’ for migrants to live in Germany”, Hürriyet Daily News, 1 November 2010

German far right emerges from shadows as anti-Muslim campaign gathers force

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Pro KolnIn today’s Observer Kate Connolly reports on prospects for the far right in Germany following the merger between Austria’s FPÖ and the anti-mosque campaign turned political party Pro Cologne.

She points out that it is the anti-Muslim mood whipped up by more mainstream political figures that provides the conditions for Pro Cologne to win support, and quotes Alexander Häusler of Düsseldorf’s University of Applied Sciences as saying:

“The anti-immigration utterings of Sarrazin, backed up by the comments by Merkel and Seehofer, are like a gift to the far right. They have had a door opened to them that has previously been closed, because it is now socially acceptable to say things that before nobody dared to voice.”

Wilders applauds Merkel’s stand against Islam and multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Dutch Islamophobic politician Geert Wilders hailed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for what he termed her “critical” stance towards Islam, the daily newspaper Die Welt reported Wednesday. Addressing the Dutch parliament, Wilders said Merkel had taken over “the lead in the area of criticism about Islam”. “Mrs. Merkel, you are right,” said the head of the Dutch anti-Islam Party for Freedom.

ABNA, 27 October 2010

See also “German chancellor rejects anti-Islam accolade from Dutch far right”, DPA, 27 October 2010

In his speech Wilders also stated: “If even the chancellor says that multicultural society has completely failed, then that means something. The most important politician of the Christian Democrats in the most important country of Europe breaks a taboo and says it like it is. And she says what millions of people are thinking.”