In Germany, he’s being called the German Geert Wilders. He is Social Democratic Party (SPD) politician and bank director Thilo Sarrazin, and in a new book he argues that Muslim immigration is threatening German culture. Germany’s response: uproar.
Thilo Sarrazin, member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, released his new book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Is Abolishing Itself) on Monday. In it, in addition to his anti-Islam message, he also put forward a controversial genetic theory.
Outside the hall where he appeared to talk about his book, hundreds of people gathered to demonstrate. Inside, it was crammed with journalists. Cups, plates and saucers crashed to the floor as photographers and cameramen clambered onto chairs and tables to get a good shot of him. Then Mr Sarrazin stood up to speak.
Downfall
Thilo Sarrazin is not a talented speaker. It’s hard to stay focused while listening to him, even though what he has to say is as clear as day. Certainly not in a Germany which, thanks to the crimes of its past, works so hard to honour the rights of minorities.
The essence of Mr Sarrazin’s message is this: Germany, the country and its culture, is being ruined by the large-scale immigration of the past decades.
“The German people and the German state have reached a turning point in history, one whose scale and character is not yet clear to everyone. After a history of a thousand years the German race is, in a quantitative sense, on the road to abolishing itself.”
He bases his claims on demographic studies that show the native German population shrinking and the immigrant population growing. And immigrants, Mr Sarrazin is convinced, will never be part of German culture.
The biggest problem
In addition, he makes a distinction between different groups of immigrants. Muslims, he says, don’t integrate and are therefore the source of the biggest problems.
“The responsibility for these problems lies not with ethnic descent but with those descended from the Islamic culture. With all immigrants except Muslims the problems disappear so that differences between them and Germans are impossible to pinpoint.”
But Mr Sarrazin goes further in his book, where he writes not just about cultural differences but also about genetic differences. He believes that Jews share a common gene, as do Basques, that sets them apart from others.
The war
In his book, Mr Sarrazin presents himself as the German face of the anti-Islam movement in Europe. While he is not the first person in Germany to attack Islam, he is certainly the most notable politician to do it so openly. And his pronouncements about immigrants and Jews are a source of extreme discomfort to a country so painfully conscious of its Nazi past. Mr Sarrazin says you must never forget the war, but adds that you must not become a hostage to history in solving the problems of the here and now.
Distance from Wilders
So is Mr Sarrazin with his anti-Islamism a German Geert Wilders? In their statements about Islam they’re definitely on each other’s wavelength. But genetics is not a theme Mr Wilders touches on. And Mr Sarrazin is careful to distance himself from Mr Wilders.
“I deplore the developments in the Netherlands quite as much as the majority of sensible Dutch people do. It was the job of the major political parties in that country to tackle the problem on time, so that it never ended in such an election result. I find the trend towards right-wing nationalist parties extremely dangerous.”
This is why Mr Sarrazin has no desire to form his own party. Instead he wants to remain in the Social Democratic Party so he can bring the problems he sees, and his solutions, to the public’s attention. But his party now wants him out. And the Bundesbank has invited him for a discussion about his future there.