A letter from Germany
01 January 1991
A letter from Germany
artdoc August=1992
CARF, no 6, January/February 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]
Almuth Ernsting responds to CARF's coverage of racist violence
in Germany. Returning to Germany after three years in Britain,
I have been shocked by the openness and aggression with which
ordinary people express their hatred against immigrants and
refugees. There are, of course, different voices of racism. There
is the growing number of neo-nazis and skinheads that we read
about in British newspapers. I doubt whether German fascist
groups number more than the BNP in Britain. However, they are
stronger, both because the state tolerates, or `fails to
suppress', the most brutal atrocities committed against `non-
Germans', and because their cry `Germany for the Germans' finds
echo amongst middle-class people.
The most remarkable shift has taken place amongst successful and
established middle-class people liberals, social democrats,
academics. The former obligatory statement, `I have nothing
against foreigners', has given way to an equally obligatory, `Of
course, we can't accept all those foreigners in our country.'
While the `official debate' amongst journalists and politicians
has an air of neutral objectivity, its content is inhuman.
`Decent solutions' are sought, as if there was a decent way of
sending refugees back to besieged Dubrovnik or Jaffna. And the
talk is of `guest workers' rather than immigrants, of asylum
seekers' not refugees, and of fears of `hostility towards
foreigners', which somehow sounds more `natural', more
acceptable, than racism.
Nor is the Left immune to this shift. I have read articles about
`Islamic fundamentalism' written by German anti-Gulf war groups
which pro-war liberals in Britain would have condemned as racist.
And while immigration rights are defended, the oppression of
women or the lack of democracy in `Muslim' countries are quoted
as proofs of cultural backwardness. When the social democrats
tried to give immigrants the franchise in local elections, some
socialists argued that Western democracy is alien to Turks, who
should not have the vote until they have reached `our' level and
can make the right political choice.