George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my regular bi-weekly radio commentary broadcast tonight 22 Oct 2010 on KVMR-FM 85.9.]

This week Germany’s Angela Merkel made an historic pronouncement that will ‘restart German history’ and set the rest of Europe on a new and unknown course.  Chancellor Merkel pronounced that in Germany “the approach to build a multicultural society and to live side by side and to enjoy each other … has failed, utterly failed."  What does this portend for Europe, and is this assessment also a look ahead for America?

Because of Germany’s Holocaust history, the country has been very sensitive about its immigration policy that was originally intended to attract much needed ‘guest workers’ to fill its war depleted ranks.  George Friedman of Stratfor has an excellent summary of Germany’s immigration history that led to what is now turning out to be a cultural and fiscal crisis for that country.  In the fifties Italians, then Spaniards and Portuguese, came to work in the booming German economy.  These immigrants stayed, worked, and as their own countries’ economies improved, they went back home as planned.

However, in the 1980s Muslim immigrants, primarily from Turkey, began arriving.  And to date very few of them have seen any reason to return ‘home’.  Germany’s early response was, ‘OK, then they’ll stay and assimilate into our society, becoming good Germans along the way.’  The reality is that they stayed and, instead, formed insular communities that have minimal cultural contacts, let alone cohesion, with the rest of Germany.  They do not learn German, they reproduce at much greater rates than the Germans, have few skills now needed in the German economy, and have become a significant drag on Germany’s generous welfare system.

We just returned from Germany and saw that the Muslim penetration has reached into the smaller cities and towns.  Our German friends also confirmed that there is almost no social or cultural contact with these immigrants who are now German citizens.  But this apartheid cannot be laid only on the Muslims, the Germans in Germany have played their part as have their neighbors in France, Poland, England, and other European countries.

The reason for this is the difference in the way Europeans see their countries as sovereign nation-states, and the way America sees itself.  America is an acknowledged nation of immigrants.  Everyone here came from someplace else, and then became Americans by assimilating into its public culture.  I have lived this experience as an assimilated immigrant and a naturalized citizen.  Since arriving here, I and my peers never once experienced anything other than total acceptance by the Americans already living here.

However in Europe, a country is fundamentally defined by the historical ethnicity of its citizens.  In Poland or France or Germany I may go through the formal process of becoming an assimilated citizen with all the legal rights and privileges, but I will never become accepted as a Pole, a Frenchman, or a German – don’t even think about it.  But years ago as a nation Germany did think about that kind of assimilation and acceptance, and now finds out that it was a mistake.  Everyone in Europe has known about this for generations, and finally the leader of Europe’s leading economic power has said it publicly.  That cat is out of the bag, and no one is going to put it back in.

What impact this will have is hard to tell as Europe goes through another round of ethnic and economic strikes and riots.  Merkel’s speech underlines a stark human reality – if we are to live together peacefully, we must adopt a common culture.  ‘Multikulti’, as the Germans call it, does not work and no one today knows what will.  Stay tuned for radically new directions in the EU.

And also stay tuned for how this reality is going to play out in America, the land of immigrants.  Given that America has some important, albeit diminishing, differences from Europe, in the end are we really all that different?  In the last decades we have accepted a radical and perverse form of multiculturalism that celebrates cultural contrasts at the cost of imposed cohesion.  There is no longer a requirement to adopt a common culture in order to enjoy the full benefits of American citizenship – sort of like in Germany.

I am George Rebane and I also expand on these and other themes in my Union columns, on NCTV, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.