International Germany's Multicultural Experiment: 45% of Migrants Failed German Integration Courses

Europe's experiment with "Multiculturalism" rather than adopting North America's "Melting Pot" is...


  • Total voters
    285
There seems to be a very big gap between the American "melting pot" brand of multiculturism compares to the sham in Europe.

Here in the U.S, minority ethnic groups automatic gravitates towards one another and form communities, but they still yearn to be "American", they appreciate the freedom and democratic ideals that they could only dream of in their native land, an they all aims for that American Dream while contributing the best aspects of their own culture to make society more colorful.

By contrast, I see so many people migrated to Germany and Britain and France decades ago and have zero interest in being a German, British, or French.

When immigration was significant in America, most of the people coming were European and while they certainly had different cultures they were still all Western, Christian cultures and so integration wasn't that hard. Language differences existed, but those fade quickly by the 2nd generation. In contrast, the immigrants to Europe are largely Middle Eastern and Asian (as in, Pakistani, Afghan, etc.) and they come from a radically different culture than the one they're entering. I also think that for the uneducated immigrant class there's not much admiration of Western culture and little desire to adopt it, immigration is more about safety and economic opportunity than it is going to a less repressive culture (one reason I don't think America has had much trouble from non-Western immigrants is that we tend to take mostly educated, fairly Westernized people only from those countries). Keep in mind too that for France and Britain at least most of their immigrant population comes from countries they used to rule, in some cases fairly brutally, so the immigrants may have some deep seeded resentments of their host nation even if they do seek the economic opportunities available there. No similar dynamic existed for US immigration.

It is worth noting however that many of the fears we see being trumpeted now about the threat immigrants pose to our way of life were repeated more or less verbatim about groups like the Irish, Italians, Chinese, etc. and proved massively overblown to say the least. It just goes to show that it's really hard to anticipate from present circumstances how immigrant communities will develop in any given nation.
 
Mass attacks on women in Germany fuel tension over refugees
Tuesday, Jan. 05, 2016​

web-wo-germany-assaults-0105.JPG

Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker addresses a news conference in Cologne, Germany, on Jan. 5.

A string of sex assaults and robberies during New Year’s celebrations in Germany has fuelled debate about the country’s ability to integrate large numbers of migrants, after police said that men who targeted dozens of women in the western city of Cologne appeared to be of “Arab or North African origin.”

Political leaders including Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the attacks, though many also warned against hasty conclusions about the perpetrators. But to some Germans already uneasy about the one million asylum-seekers their country took in last year the incident seemed to confirm simmering fears.

“Is this the ‘cosmopolitan and colourful’ Germany that Merkel wished for?” asked Frauke Petry, leader of the nationalist party Alternative for Germany.

Ms. Petry’s party has called for a clampdown on the number of asylum-seekers allowed into the country, a sentiment shared among a growing number of supporters in Ms. Merkel’s own centre-right bloc.

“It’s unacceptable that women are sexually molested and robbed by young migrants on the streets and public squares of German cities at night,” said Andreas Scheuer, general-secretary of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian wing of Ms. Merkel’s party.

“Whoever won’t accept our rules for living together, including respect for women, can have no place in our society here in Germany,” said Mr. Scheuer. His party has called for a cap of 200,000 asylum-seekers in Germany a year, a demand its lawmakers are likely to repeat at a meeting with Ms. Merkel on Wednesday.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-in-cologne-on-new-years-eve/article28019540/
 
They want them to integrate so they intermix more and destroy us

That is what it is

At least when they're not integrated they stay with their own

Multiculturalism is a sham the same people who encourage it are also telling these people to give up their culture and be more like us that is what integration is

But nobody can talk about genetics because its racist!

However I'd like Europe to stay European. If you say Africa was to be made Asian or White well that would be fucked up.

They'll bring up the Nazi's, of course ignoring that the Jews themselves are big on purity and consider Jews mixed with goyim to be inpure.

Which is why of course you may have heard some people calling Star Wars White genocide propaganda. Since it is in fact the Jews who promote a lot of race mixing of White people to destroy them. That doesn't mean it's always done on purpose, but I'm sure some of it is.

Has anyone here heard of the Frankfurt school of subversion?
 
Cologne sex assaults test the limits of German tolerance
The sex attacks in Germany raise sensitive questions on integration

7292844d-f6b6-4a79-8e93-6e0863b4118b.img

Germany’s warm welcome for refugees was displayed last summer by the enthusiastic reception the bedraggled newcomers received at Munich train station. It could now come to a sorry end with events at another rail terminus — the shocking mass sex attack on women in Cologne.

While the police investigation into the New Year’s Eve assaults is still under way, it is already clear they are dealing with more than 100 alleged assaults and robberies. According to police reports and witnesses, the assailants emerged from a crowd of around 1,000 young men of Arab or North African origin.

The unprecedented sexual violence was highlighted on Thursday in a leaked police report in which a senior officer spoke of the worst scenes in his 29 years’ service, with women “forced to run the gauntlet” of assaults.

The crime has shaken a country that is normally proud of its public order and raised questions about everything, from police tactics to immigration policy and Muslim integration.

The Cologne incident has shattered a longstanding German taboo about publicly criticising the conduct of Muslim communities, which make up most of the immigrant population. Given the Nazi past, mainstream politicians officials, and commentators have long been especially careful to avoid stereotyping minorities.

The initial response to Cologne was low-key, not least because New Year’s Eve is often rowdy in big German cities. Jens Spahn, a deputy minister, was among those who broke the shibboleth, condemning the “embarrassed silence” in a tweet and asking: “Where really is the outcry when we genuinely need one?”

Now the floodgates have opened with Bild, the top-selling newspaper, putting “sex mob” in its front-page headline two days running, and Frankfurter Allgemeine, a conservative broadsheet, calling on the state to “finally enforce the established law”.

First in the line of fire are the Cologne police, for allegedly allowing thieving gangs to prey for years around the railway station, and for mishandling New Year’s Eve. “The police cannot operate like this,” says interior minister Thomas de Maiziére.

More broadly, police forces across Germany have been accused of permitting no-go areas, where locals apply their own rules — whether rightwing extremists in east German towns or immigrant gangs in big west German cities.

Police commanders deny they have given up control anywhere. But police unions say forces are stretched, with numbers cut by around 5 per cent in the past two decades.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on the police to take “tough action” against the Cologne assailants, whatever their origin.

But that will not be enough to deflect criticism of her asylum policy, which, as official figures this week showed, last year resulted in a record 1.1m refugees entering Germany. The rightwing Alternative für Deutschland has explicitly linked Cologne to the chancellor blaming the violence on a “dangerous mix of uncontrolled immigration, inexcusable failure of government and political interference”.

Right-wingers in Ms Merkel’s ruling conservative CDU/CSU bloc have not gone this far. But they have used Cologne to raise the pressure, with Hans-Peter Friedrich, a CSU former interior minister, speaking of “uncontrolled immigration”.

Liberals have hit back, warning against stereotyping. Claudia Roth, a Green MP and a Bundestag vice-president, said: “It’s not right to say that this is typically North African or typically refugee [behaviour].”

But it is the right that has the wind in its sails as the country prepares for the next big electoral test — three regional polls in March.

Ms Merkel accepts that refugee inflows must fall to improve public acceptance and relieve the administrative burden. But she puts the onus on better integration of immigrants in German society

The Cologne scandal will add weight to the integration argument. There is now widespread consensus that successive governments failed to integrate past immigrants properly, allowing them, especially Muslims, to live parallel lives in ethnic communities.

Necla Kelek, a sociologist and writer of Muslim-origin, condemns this “false tolerance”. She blames it for allowing some Muslim immigrants, often young single men coming to Germany without family support, to develop radical Islamic views of society “where men have dominance over women”.

Even before Cologne, Ms Merkel emphasised the importance of immigrants respecting the German constitution and human rights laws, not least the complete equality of men and women. Cologne has shown that this is not an academic exercise but one that matters to every German. The country’s much-lauded “refugee welcome” depends upon it.


http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b01821ea-b55c-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#axzz3x1Kd8F00
 
Last edited:
Merkel cannot afford to see another Cologne
January 8, 2016

5b8d29eb-51e0-4c40-bade-d2746d4ab2db.img

The sex attacks in Germany raise sensitive questions on integration

Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than 1m migrants from the Middle East and north Africa to take refuge in Germany has generated deep divisions in her country. Few events have sharpened the debate more acutely than the shocking mass sex attack on women in the city of Cologne on New Year’s eve.

Although the police investigation into the assault is continuing, it is clear that scores of young women in the city were groped and robbed by gangs of men described by the authorities as having a “north African or Arab” appearance. Evidence emerged yesterday that newly arrived asylum seekers were among the hundreds of young men present when the assaults took place. The populist anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland has blamed the outrage on the German chancellor’s “catastrophic asylum and immigration policy”.

The attacks in Cologne seem to have occurred for a variety of reasons. Some blame must lie with the city police, whose chief stepped down yesterday. For years, the local force has allowed thieving gangs to prey around the railway station where the attacks happened. The police trades union says there were too few officers at the scene on December 31, given how many people were expected on the streets.

Other aspects of these crimes cannot be ignored, however. The fact that the overwhelming majority of the assailants were of African and Middle Eastern origin has raised fears about whether young immigrant men are well enough integrated into German society. The huge flow of asylum seekers into the country, which shows no sign of abating in 2016, makes this matter all the more pressing.

Ms Merkel has long expressed concern about the lack of community integration in Germany. She has criticised multiculturalism — the notion that people can live in parallel communities with little or no regard for one another — as a “sham”. Immigrants should never be forced to give up their linguistic, religious and cultural roots. But she is right to insist that all minorities must respect Germany’s basic values, its democratic and human rights and its commitment to religious and sexual equality.

In Germany, as elsewhere in Europe, fostering such integration will require immense patience and resources. Whatever the difficulties, there can be no compromise when crimes are committed by gangs of any race or religion, Muslim or otherwise. Britain has recently witnessed a number of incidents in which city authorities refrained for a while from denouncing child abuse by male gangs of Pakistani heritage for fear of inflaming racial prejudice. In the case of Cologne, there appears to have been a similar failure. The German police and national media were too slow to publicise the attacks, anxious perhaps not to fuel sentiment against foreigners.

The events in Cologne will inevitably throw a fresh spotlight on the generous stance that Ms Merkel has taken over the refugee crisis. Her approach is courageous and admirable. As the world looks on with horror this weekend at the images of people starving in the Syrian town of Madaya, overblown criticism of a great European nation as it embraces people fleeing conflict is misplaced.

The German government cannot be complacent, however, as it manages the immense movement of migrants on to its territory. Ms Merkel’s open door policy will only work if it is accompanied by a concentrated effort at integration which preserves her nation’s postwar values. Germany — and its chancellor — cannot tolerate another Cologne.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/91cf6472-b5fd-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b2f.html#axzz3x1Kd8F00
 
Smart people can do dumb things. Merkel is supposed to be a smart lady...but with the enormity of evidence that shows that Islam is simply incompatible with the west - especially 1st and 2nd generation Muslims from the ME and Africa - it's become astounding that those with even basic sense would want significant numbers of Muslims coming to their country. It's not a left or right thing either - I keep hearing that supporters of Islamic immigration and refugees are liberals....I'm a liberal and I want to stay one. An alive one who enjoys living in a free society. That will not remain the case if we keep on letting in the numbers that we are.
 
Multiculturalism reconsidered
Waves of migrants force Europe to look again at a brave new idea


Ageneration ago the Europeans, who had bled themselves white in war after war, usually in the service of chauvinistic nationalism, decided they could save the day with a new concept called multiculturalism. The concept was vague but expansive, which celebrated ethnic and other cultural differences and sprinkling them with holy water. “Multi-culti” became fashionable.

Soon Europe’s native minorities were joined by vast new numbers of arrivals from places far from Europe, many from former colonial appendages. By cultivating their differences, rather inviting them to join a melting pot that had worked so well for so long in North America, tolerance and “cultural enrichment” became the norm.

But there’s a growing realization that maybe “multi-culti” hasn’t worked so well, after all. Prominent Europeans are turning their backs on the idea. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have called the scheme, however well meant, into serious question.

The reasons are clear enough. The idea that new arrivals would inherit a mixture of the old and the new turned out to be non-achievable. Instead, multiculturalism created ghettoes, often impoverished ones. The institutionalized subsidies to the new arrivals created dependence on government handouts rather than self-reliance through integration in the workplace. This in turn produced resentment among the native population — wholly predictable but a revelation to the government wise men — leading to the formation of nationalistic political parties threatening the moderate center.

This has led to occasional violence, such as the attack in 2011 by a far-right Norwegian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 69 persons at a youth camp of the Norwegian island of Utoya the day after he killed 8 with a car bomb in Oslo. He was sentenced to an indeterminate term in prison, likely to be for life.

The face of European multiculturalism is different country by country. In Britain, ethnic communities were encouraged to take part in the nation’s politics. Germany provided jobs and security but refused citizenship to the large Turkish immigration, alienating the second generation and encouraging some to join radical political movements. France thought it was integrating the new arrivals, as it had earlier Italian and East European immigrants, but in fact sent North African Muslims to separate communities at the edge of the large cities.

The waves of immigrants were transforming European society, much of it in unintended ways, and attempts to channel the various cultural streams were either inappropriate, ineffective, or both. The numbers were staggering. By 2013 Germany, which has taken in more immigrants than any country in the world except for the United States, counted 13 percent of its population as foreign born. Even relatively remote Sweden counted 12 percent foreign-born, and its lavish welfare state became a magnet for migrants, causing a breakdown under a tsunami of migrants from Syria and the Middle East.

The old institutions of churches and trade unions, which once could help absorb new migrants, have become weaker and can no longer do much to help. The British government warned in 1953 (when everything was “politically incorrect”) that a “large colored community as a noticeable feature of our social life would weaken … the concept of England or Britain to which people of British stock throughout the Commonwealth are attached.”

The growing Muslim numbers in Europe include some immigrants with ties, however nebulous, to radical Islamic terrorism. Events have forced a Muslim identity on the migrants to Europe that was not there in earlier years. It’s clear now that European leaders must devise new solutions to new problems. It’s something that Americans, with a long history of relatively easy assimilation, must watch closely.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/10/editorial-multiculturalism-reconsidered-in-europe/
 
Last edited:
Merkel is fun to lay into, but she's really not the person coming up with strategy and making these decisions. She's more the saleswoman.

I wouldn't shed a tear if she gets ousted, but it would be more symbolic than anything.
 
Merkel is fun to lay into, but she's really not the person coming up with strategy and making these decisions. She's more the saleswoman.

I wouldn't shed a tear if she gets ousted, but it would be more symbolic than anything.

Why do you think European Multiculturalism isn't panning out the way they thought it would?

Is the concept inherently flawed? or is there simply fixable mistakes in the execution?
 
Why do you think European Multiculturalism isn't panning out the way they thought it would?

Is the concept inherently flawed? or is there simply fixable mistakes in the execution?

I think it is turning out as expected. It's a divide and conquer strategy, as well as a way to undermine the ethos and cultures of the nation-states, among other things.
 
Multiculturalism reconsidered
Waves of migrants force Europe to look again at a brave new idea


Ageneration ago the Europeans, who had bled themselves white in war after war, usually in the service of chauvinistic nationalism, decided they could save the day with a new concept called multiculturalism. The concept was vague but expansive, which celebrated ethnic and other cultural differences and sprinkling them with holy water. “Multi-culti” became fashionable.

Soon Europe’s native minorities were joined by vast new numbers of arrivals from places far from Europe, many from former colonial appendages. By cultivating their differences, rather inviting them to join a melting pot that had worked so well for so long in North America, tolerance and “cultural enrichment” became the norm.

But there’s a growing realization that maybe “multi-culti” hasn’t worked so well, after all. Prominent Europeans are turning their backs on the idea. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany have called the scheme, however well meant, into serious question.

The reasons are clear enough. The idea that new arrivals would inherit a mixture of the old and the new turned out to be non-achievable. Instead, multiculturalism created ghettoes, often impoverished ones. The institutionalized subsidies to the new arrivals created dependence on government handouts rather than self-reliance through integration in the workplace. This in turn produced resentment among the native population — wholly predictable but a revelation to the government wise men — leading to the formation of nationalistic political parties threatening the moderate center.

This has led to occasional violence, such as the attack in 2011 by a far-right Norwegian terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 69 persons at a youth camp of the Norwegian island of Utoya the day after he killed 8 with a car bomb in Oslo. He was sentenced to an indeterminate term in prison, likely to be for life.

The face of European multiculturalism is different country by country. In Britain, ethnic communities were encouraged to take part in the nation’s politics. Germany provided jobs and security but refused citizenship to the large Turkish immigration, alienating the second generation and encouraging some to join radical political movements. France thought it was integrating the new arrivals, as it had earlier Italian and East European immigrants, but in fact sent North African Muslims to separate communities at the edge of the large cities.

The waves of immigrants were transforming European society, much of it in unintended ways, and attempts to channel the various cultural streams were either inappropriate, ineffective, or both. The numbers were staggering. By 2013 Germany, which has taken in more immigrants than any country in the world except for the United States, counted 13 percent of its population as foreign born. Even relatively remote Sweden counted 12 percent foreign-born, and its lavish welfare state became a magnet for migrants, causing a breakdown under a tsunami of migrants from Syria and the Middle East.

The old institutions of churches and trade unions, which once could help absorb new migrants, have become weaker and can no longer do much to help. The British government warned in 1953 (when everything was “politically incorrect”) that a “large colored community as a noticeable feature of our social life would weaken … the concept of England or Britain to which people of British stock throughout the Commonwealth are attached.”

The growing Muslim numbers in Europe include some immigrants with ties, however nebulous, to radical Islamic terrorism. Events have forced a Muslim identity on the migrants to Europe that was not there in earlier years. It’s clear now that European leaders must devise new solutions to new problems. It’s something that Americans, with a long history of relatively easy assimilation, must watch closely.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jan/10/editorial-multiculturalism-reconsidered-in-europe/
I have a very nuanced and we'll thought out reply to this piece. Ready? Here goes:

Well, duh.
 
1-0 was I seriously the first person to vote on this poll or was it reset?
 
I think it is turning out as expected. It's a divide and conquer strategy, as well as a way to undermine the ethos and cultures of the nation-states, among other things.

Where you see a continental conspiracy, I simply see extreme voluntary libtardation by the Europeans to over-compensate for the previously insane nationalism that led to two World Wars.
 
She was pretty clear on that. You need to help those in need. Not all of those coming were in need and therefore a lot of people shall be deported. Those who stay shall assimilate.

If Merkel could actually get that incredible plan to work, I'd say we should crown her Person of the Century, and as a proud American, I will concede that Germany is the Greatest Country in the World.


Why Germany’s Plan To Deport Criminal Foreigners Won’t Work

Simon Shuster, Time Magazine
Jan. 14, 2016​


Deport them. It sounds like an easy solution. And over the past week it’s been the one Germany’s government has offered to the spate of sexual assaults that migrants allegedly committed on New Year’s Eve. But in practice, Chancellor Angela Merkel will not be able to deport her way out of this scandal. There are just too many legal and practical barriers that protect asylum seekers from expulsion, even when they have violated German law.

“This idea is just propaganda,” says Aische Westermann, a legal adviser to migrants in Cologne, where most of the New Year’s Eve attacks took place. “It cannot be implemented.”

For one thing, many of the roughly one million migrants who entered Germany last year arrived without passports, and it can take years for their home countries to confirm their identities and provide new documents. Until then, the German authorities have no way to establish where a migrant really came from or, when it comes to deportation, where they should be sent back.

On Thursday afternoon, such dilemmas were the focus of an emergency session of parliament in the region of North-Rhine Westphalia, which includes Cologne. “We know the realities,” the head of the region, Hannelore Kraft, told the assembled lawmakers in her opening remarks. “We know that there are many who cannot be deported.” Among the 32 men charged in connection with the New Year’s Eve attacks, 17 are citizens of either Morocco or Algeria, and both countries are refusing to cooperate on deportation cases, Kraft said. “We have the problem that these countries don’t take these people back.”

Under European law, Germany does have the right in most cases to send migrants back to the country where they first entered the European Union, usually Italy or Greece. But that practice doesn’t do Germany much good either.

For German immigration authorities, the options are even more limited when it comes to migrants from war-ravaged countries like Syria and Iraq. Under both German and international law, refugees from these countries cannot be sent home out of concern for their safety. So what is Germany supposed to do with the four Syrians who have been charged in connection with the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne? “Are we going to send them home to their deaths?” asks Claus-Ulrich Proelss, the director of Cologne’s Refugee Council, which coordinates assistance to migrants in the city. “Legally that’s a big question.”

And Merkel’s government provided few answers when it presented its deportation plan in parliament on Wednesday afternoon. It was an unusually raucous debate, punctuated by jeers and emotions like the chamber seldom sees. “We find ourselves in a critical phase,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas told the hall of lawmakers, with Merkel seated to his right, wearing a black blazer and an expression to match. “Many citizens are worried about the state’s ability to act,” Maas continued. “We cannot allow that.”

The law he proposed would seek to ease the state’s ability to revoke the asylum status of migrants who break German law and, when they are sentenced to more than a year in prison, to deport them. But in her rush to quiet public outrage in the past week, Merkel may have overlooked, or willfully ignored, the flaws in a legal response that hinges on deportation.


http://time.com/4180358/why-germanys-plan-to-deport-criminal-foreigners-wont-work/
 
Last edited:
I have a very nuanced and we'll thought out reply to this piece. Ready? Here goes:

Well, duh.

Go easy on the Germany politicians, there's no way they would know those countries would refuse to take their criminals back! :rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
Multiculturism is great when it comes to how to season food. Bad when it comes to views on rape and misogyny.
 
You know multiculturalism is bad when the only good thing that can be said about it is foreign food that you can find recipes for in books and on the internet.
 
Cologne puts Germany’s "lying press" on defensive
Media’s timidity on refugees prompts charges of bias.
By Matthew Karnitschnig - 1/20/16

GettyImages-503573452-714x491.jpg

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere at a news conference
BERLIN — Germany’s police and politicians have faced increasing anger in the wake of the New Year’s sex attack spree in Cologne, but much of the public’s ire has been directed at a group more comfortable asking questions than answering them: the news media.

After largely ignoring the story for several days after the attacks, much of the national media appeared reluctant to explore possible links between the attacks and the recent influx of refugees. Some commentators went so far as to suggest it was unlikely asylum seekers were even involved.

“In all likelihood, the people behind this have been here for a long time,” left-leaning daily Süddeutsche Zeitung declared in its lead editorial a week after the attacks.

In other words, just as with the terror attacks in Paris, the culprits in Cologne were most likely homegrown “foreigners.” The real problem, the paper concluded, was likely “failed integration” — German society’s failure to assimilate foreigners.

Just hours after the article appeared, a police report on the assaults surfaced, revealing that many of the suspects were, in fact, refugees.

The German media’s timidity on the Cologne sex assault coverage has presented right-wing agitators with a useful “told you so” moment.

More thoughtful observers see a problem deeper than political bias behind the coverage of Cologne and the broader refugee crisis: a press corps that has shifted from dispassionate observer to political actor. Instead of just reporting and analyzing events, some influential journalists, especially those who work for the public broadcasting networks, consider it their professional duty to serve as a counterweight to the populist rhetoric fueling the country’s right-wing revival, critics say.

“Cologne has helped blow the top off,” said Roland Tichy, a veteran German editor who now runs an eponymous opinion site of conservative commentary.

Rise of the Right

The rapid rise of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party amid the refugee crisis — recent polls predict the party would win about 10 percent of the vote — has unnerved many liberals in and outside the media.

A core aspect of the AfD’s message is that Germany’s public debate is controlled by the politically correct strictures determined by the country’s media elite.

That view has resonated with many citizens who feel their voices aren’t being heard. A decision by local state broadcasters on Tuesday not to include the AfD in upcoming live studio debates ahead of March regional elections will only harden the belief that authorities are trying to suppress the party.

Even before Cologne, many Germans worried the media weren’t telling them everything. In a poll conducted by the respected Allensbach institute in December, 53 percent of respondents said they didn’t believe the media presented an accurate picture of the refugees’ qualifications for employment or other details.

A majority of Germans still trust the media, but more than 40 percent described the reporting on refugees as “one-sided.”

The most virulent strain of that distrust can be seen on Germany’s streets, during the regular marches by the anti-foreigner Pegida group. Even before the recent wave of refugees began arriving, right-wing marchers revived a slur popular during the Nazi-era – Lügenpresse, or lying press. A number of journalists have even been assaulted at the rallies.

While Germany’s printed press offers a multitude of opinions and views, the public broadcasting sector, once similarly diverse, has veered left in recent years, critics say.

“The public stations have evolved into Social Democratic/Green mainstream broadcasters,” Tichy said. “There’s no denying it.”

Hans-Peter Friedrich, a former interior minister under Angela Merkel, accused the public broadcasters of operating a “cartel of silence.”

“There’s suspicion that they believe they don’t have to report on such assaults, especially involving migrants and foreigners, for fear of unsettling the public,” he said.

Following Friedrich’s critique, a freelance reporter for German public broadcaster WDR told a Dutch radio program that she and her colleagues were obliged to toe the government’s line on the refugee crisis. “We’re a public broadcaster and are therefore expected to approach the problem in a more positive way,” Claudia Zimmermann, the reporter, said.

WDR, the local broadcaster in the Cologne region, vigorously denied Zimmermann’s characterization. The station said it “follows the highest journalistic standards,” including on the refugees.

Zimmermann has since retracted, saying she was nervous during the interview and had spoken “nonsense.”

The cautious approach to news, what one commentator recently called “nanny journalism,” is a vestige of the effort to reprogram Germans after World War II from Nazi sympathizers into peace-loving democrats.


http://www.politico.eu/article/colo...e-migration-refugees-attacks-sex-assault-nye/
 
Back
Top