Mut is der Wind, der zu fernen Küsten treibt, der Schlüssel zu allen Schätzen, der Hammer, der groβe Reiche schmiedet, der Schild, ohne den keine Kultur besteht [...] Zum Teufel mit einer Zeit, die uns den Mut und die Männer nehmen will!Ernst Jünger
© Frank Ellis 2010
Introduction to the Reviewer’s Commentary and Analysis
Publication in Germany earlier this year of Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion: How we are Putting Our Country at Risk) has made it possible for Germans to talk openly for the first time about themes which have been publicly censored in Germany over the last five decades. Having read this work very closely, I have no doubt that Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion may well be the book that finally smashes taboos about race, immigration and integration which have exerted such an insidious influence on German intellectual life since the end of World War Two. In fact, the influence of Sarrazin’s book will extend way beyond Germany. This book is not just about the future and fate of Germany: it is about the very survival of Europe.
Concerns over the magnitude and speed of population growth, as well as the racial and cultural changes brought about by mass immigration are nothing new. What is new is the manner in which the political establishments of virtually all Western states have abandoned, with complete disregard for the legitimate fears and well being of their own indigenous populations, any form of immigration controls. In the USA and Western Europe, a very large proportion of the political class have tried to justify this mass influx of foreigners with the claim that we need the labour, skilled or otherwise; that the mass movement of people is a necessary part of a globalised economy; that in some vague, sentimental way the prosperous nations of the north have an obligation to throw open their doors to the surplus populations of the Third World. Until quite recently, this mass movement of the unemployed and unemployable from the slums of the Middle East, Africa and the Indian sub-continent, with a fair proportion of actual and would-be terrorists among them, used to be justified by the obviously preposterous claim that the white indigenous populations of northern Europe would somehow benefit from the influx of millions of foreigners into their countries. Indeed, we were told – though not so much these days – that immigrants were bearers of the remarkable gift of diversity; that their presence enriched us.
In common with other Western states, Germany has suffered from the combination of a duplicitous and negligent political class, one which has relentlessly harried its citizens to accept what they instinctively feel and know to be wrong, and from waves of immigrants who, the evidence quite clearly shows, have no intention of integrating. Third World immigrants are attracted to Germany not by abstract concepts of free speech, the rule of law, liberal democracy and personal freedom but by the higher standard of living they can enjoy at the expense of the German taxpayer. In part because of the Nazi period, the pressure on Germans to conform to the United Nations-sponsored ideology of multiculturalism has been immense, much worse than anything we have experienced in the United Kingdom. History matters: the Nazi past will remain an integral part of Germany’s history but no other nation has submitted itself to such soul-searching and public flagellation in order to face up to its past and to make amends. However, one of the downsides of Germany’s laudable, post-1945 Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) has been to treat any assertion of national German pride as a manifestation of Neo-Nazi tendencies, as something hideously offensive and shameful when it is, in fact, the normal, emotional and rational pride in, and commitment to, one’s country of origin, to one’s Vaterland, to use that beautifully evocative German word. Germany’s reaction to its past stands in striking contrast to Turkey. The Turkish government will not tolerate any discussion of the genocide of 1.5,000,000 – 2,000,000 Armenians perpetrated by Turks in 1915, and those who highlight the genocide in Turkey can expect to be censored and subjected to other harsh sanctions. Moreover, the Turkish government demands that Turkey be treated as a modern European state, which Turkey emphatically is not, and does not hesitate to pass comment on German immigration policy, as it affects Turks. By exploiting the presence of Turks in Germany for its own ends, as a club with which to belabour Germany, and to exact concessions, the Turkish government behaves in exactly the same way as the Hitler regime did towards Czechoslovakia before World War Two (see below).
It is this specifically German historical, social and political background that makes the appearance of Thilo Sarrazin’s book in Germany so remarkable, and all the more remarkable for its having been written by one of Germany’s top technocrats, a person at the very heart of the German administrative establishment, a person, who whatever his misgivings about the state of Germany, I, for one, would have expected to remain silent. Clearly, Herr Sarrazin has had enough. He instinctively grasps the truth of Solzhenitysn’s eleventh commandment: thou shall not live by the Lie. There is something about Sarrazin that bears the stamp of Martin Luther, Pastor Martin Niemöller and the White Rose students who defied the Nazis in Munich. Moral courage is always inspirational and life-enhancing. Indeed, the fact that Sarrazin’s book has become a best seller in Germany and attracted enormous support for its author may well have prompted Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, publicly to admit (October 2010) that multiculturalism had utterly failed in Germany. Indeed, it has: and not just in Germany.
Sarrazin is well aware that the title of his book will inevitably cause some readers to ask, in all seriousness, whether his central thesis – that Germany is heading towards self-inflicted oblivion – is an accurate reflection of what is happening. The ensuing avalanche of evidence and professional analyses presented by the author left me in no doubt that the suicide scenario is fundamentally accurate. Sarrazin underlines the rather obvious but easily forgotten point that Germany is Germany ‘by virtue of its inhabitants and their living intellectual as well as their cultural traditions. Without the people it would merely be a geographical term’ (Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion, p.7). The same is true of England, Denmark, France and Russia. As befits a highly trained and experienced member of the German technocracy, Sarrazin presents a thoroughly well researched set of arguments. Each chapter addresses some aspect of the immigrant problem – poverty, fertility, declining mean IQ and educational standards, spiralling welfare payments, left-wing and intellectual cowardice and the relentless Islamification of Germany - providing the reader with a series of brilliantly written mini-monographs. He examines the various socio-economic, intellectual and demographic trends which are inextricably linked with one another and which lead inexorably to his synthesis and the work’s devastating conclusions. Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion is a masterly display of erudition and logical exposition; yet additional reasons why the intellectually lazy and sentimental will hate the author.
Including a detailed introduction, Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion comes with a total of ten chapters. What follows is a chapter-by-chapter summary and review-commentary. My aim is to provide as much information and as many translations of key passages as possible for the English-speaking reader and at the same time to offer a ready reference work for students, academics and others alarmed by, to borrow the title of Oswald Spengler’s book, the Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West, 1918) and what, if anything, can be done to reverse these trends. For those, such as this reviewer, who consider sources and references important, I have numbered every paragraph in this summary for ease of reference. Page numbers in brackets refer to the original German publication (Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, München, 2010, ISBN 978-3-421-04430-3). All translations from the German are mine: all analysis, commentary and any errors therein are also mine.
Before turning to the substance of Thilo Sarrazin’s book I want to deal briefly with the translation of the German title. The main German title of the book has in some quarters been translated into English as Germany is Abolishing itself or Germany is Doing away with itself. The German verb abschaffen can indeed be translated as to abolish or to get rid of something but these translations do not, in my opinion, do justice to the scope, depth and above all the implications of the book’s themes which will become clear below. I suggest, therefore, that a better translation of the main title, one that better reflects the impending German (and Western) catastrophe, would be Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion (or even Germany Commits Suicide or Germany’s Death Wish).
I can only hope that this magnificent book will very soon be translated into English as well as into all the major European languages. That said, having observed and personally experienced the intellectual and moral cowardice and double standards of the left, above all in universities, I have no doubt that those hostile to Sarrazin’s message will do everything they can to distort the findings and to try to prevent this book from ever being translated into any other language in the hope that Sarrazin’s findings do not become too widely known. I pray I am wrong. Meanwhile, until such time as Sarrazin’s book is translated into English, this review-commentary with its selected translations will serve as a provisional, and I hope, a useful reference work.
Thilo Sarrazin, Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion:
How we are Putting Our Country at Risk
1. Germans, especially high-IQ women, are not having enough children. As a consequence, the population of indigenous German – Sarrazin repeatedly uses the word autochthonous instead of indigenous – is dropping below replacement rate. Mean IQ is falling. If this trend continues, immigrants will emerge as the dominant population with serious consequences for the German economy. The problem is clearly stated:
The Germans are, however, gradually consigning themselves to oblivion. A net reproduction rate of 0.7 or less, which we have had for the last forty years, means nothing other than that the generation of the grandchildren will each time be half the size of the generation of the grandfathers (pp.7-8).
2. Sarrazin notes that it has not been possible to talk about this in Germany for decades. To do so was to run the risk of incurring some kind of ideological suspicion. As always the left-wing media would denounce any person expressing these fears as a Nazi, racist or xenophobic. Enormous damage has been inflicted on Germany because of this Marxist-imposed silence and the repressive censorship. Some of the subjects that have been banned and driven from public discourse in Germany over recent years are:
(i). any discussion of the fact that some 90% of schoolchildren can apparently meet the standards required for university but that only 10% could meet the demands of the mathematics component;
(ii). any discussion of the fact that not all are intellectually equal;
(iii). any discussion of the fact that the mean intelligence of Germany is declining because the more intelligent women are having fewer or no children;
(iv). any discussion of the fact that the individual is responsible for his behaviour not society (p.9).
3. As in the United Kingdom and the USA, the same sort of politically correct censorship has been used to crush arguments hostile to the left/illiberal agenda and where censorship has failed abuse and invective often stemming from the mainstream media made have been deployed against dissenters. For example, if a child, especially an immigrant cannot meet the same standards as indigenous Germans, this is always the fault of society never the immigrants themselves. Here we have a striking parallel with the neo-Marxist propaganda of The Macpherson Report (1999) and its ideological construct of “institutional racism”. To quote Sarrazin:
From the sociologically correct but banal acknowledgement that in society everything is related to everything else, the tendency has arisen whereby everything is reduced to social relations and so the individual is relieved morally and in practical terms comprehensively of any burden of responsibility for himself and his life (p.10).
4. Sarrazin clearly touched a very raw nerve in Germany when he demonstrated empirically that one could indeed live very healthily on the money provided by welfare handouts (p.10). Publication of his data led to his receiving hate mail (p.13). Truth breeds hatred. Nevertheless, people, Germans, must speak out:
There exists an enormous societal need for the unvarnished truth, but he who meets this need lives politically in danger and easily becomes a victim of the power of the media exercised by those who are politically correct (p.12).
5. People, notes Sarrazin, are prepared to talk about and to consider the changes of the world’s climate in 100 or 500 years but not the fact that Germany is becoming smaller and less intelligent (p.17):
Why should we be interested in the state of the climate in 500 years when German social policy amounts to the eradication of the Germans? (p.18).
Chapter 1 State and Society: An Historical Summary
1. Sarrazin begins this chapter by stressing the all-important point that nations cannot just be made and remade:
The various ways in which political-development formulations have collapsed show that one cannot simply “create” societies and economies. The economic and cultural development in Central Africa and in the Islamic countries of the Middle East takes a different course from that in East Asia (p.23).
2. Sarrazin shows an acute understanding of the implications of the consequences ensuing from the fact that the religious foundations of the state were replaced by human rights. With religion dethroned, as it were, the way is now set for paradise to be built on earth. One of the main consequences is the rise of socialism and other utopian-egalitarian ideologies. Successful societies and states, Sarrazin argues, have three key features. They are:
(i). they provide a certain level of external and internal security;
(ii). they are based on a legitimizing foundation which goes beyond the individual (religion, socialism, ideology, nationalism);
(iii). their material and economic success depends on their ability to guarantee some outlet for individual striving (p.31).
3. Sarrazin concludes this first chapter by noting the all important connection between intelligence and motivation. His conclusion is bound to antagonise the multicultural fantasists:
Society is itself an object and can as a consequence of the framework conditions which it sets for itself change its form. If this were not the case then all human societies, like the various chimpanzee tribes in the ancient forest, would be always be at the same level of development, specifically the level of the African bush. All investigations show that national economies, societies and states, are all the more successful, the more hard-working, the more educated, the more entrepreneurial and the more intelligent a population is. Germany has always been near the top on the scale of achievement. However numerous indices would suggest that Germany is dropping down the scale. Whether that is the case, how it manifests itself and whether and how one can counteract or should counteract this trend is the subject of this book (p.34).
Chapter 2 A Glance into the Future: Some Realities and some Wishful Thinking
1. Critical for this chapter and indeed the book as a whole is Sarrazin’s observation that for any country without significant natural resources, wealth creation comes from the people. Ultimately wealth creation is a product of men’s minds.
2. One of the key problems associated with an ageing population is the rising cost of healthcare and this can only be financed by increasing the number of gainfully employed. Since this is highly unlikely one consequence will be that ‘future allocation and financial problems cannot be solved at the level of the national economy by more growth but only by redistribution’ (p.37). This is a very serious conclusion and, if accurate, an alarming one for individual freedom, since it means that growth will be finite or only very slow and that economic measures more appropriate for a full-blown socialist economy will be introduced. This would be another step on the road to serfdom, to allude to Friedrich Hayek’s famous book.
3. Sarrazin reports that Germany’s long term productivity trends were intensively analysed in the Berlin Senate. The conclusions are stark:
(i). the long term trend was for growth to slow;
(ii). the structure of consumption is moving away from goods to services (a trend which has been long under way in the United Kingdom and the USA);
(iii). the constantly increasing mean age of the working population displaces the concentration of working people to age groups which are far less suited for work requiring innovation and which is physically demanding. As with the first factor this, too, works to reduce the productivity of labour (p.45).
1. Sarrazin begins this chapter with observations that pertain to all Western industrialised societies:
The projections for Germany’s development do not look good, since they unmistakably show that the trend to an ever increasing standard of living is broken and that conflicts will increase which, on the one hand arise from the growing number of retired people, and on the other, hand from the decreasing number of gainfully employed people (p.51).
2. Mass immigration from Third World states, primarily Turkey, the Middle East and Africa will not solve Germany’s problems. Germany’s economic future lies in its human and above all intellectual capital. These are the keys to the creation of wealth, and are firmly in line with the data and conclusions of Richard Lynn: see, for example, Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (1996); Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001); Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis (2006); and The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide (2008); and the two studies which Lynn co-authored with Tatu Vanhanen: IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002); and IQ and Global Inequality (2006). Sarrazin argues that the MINT-disciplines (Mathematics, Information Technology, Natural sciences and Technology) are the drivers of wealth creation. There is now less work for those who rely on manual labour. We see the same problem in the United Kingdom. Sarrazin also provides compelling support for the pioneering work of Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994) and agrees with Murray and Herrnstein that there is a growing gap between the intellectually talented and the less intellectually able (p.58).
3. Immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and Arab countries are ‘the core of the integration problem’ (p.59) and the majority that live on welfare handouts are from Africa, Turkey and the Far East (p.63). He argues that had Germany not permitted the influx of low-skilled labour the following outcomes would not have been possible:
(i). one could not have afforded to transfer the German export model, nor to shift production, abroad;
(ii) there would have been much greater pressure, as a consequence of a proper family and population policy, to raise the German birth rate;
(iii) one would never have started the process whereby people were allowed to retire early;
(iv) the emphasis on education would have increased (pp.63-64).
4. In a conclusion that will only offend German xenophiles, Sarrazin notes: ‘The three immigrant groups with the greatest lack of education and the highest social costs are also those who are reproducing themselves the most’ (p.64).
5. Sarrazin devotes a deal of space to an examination of the failings of the German education system. There is, he says, far too much reliance on audio-visual work and easy text analysis which means that rigour in reading and writing are being lost (p.70). In this regard see Paul Fussell, BAD: or the Dumbing of America (1992) and Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students (1987). Sarrazin cites some truly shocking data which were revealed in a survey of various skills among applicants for jobs across the whole German economy. One finding that really stands out is that 58.2% of those applying for posts in the media were found to have shortcomings in expressing themselves in speech and writing (p.71). This may well be significant in less obvious ways. Those who cannot express themselves accurately in speech and in writing (and in accordance with basic grammatical norms) are often the most susceptible to being deceived and misled by the ideological abuse of language arising from political correctness. They lack the intellectual ability to identify fallacies and readily internalise the politically correct agenda.
6. Other survey data are just as devastating. Sarrazin cites the results of the PISA 2006 in Deutschland. Die Kompetenzen der Jugendlichen im Ländervergleich (PISA 2006 in Germany. A Comparison of Youth Competencies in German States). The PISA acronym stands for Programme of International Student Assessment. One part of this survey measured the maths competence of schoolchildren in the German federal states. Berlin, Sarrazin’s state, did very badly. In fact, Sarrazin judged the Berlin results to be ‘catastrophic’ (p.73). Predictably these results led to demands for more money and teachers. Sarrazin’s analysis showed that more money was not the answer:
Although the ratio of schoolchildren to teachers in Berlin was 15% more favourable than the German-wide average, Berlin, together with Bremen, achieved the worst PISA results. In numerous public appearances concerning this theme I laid on a Power Point presentation of the results and maintained that here was clear evidence that school performances were far worse the more teachers were let loose on the schoolchildren. Naturally that was nonsense but it ensured that the theme was guaranteed the necessary attention and finally was part of my successful rebuttal of all attempts to enlarge the number of Berlin allocations for teaching positions. Moreover, I was able to demonstrate that as regards the allocations per schoolchild Berlin was top when compared with other regions of German. This proved that it was not differences in the input of material resources into the education system that were responsible for the differences between the German federal states (p.74).
7. Even if families are poorer there is no reason, Sarrazin concludes, why parents cannot ensure that children clean their teeth on a regular basis or that they control access to television or read to their children, and visit libraries (p.79). His arguments here are decisive:
There are therefore no material reasons which make it impossible for the recipients of unemployment payments to achieve among the examined markers the characteristics of a higher social class (emphasis in the original, p.79).
8. Furthermore, the author quite rightly points out that more permeable an education system is – by that he means one that makes it possible for the gifted and very gifted to realise their potential – the more efficiently such a system realises the potential pool of talent from among the lower social strata. He cites the use of IQ tests in communist East Germany which produced stunning results and ones which were unanticipated and hostile to the egalitarian ethos of a socialist/communist state. Huge efforts were made in East Germany to get as many students as possible from the so-called working class into higher education. In 1954, for example, 12% of students in the science high schools came from the intelligentsia whereas the figure from the working class was 48%. Over the years the percentage of those from the working class continually fell. In 1989, the year of the last assessment 78% of students came from the stratum of intelligentsia and only 7-10% from the working class. A striking thing about these data – noted by Sarrazin – is that in 1989 the percentage of students in West Germany of working class status was 15% (pp.82-83). The conclusion from these data, one which can be drawn from similar observations in the West, is that the more levelling, the less equal the outcomes for the reason that innate qualities such as IQ, motivation, self-discipline and interest will ensure that students with such qualities will do better than those students without them. (Students studying Marxism-Leninism had the lowest mean IQ). Most of these data and research studies were kept secret by the East German regime. In writing this chapter Sarrazin demonstrates a thorough familiarity with the work of Volkmar Weiss, Charles Murray and Francis Galton.
9. Educational permeability has consequences. To quote Sarrazin:
Regardless of how permeable an education system is the same logic applies always and everywhere: the more permeable the system is the faster and sooner the underclass will bloom intellectually. Those remaining will be those who are only able to acquire simple and middle level qualifications for which there is an ever smaller market demand. This tendency can be observed globally in all industrialised states (p.84)
From this he concludes:
As a result of the negative selection on the one hand, which is all the more unavoidable the more permeable a society is, and the falling demand for simple, less qualified work on the other hand, the part of the population that can be placed in the underclass is growing relatively and absolutely (p.84).
10. Sarrazin devotes much time to the definition of, and what constitutes, poverty. In modern welfare states it is not material: it is the lack of intellectual resources of the “poor”. Regarding welfare provision in Germany, Sarrazin argues:
The guaranteed minimum wage in Germany is not indecently low but rather indecently close to the other levels of income. This undoubtedly makes falling into the underclass less painful and the existence in the underclass more bearable but, to be sure, furthers the growth and the reinforcing of this class and its gradual decoupling from the rest of society (p.86).
11. Sarrazin boldly advances politically incorrect conclusions with his application of the work of Charles Darwin, Gregor Mendel and Francis Galton to modern populations. Galton was one of the first to realise that if the less intelligent breed more than the intelligent then the mean IQ of a population will be reduced. Sarrazin defiantly nails his colours to the mast:
Among serious scientists there is no longer any serious doubt that human intelligence is from 50% to 80% hereditable. The fact that among various rates of fertility among population groups of different intelligence eugenic or dysgenic effects can arise is no longer fundamentally disputed (p.93).
And:
For the relationship which is under discussion here it makes no difference whether the heritability of intelligence is 40%, 60% or 80% […] With the higher relative fertility of the less intelligent the mean intelligence of the whole population falls. This is currently the problem in Germany and was for some considerable period the problem in the old Bundesrepublik (pp.98-99).
Chapter 4 Poverty and Inequality:
Lots of Good Intentions but little Courage to Tell the Truth
1. Regardless whether it exists among indigenous or immigrant populations, the question of poverty – relative or absolute - is critical. Can people really said to be poor in the welfare states of the West? Despite his many objections to out-of-control welfare statism raised in Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion, Sarrazin insists on some form of welfare provision:
He who is weak and helpless, he who suffers misfortune, he who is unable to feed himself and his own in a dignified manner, should and must be helped. As human beings and citizens we are obliged to our fellow citizens for that and it corresponds with our perception of what society is (p.103).
Let me play Devil’s advocate. What happens when the numbers rise so that the means to clothe and feed these poor and wretched can no longer be found? If the welfare net is too generous it subsidises the procreation of the less able and less intelligent. The poor and lazy, encouraged by unscrupulous politicians who exploit alleged poverty to secure votes and a class of poverty bureaucrats who derive a living from dispensing other people’s money to the underclass are engaging in a massive game of blackmail. Confronted with the analyses of people like Sarrazin (and many before him), the so-called poor and feckless, aided and abetted by politicians and poverty bureaucrats, will deploy what they regard as their nuclear option: will you, they ask, allow the poor and needy to starve to death? Now it is completely evasive to say in response that this would never happen; that the question’s premise is too extreme; that things would never get that bad. That merely concedes the principle, albeit implicitly, that the poor and needy, at home and abroad, however we define them can lay a claim on the public purse.
2. There are two responses that can be offered. First, the question whether the poor and needy should be allowed to die is misleading since the question removes the burden of survival from the feckless and imposes it on the responsible: why are the poor and needy poor and needy? Why should the sexually and demographically responsible and the economically prudent even have to consider an answer to the question, let alone provide material resources? One way to deal with the poor and unemployable would be to provide services and food in government centres under strict supervision (food stamps only and absolutely no, or very little, money). Second, an honest answer is that human beings who engage in reckless and unsustainable personal breeding experiments, who use their breeding habits as a way of extorting money, goods and services from others are indeed free to suffer the consequences. I do not kill them or their progeny by not agreeing to permit a transfer of my wealth, goods and services: those responsible are the incompetent and reckless parents who do not grasp or do not care that copulation is only the start of parenthood. That is the honest, morally wholesome and rational answer when targeted by poverty hustler-bureaucrats and politicians using moral blackmail. The same arguments also apply to the demented do-goodery of multimillionaire celebrities, models and pop stars who want other people’s money and other people’s taxes to subsidise the reckless and destructive breeding of the Third World.
3. Another problem is also evident. Immigrants who live in parallel societies courtesy of German and European taxpayers and who have no intention whatsoever of integrating cannot be considered to be my ‘fellow citizens’. They are aliens among us. Do they meet the conditions laid down by Sarrazin for tax-payer charity when they become poor and needy? Furthermore, Sarrazin’s justification for welfare provision inside Germany will be used – is being used - as the moral basis for the massive transfer of German and European wealth to the Third World. According to xenophiles the starving and diseased in Somalia or Haiti – or wherever the latest Third World disaster happens to be - are our fellow citizens of the world and thus entitled to our money and support.
4. The problem of ‘poverty in Germany’ is emotionally driven not analytically (as in other Western states). To quote Sarrazin:
The poverty risk threshold in Germany today is higher than the average net income of Germans at the high point of the economic miracle at the start of the sixties in the previous century (p.105).
5. Sarrazin is especially effective at disentangling the definitions of poverty. Regarding definitions of relative poverty he notes:
Every increase in economic and income that does not change the distribution simultaneously raises the threshold of relative poverty. Inherent in the definition of relative poverty therefore is the fact that in combatting it economic growth is always a rat race that cannot be won (p.109).
He then notes that:
The concept of relative poverty has however nothing to do with poverty in the classic sense. Ultimately it draws on something social-psychological. Man assesses his material possibilities and his place in life overwhelmingly in accordance with the social context and in keeping with the old English expression of “to keep up with the Jones” (pp.109-110).
6. Sarrazin goes to the heart of the poverty question with the following observation, that ‘wherever there is talk of poverty and inequality envy is never far away’ (p.111).
7. Sarrazin is quite rightly scornful of the pitiful definition of poverty offered by the European Union. The poor are considered to be those:
[…] who have so few means at their disposal (material, cultural and social) that they are excluded from the way of life which obtains in the town in which they live and which are considered to be the acceptable minimum. According to this definition a prosperous idiot who never learned to read properly when he was at school and is unable to carry on any profession would be classed as poor. Naturally this is rubbish. Access to “cultural and social means” is an expression designed to obscure. It plain German it means: he who has inadequate access to “very few cultural and social means” (politically correct EU speak) is not intelligent, is uneducated and lacks behavioural adjustment. In the EU formulation the person deemed to be poor in this way is relieved of the burden of responsibility for his situation and any moral pressure to do something himself to make any change (pp.113-114).
This sort of poverty, Sarrazin points out, is not going to be changed or removed by money.
8. Sarrazin was able to demonstrate – for which he shall never be forgiven – that it is possible to eat well and healthily on the money provided by the German welfare system (Sarrazin and his wife put the feeding plan to the test and had no problems). As a consequence of his experiment the results of which were publicly discussed he received hundreds of hate emails. During the course of making a television programme based on Sarrazin’s experiment, one of the cameramen of a television station told Sarrazin that he had been instructed not to film the inside of any apartments of welfare recipients because they were full of electronic gadgets (p.118). Sarrazin also reports that recipients of welfare payments have above average provision of electronic media (p.118). It is the same in the United Kingdom: rows of houses in estates full of the unemployed and unemployable, all sporting satellite dishes. Sarrazin identifies three reasons why so much emotion is aroused by the recipients of welfare and the bureaucrats and lawyers who work in the field when the provision of welfare is challenged. First, the recipients have a vested interest in the system’s being continued. Second, politicians and the hordes of so-called researchers and media activists also have a vested interest in the system: without it they are out of work. Third, if it is possible to live adequately on the money provided but those who receive this money do not live adequately then the problem of poverty can only be a behavioural problem not some existential catastrophe. It is the last point that triggers the rage and aggression.
9. Related to this is, once again, the question of envy. To quote Sarrazin:
Numerous artists and many students live on an income which is on the threshold or beneath the socioeconomic subsistence minimum. In spite of this they are happier than most welfare recipients because they do not derive their personal status and place in society from their income level and feel independent (pp.126-127).
10. Sarrazin fully grasps the acute dangers posed by those trying to impose equality: ‘Equality - and also income equality - has hitherto never been possible without the use of totalitarian methods, something that regularly ends in dictatorship and a bloodbath’ (p.129). The twentieth century provides irrefutable proof of this in the Soviet and other communist experiments.
11. Proposals have been made in Germany to provide all citizens with a guaranteed income and so remove the need for other handouts. Note here the striking similarity with the British coalition government’s plan to do the same with the state pension: a raised flat rate for all regardless of whether you have ever paid Class 4 National Insurance Contributions (October 2010). Sarrazin notes that those who propose this scheme in Germany offer two reasons: (i). the sources of poverty and fear for one’s existence will be removed for all and without discrimination; (ii). most social benefits will be withdrawn, and the bureaucracy that goes with it (p.140). They argue that in an age when the amount of work is decreasing people receiving this benefit will be able to devote their lives to cultural and creative activities (p.141). One of the more devastating responses to these proposals comes from Erich Fromm, cited by Sarrazin: ‘It is not money that makes you happy it is meaning’ (p.146), to which I can add the conclusions of Viktor Frankl based on his experiences in the Nazi camps (see Ein Psycholog erlebt das Konzentrationslager (1946), translated as Man’s Search for Meaning, 1959).
12. The fertility of various groups will change the nature of Germany. To quote Sarrazin:
The provision of basic welfare also influences the socialisation and the reproductive behaviour of the underclass. It also essentially determines migration and the willingness of immigrants to integrate. Without the German provision of basic welfare a large part of the immigrants from Turkey, Africa and the Middle East would never have come since for the last 35 years there has been no market justification at all. Without the provision of basic welfare the movement of families would have been much less and Germany would have been only half as attractive for asylum. Without the provision of basic welfare Turks and Arabs in Germany would at the very least have demonstrated a different form of reproductive behaviour. Among Arabs in Germany the tendency to produce children in order to secure more welfare payments is especially widespread and the women in the family who are often incarcerated have basically not much else to do (p.150).
13. According to Sarrazin, generous welfare payments are especially detrimental regarding the willingness of Islamic immigrants to integrate. Generous welfare provision makes it possible for them to set up parallel societies paid for by Germans (p.150).
Chapter 5 Work and Politics: Concerning Readiness to Work and Work Incentives
1. Sarrazin reminds us that work is an important source of meaning. Small groups of people will find purpose through art and creative work. The bulk of those who subsist on benefits go for the products of instant gratification. Note the truly shocking revelation: ‘No one has to work in Germany in order to get 60% of the middle net income: state provision of basic social security takes care of that. That has consequences’ (p.166).
2. Welfare provision in Germany is too generous. Why, he asks, do Poles come to Germany every year to harvest asparagus when there so many unemployed in Germany? The reason is that the German underclass gets more money from not working than from working. We have exactly the same problems in the United Kingdom: why do farmers in Herefordshire and in Lincolnshire have to import migrant workers to pick crops when huge numbers of the indigenous members of the underclass are unemployed? The reason is obvious: the British underclass, like its German counterpart, derives goods and services for nothing and enjoys a higher standard of living for remaining inactive.
3. Sarrazin cites the case of a Carola Goetze who with her husband (also unemployed) receives €1,400 per month. She has been offered a steady stream of jobs in Gelsenkirchen but refuses to take them. Sarrazin correctly observes that were welfare handouts not so generous she would have to work. He notes that millions of people from 30, 40 and 50 years old who are quite capable of working will be supported by state handouts from 30 to 50 years (p.177). He sees three ways to stop this exploitation by the underclass of those in paid work:
(i) reduce the amount of handouts so as to compel people to seek work;
(ii) make work more attractive by changing allowances;
(iii) those capable of working and who are beneath the statutory retirement age limit only receive handouts in return for services rendered (p.177).
Sarrazin quite rightly poses the following question:
One must ask whether it can be really right to guarantee every person in the region of 60% of the mean income without some service in return (p.179).
4. According to Sarrazin, some estimates of a comprehensive workfare scheme in Germany could create some 1.9 million work placements. Conceding that these estimates remain unverified, he nevertheless concludes:
Totally indisputable and substantiated by all available empirical evidence is, on the other hand, the fact that an effectively implemented compulsion to work, sanctioned by the removal of welfare payments, comprehensively reduces the numbers of those claiming services and considerably so (p.184).
Chapter 6 Education and Justice: Concerning the Difference
Between Good and Good Intentions
1. The German population, Sarrazin argues, is becoming more heterogeneous and, on average, older, less interested in education and less intelligent (p.187):
If one sees the essential resource in “raw material man” for Germany’s future one can only perceive this trend as threatening (p.187).
2. Sarrazin says that there are still those who believe that education is the answer to all society’s ills and that ills are due to “society” or “system”. He notes:
The comprehensive advisory literature essentially addresses these education optimists and implies that all and everything – from team efficiency to mathematical understanding – can, fundamentally, be learned if only the material is correctly presented and the corresponding instruction methods are employed (p.188).
3. Note the following which could have been taken straight out of Arthur Jensen’s The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability (1998):
From my own experience I know that reading ability, text comprehension and the general knowledge that is made possible by reading are the core competences for the transmission of education. They also facilitate the access to mathematical and science competences since logical and empirical connections and the stating of problems must first of all be explained so that a starting point for the formal solution of the problem and the level of discourse can be found (pp.194-195).
4. Sarrazin highlights the decline in reading among Germans and the way in which texts have been made easier. Note the following, which, once again, goes to the heart of the matter identified by Jensen in The g Factor:
Only he who has acquired a good and sufficiently interconnected facility for text comprehension and is sufficiently schooled in mathematical-logical analysis possesses the central prerequisites for acquiring the necessary grasp of quite distinct intellectual and conceptual material (p.197).
5. Sarrazin returns to the PISA Test data once again:
It is known that correlations do not justify causality. They can though support suppositions concerning a particular cause. So we know that correlations between intelligence and school success amount to some of the highest correlations in psychological diagnosis and – moreover – that measured intelligence is one of the best predictors for school success. It stirred things up in academic circles, therefore, when in 2006 Heiner Rindermann demonstrated that data of all three competences from PISA 2000 and 2003 - reading, mathematics and natural sciences – correlated not only extremely highly with one another but also with measured intelligence. Rindermann posed the question whether the Pisa tests were measuring not merely intelligence. Furthermore he compared the OECD-wide PISA results with the data compiled by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen of the mean IQs of the corresponding states and likewise established a high correlation. And so Pandora’s box was opened (p.213).
6. Sarrazin notes:
Lynn and Vanhanen had shown that the prosperity of nations was positively correlated with the measured mean intelligence of the peoples (p.214).
7. Sarrazin argues that given the long-standing permeability of the German education system that goes back to the 19th century any talent from the lower classes that was capable of rising higher in socioeconomic terms has done so. He notes therefore that is perfectly logical and in no way an indicator of a lack of justness [or fairness FE] that the leadership stratum of a country comes from the higher socioeconomic classes. However he notes: ‘It is politically correct in Germany to be annoyed about this..’(p.228).The same fake anger and fake concern are to be found in the United Kingdom among those employed in the poverty industry.
8. Sarrazin informs us that the educational authorities in Germany have decided that in future the results of PISA tests will be not be published in a format that shows the differences between the various German federal states (p.250).
1. Sarrazin begins this chapter by pointing out the dangers posed by uncontrolled, mass immigration, pouring scorn on the German mass media who promote a mendacious and propagandistic view of mass immigration as if it were a benefit. One obvious consequence of the lies and distortions promoted by the mass media in Germany is that there is no open and free discussion about multiculturalism and the impact of immigration on Germany. Politicians know that the slogan – “diversity is our strength” – is a lie, yet they continue to disseminate the lie. This is one reason why the majority of politicians in the United Kingdom, for example, are quite properly regarded as a corrupt, untrustworthy parasite class. Politicians, like many in the public sector, support uncontrolled immigration because they either benefit from staying on message or because they lack the moral fibre to challenge what has been happening to Britain since 1948. Sarrazin notes that these major changes and shifts in population are ‘seldom bloodless’ (p.257). He argues, correctly, that now that the major living spaces of the world, once under-populated, are now occupied uncontrolled migration is no longer possible. He continues:
[…] the natural population decrease in one country or group of countries may not serve as the basis morally and politically to justify immigration or seizure of land. The territorial principle is an inviolable component of state sovereignty and respect for it serves to maintain peace (p.257).
To this he adds:
In the globalised world capital and goods can flow freely. It is however unthinkable that this should also apply to labour since families, societies and peoples depend on the work (p.257).
And note the following:
Finally, the worker immigration of the 1960s set in train a new wave of European immigration the consequences of which afflict us. Today we know that factories and service industries must move but not people. Ageing and shrinking, like it is, in its cultural substance, the world of the Occident would hardly survive. The geographical and cultural border of Europe can also quite clearly be drawn on the Bosphorus and not, as in many statistics on the Turkish border with Iraq and Iran (p.258).
2. Very few Turks who came as workers returned to Turkey, Sarrazin notes, and then they brought their families over from Turkey. This has created a huge, hostile underclass. He argues that the whole guest worker programme was ‘a gigantic error’ (p.259).
3. One of the consequences of allowing unqualified immigrants into Germany, especially relevant for the United Kingdom can be seen in the case of the Nigerian doctor, Daniel Ubani, who, having acquired German citizenship, then tried to relocate to the United Kingdom. One hospital turned him down because his command of English was so inadequate. Eventually he managed to secure a post in the United Kingdom. He then gave a massive overdose of morphine to a patient (a retired General Practitioner) who died. The suspicion has to be that Ubani could not read properly or do basic maths. He then absconded back to Germany.
4. Sarrazin reports that according to the micro-census in Germany (2007) there are some 15.4 million people with an immigrant background in Germany (p.261). He estimates the number of Muslims in Germany could be as high as 6 to 7 million (p.262).
5. Sarrazin devotes a fair bit of space to a discussion of the growth in the numbers of Pakistanis and blacks in England and Muslims in France and Germany. For example, Sarrazin comments on the case of Enoch Powell and his remarks made in 1968. Sarrazin lists the problems caused by Muslims in European states. They are:
(i). below average integration in the employment market;
(ii). above average dependence on welfare and handouts;
(iii).above average fertility;
(iv). spatial segregation with a tendency to create parallel societies;
(v). above average religious adherence with an attraction to fundamentalist Islam;
(vi).above average criminality (street crime) and participation in terrorism (p.264).
6. There are a number of places in Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion where Sarrazin reveals a rather touching faith in the American model of immigration. Note the following, for example:
The Hispanic immigrants strengthen and enrich the Occidental culture and civilization of the USA instead of calling it into question (p.265).
This completely ignores immigrant organisations such as La Raza and La Reconquista which have no interest in integration. If there is a weak side to this book it is here and elsewhere when Sarrazin cites the American model of immigration. Like the European version of multiculturalism, the US version attaches some special status to non-white immigrants and ignores the fact that too many immigrants do not integrate. Essential reading here is Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (1996). One of the key problems as regards Islam is that Islam cannot be separated from Islamism. There is one ideological whole (p.267). There is no lay principle.
7. Sarrazin quite rightly takes the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to task for his grotesque remarks on Islam in Germany (p.270). Schröder made the following claims:
(i). According to Schröder we must recognise that Islam has become part of German society and part of European society to which Sarrazin countered:
No, we do not have to. What we have to recognise is that Muslims who live among us have the same rights as Catholics, members of a Free Church and Jehovah Witnesses to practice their religion: No more no less (p.270);
(ii). According to Schröder Islam is not a political ideology but a peaceful religion. That is taught by the Koran. Sarrazin countered:
The Koran teaches the opposite. That is in fact the problem with Islam (p.270);
(iii). According to Schröder the concept of the Enlightenment must not be used for purposes of separation. Sarrazin countered:
On the contrary that’s the problem! The attitude towards the Occidental Enlightenment highlights the very problem (p.270);
(iv). According to Schröder, the way of looking at Muslim states must change. The Turks have fundamentally democratised. Sarrazin countered:
It is our right and our duty to view Muslim states through Western eyes and to assess them according to our norms (p.270, emphasis added).
8. Christian believers in Turkey are denied the right to build new churches. Before World War One 25% of Turkey were Christian. Sarrazin notes:
Since the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians and several hundred thousand Aramaic-speaking Assyrians in the First World War as well the mass expulsion of 1.5 million Greek Orthodox believers after the First World War this proportion has sunk to 0.2% (p.272).
9. He notes that in all Muslim states Christians are persecuted (p.272). Dialogue is okay but: ‘Certain points are non-negotiable (p.274, emphasis in the original).
10. With regard to Islam and the historical-critical method he notes that Islam remains pre-modern (p.276). Indeed it does. He notes that Islamic scholars sanction the execution of Muslim converts to other religions. Changing one’s religion is, therefore, the test case for Islam’s adaptation to the modern world. He notes: ‘Where this is not possible because of danger and sanctions there can be no talk of religious freedom’ (p.277). Sarrazin cites two British journalists – John Micklethwaite and Adrian Wooldridge – who claim that: ‘The coexistence of various worldviews is a decisive characteristic of the modern’ (p.277). It is not at all clear to this reviewer that this is the case. Up to a point various worldviews can coexist but once religious, cultural and racial rivalry become factors coexistence is no longer possible and the solution to this friction is to be found in war. Nor is coexistence possible in a country such as Britain, for example, where governments have ignored the mass influx of immigrants (legal or illegal) and pursued a policy of coerced racial and cultural integration of various groups at the expense of the white indigenous majority. Note the following from Sarrazin:
Muslims in Germany and the rest of Europe are subject to an alien cultural and religious influence of which we have no oversight never mind control. We tolerate the growth of a culturally different minority whose basis in secular society is exiguous, that does not have our levels of tolerance and which is reproducing more strongly than the host society. We ought not to omit the contradictory movements in the Islamic world and the expansionist tendency of radical Islam, which by the way has nothing to do with poverty and lack of education, as is always repeatedly suggested. The history of Islamic terrorism repeatedly shows that it is precisely educated young men from affluent Muslim families – and also increasingly converts from European countries – that are especially prone to adopt radical positions up to supporting terror (pp.277-278).
11. He notes the work of the left in creating a climate of fear so that any criticism of Islam is denounced as racism (p.278). He notes the following sequence used by the left: criticism of Islam = Islamophobia = Racism = Anti-Semitism = Right-wing extremism = National Socialism (p.279).
12. Turks do not integrate. Note the following which will strike a chord with many non-German readers:
A part of the German population – also the elite – has just not understood the problem. In their everyday life, where they live and work they encounter Muslim immigrants only as cleaners or as alien backdrop on the occasional visit to Kreuzberg in Berlin. A section of the intellectuals and the liberal press even seem to find some secret joy in the fact that Muslim immigration is undermining German society (p.289).
13. Sarrazin cites some truly horrendous examples of Turks living on welfare. There is the example of some small German town where the population of 300 Turks is derived from just two families (p.294). One of them says: ‘we don’t need the Germans’ (p.295). The Turkish ghetto problem is very similar to blacks in the US. Largely unemployed and unemployable, they seek status through violence and robbery and other anti-social behaviour. Crimes in Germany involving immigrants are often suppressed by the mainstream media for the very obvious reason that reporting these crimes would show that the perpetrators are immigrants. We have the same problem in the United Kingdom concerning the prevalence of gun and knife crime in our cities which is essentially a black problem. Regarding the suppression of the truth or just ignoring it (another form of suppression), he notes: ‘Who is actually helped when facts in the public domain are suppressed, facts which those who are affected do not deny? Certainly neither the truth nor clear analysis or integration’ (p.297).
14. Sarrazin take a long hard look at what is happening in the Berlin district of Neukölln. The district has about 305,000 inhabitants of whom 120,000 are of immigrant background. It is estimated that the total of illegals is 20,000 – 30,000 out of a total illegal population of 150,000-200,000 in Berlin (p.299). He goes on to say that there are many such examples of Neukölln in Germany where immigrants are rapidly displacing the indigenous population. Sarrazin’s devastating point that - ‘A German going through these districts would feel like a foreigner in his own country’ (p.300) – would secure a lengthy standing ovation were it addressed to an indigenous British audience in some of our major cities.
15. Some truly horrendous consequences arising from Germany’s generous welfare provision are cited in this book. One observer describes the chaos of life in an immigrant Turkish family: ‘And the flat screen television is always on, always’ (p.305). It seems that one of the classic features of the underclass, be they black, white or Islamic immigrants in Germany is an addiction to television. It is almost as if television, with its relentless diet of soap operas and celebrity trash shows, is deliberately designed to cater overwhelmingly to the underclass of all races in all countries. Television is the narcotic of first choice for the international underclass.
16. Among male immigrants the combination of low educational attainment, machismo, arrogance towards women and violence is ‘shocking’ (p.306). Sarrazin notes: ‘However, the mantra education, education, education, cuts no ice’ (p.306).
17. In this chapter there is a sub-section entitled ‘Conquest through Fertility?’ (p.316). Sarrazin cites the remarks of a prominent Turk in Germany who boasted that by 2100 there would be 35 million Turks in Germany (p.317). Sarrazin notes that Turkish politicians are already using the presence of large numbers of Turks in Germany as a way of gaining access to the EU, using their presence in fact as an excuse to interfere in the internal affairs of Germany. This has a striking historical parallel with the way Hitler exploited the presence of the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) to interfere in Czechoslovakia.
18. Sarrazin observes that the rate of population change and displacement can be very rapid:
The displacement of population structures by means of differential rates of reproduction changes the face of the world, separate regions and entire states in historically very brief time spans (p.317).
19. One thing Sarrazin omits to discuss about the presence of immigrant children in the Berlin schools system is the effect that large numbers of such immigrants have on the educational outcomes and opportunities of the indigenous/autochthonous Germans. For example, in one school in Neukölln out of a total of 654 schoolchildren 80% are immigrants. Given the well documented failure of these children to integrate, which, among other things, means learning to speak and to write German, how is it possible for indigenous German schoolchildren to derive the maximum benefit from their time in school when so many of their classmates struggle with the language of instruction? What we have here is an example of how the opportunities of white children (indigenous Germans) are being sacrificed in an attempt to impose a multicultural curriculum. The same thing happens in England when English history is ignored or rewritten to suit the perceived needs of immigrants. Anyone who remembers the case of Ray Honeyford will know that this was one of his key concerns when he was the headmaster of a Bradford school.
20. It is in this chapter that Sarrazin delivers what could well be a rallying call for all European nations faced with the same consequences of mass, uncontrolled legal/legal immigration:
Who is here and has legal residency status is welcome. However, we expect that you learn the language; that you earn your living by work; that you are educationally ambitious for your children; that you adapt to the habits and ways of Germany and that, with time, you become Germans – if not yourselves, then at the very latest your children. If you are of Muslim faith, this is okay. You have the same rights and duties as heathen, Evangelical or Catholic Germans. But we want no national minorities. Those who want to remain as a Turk or an Arab and want the same for their children are better off staying in their lands of origin. And those who are solely interested in the blessings of the German welfare state are certainly not welcome here (p.326).
Chapter 8 Demography and Population Policy:
More Children from the Clever Before it is too Late
1. The projected population increases made by the United Nations are truly horrendous. Bearing this in mind, Sarrazin insists that:
The target migration countries have every right in the world to assess immigration exclusively from the perspective of their own advantage (p.339).
2. He considers Germany’s situation:
The number of births of the indigenous population [Germany] amounts annually to about 400,000. In other words in 45 years – in only one and half generations – it has reduced by 70%. From a purely physical point of view, the population that has been living since the start of the 1960s has been in a process of dying out. This population has already covered two thirds of the way towards its end, as measured by birth data. This is no complaint but rather instead a value-free, factual, completely indisputable statement (p.341).
3. Sarrazin returns – as he must – to the question of why nations decline and die. He notes that nations and peoples can just fade away. To what extent is the Nazi past responsible for inducing a suicidal guilt in Germans which is exacerbated and encouraged by a left-wing media? Typically, he notes, there are two responses to this state of affairs. First, the xenophile multiculturalists welcome the advance to one world in which national boundaries and racial/ethnic identities are lost forever. In the German variation some of these people regret that they were ever born as Germans. Second, there is a view that nothing can be done to stop this development and that there is no point in complaining about it. To which Sarrazin offers a superb riposte and one that highlights the confusion, inconsistency and cowardice of the political class in all Western states:
That is the majority of politicians in all parties, that get worked up about the fact that the Earth’s temperature will rise by about 2 to 4 degrees in 100 years instead of getting excited about the fact that over the same time span the number of Germans will drop by 80%. To this second group one can say that it is far easier to exert an influence on the German birth rate than on average global temperature. To the first group one must respond by saying: those who cannot attach any special value to the fact that there is a German language and culture must also be indifferent to the fact whether there will be human beings in the future who can continue to carry this language and culture. In any case the friends of multiculturalism are mistaken. There will never be a transnational, global society. As long as mankind exists it will form states and peoples, speak different languages and nurture different habits (p.346).
4. Sarrazin identifies five core problem areas (Grundlasten) which are related to German demography. They are:
(i). The first problem consists in the shift in the age of those of working age and those who are no longer working. In 2005 there were two people in work for very retired person. In 2050 that ratio will be 1:1;
(ii). The second problem consists in the ageing of the working population. In 2050 two thirds of them will 55 years old and only 20% will be between 25 and 35 years old. This will affect innovation and productivity;
(iii). The third problem consists in a population shrinkage from generation to generation. A stable state is not conceivable in the long term when in each generation the number of births falls by 36%;
(iv). The fourth problem consists in the different fertility rates of the educated and uneducated strata. In only a few generations this has considerable effects on the intellectual potential of society;
(v). The fifth problem consists in the increase of the proportion of those with a Muslim migrant background. This aggravates the fourth problem (pp.346-347).
5. The consequences of these demographic changes are as follows:
(i). A shift in the structure of the population to the less intelligent;
(ii). a decline in the number of those with high IQ;
(iii). a dramatic drop in Germany’s intellectual capital (pp.347-348).
6. In his analysis of the dysgenic effects of high breeding rates among the low IQ population Sarrazin demonstrates a firm grasp of the main sources. Here are his thoughts on the problem facing Germany:
The example of reproductive behaviour in Germany since the middle of the 1960s not only does not represent any Darwinian natural selection in the sense of the “survival of the fittest” but a culturally determined, negative selection process controlled by human beings themselves which has reduced, relatively and absolutely, and at high rate, the sole replaceable raw material that Germany has, namely intelligence. Rare minerals and elements, such as those required for modern battery technology are no longer available in Germany and Europe. The sole currency with which we are able to pay in world markets are the products of our intelligence (pp.353-354).
7. Data from the 2008 Microcensus, cited by Sarrazin, show the reproduction rates of woman in the year range from 1964 – 1968. They are:
Low level of education = 1.86 children per woman
Middle level of education = 1.45 children per woman
Higher education = 1.26 children per woman (p.355)
8. As regards the lack of children among high IQ women, he notes:
In general one can say that as regards Germany there is empirical evidence for the fact that the fertility of human beings is all the more higher, the lower the level of their education, socioeconomic status, income and – causally linked with these three points – their IQ. All industrialised societies are going to have to examine these dysgenic effects. The effects are all the greater the wider the gap is between stratum-dependent birth rates and the less immigration, insofar as it takes place, exerts a compensatory effect on the basis of its structure (p.357).
9. The consequences of the falling birth rate in Germany among indigenous Germans and the levels of Turkish, Arab and African immigration mean that Germans will be reduced to a minority if firm action is not taken (p.360).
10. He quite rightly notes that population size is a perfectly legitimate question for governments and goes to the heart of so much that is wrong in Germany and in the other welfare states of Western Europe:
The German system of social security – constructed in such a manner that the minimum received by a welfare recipient amounts to 60% of the middle income range – provides Muslim immigrants in Germany, without the imposition of any demands at all and without any work, an income that by the standards of their homeland could only be characterised as fantastic. As a consequence of this the income demands of these immigrants is from the very beginning set at a level way beyond their qualifications. Their high levels of unemployment are accordingly pre-programmed.
Those who migrate to Germany from Africa, the Near East and Middle East want to improve their standard of living. That is guaranteed for them by the German welfare system without their having to work. On the other hand those who migrate to the USA or Canada know full well that only their hands and brains can help them to achieve a better life. Those who do not think they can do that or who are not prepared to make the necessary efforts do not migrate to these countries. There the immigrants represent something of an elite selection. That is not the case in Germany and Europe. In view of the fact that their homelands are poor enough it makes sense for the incapable and the lazy to come to Germany (pp.370-371).
I suggest that once again Sarrazin adopts a too generous view of immigrants entering the USA, especially from across the Mexican border (p.370). At some stage in the past his view that immigrants had to be self-reliant; that they had the choice of sinking or swimming was true. It no longer applies.
Chapter 9 A Dream and a Nightmare: Germany in 100 Years
1. This final chapter begins with an unequivocal assertion of national sovereignty and the right of Germans to determine their country’s future:
1. Every state has the right to decide who shall be permitted to move to that state and who shall not be permitted.
2. The Western and European values and the respective cultural qualities of its peoples are worth being preserved. In 100 years Danes should live as Danes among Danes and Germans as Germans among Germans when they want it (p.391).
Sarrazin continues:
I would like, however, my descendants in 50 and in a 100 years time to be still living in a Germany in which German is the day-to-day language and where the people feel themselves to be German; that they live in a country that has preserved and developed its cultural and intellectual capacity; that they live in a country that is firmly rooted in a Europe of nation states. I find that – please forgive me – far more important than the question of whether the level of the North Sea will rise by 10 or 20 centimetres over the next hundred years. I am certain that our neighbours to the east in Poland want that Poland will still be Poland in 50 or a hundred years time in exactly the same way that the French, the Danes, the Dutch and the Czechs want the same thing for their peoples and countries (p.392).
2. Sarrazin stresses that immigrants are welcome – subject to the requirements of the host country and a willingness to adapt to German folkways and customs – but that importing another mass wave of immigrants from Africa and the Middle East will solve nothing but rather will cause more problems. Germany, he argues, must rely on its own indigenous resources and intellectual capital if it is to maintain itself as a prosperous and German nation. Germany cannot continue to plug the demographic gaps with Anatolian farmers, Palestinian war refugees and various generations of refugees from the Sahel zone (the zone immediately to the south of the Sahara stretching from the Atlantic coast of Africa to the Red Sea, FE). He notes:
Germany will not die all of sudden. The Germans will pass away quietly and with the demographically determined exhaustion of their intellectual potential. The German in Germany is becoming increasingly diluted and the intellectual potential is being diluted still faster. Who in a 100 years time will still know The Wayfarer’s Song by Night? [a poem by Goethe FE]: certainly not the Koran scholar in the mosque next door (p.393).
3. Sarrazin ends his book with two scenarios: the nightmare and possible salvation. Here is a summary of the nightmare scenario.
4. Some scholar, it turns out, claims to have demonstrated that the desire on the part of Germans to insist that immigrants meet a German-language requirement represents a form of latent fascism. Insisting that immigrants master German against their will is, it is claimed, a manifestation of a delusion of German superiority ‘that once before almost destroyed the world’ (p.397). So the German-language requirement for immigrants is abolished. The minister for the family, a young, left-leaning woman, insisted that, given the worldwide population increase, the need to protect the environment and Germany’s questionable past and low birth rate, Germany could make a positive contribution to the future of mankind. Falling population created room for more immigrants and Germany could, she claimed, make a contribution to easing the world situation. If the Germans could no longer produce sufficient engineers then that was not a problem: there were plenty of Indians and Chinese.
5. By 2015 the rate of immigration was increasing. Most were families coming to join husbands, the rest were economic migrants from Africa. Things meanwhile had become much easier for immigrants. Those immigrants who could reach Germany and committed no crimes for six months ‘automatically acquired approval to remain for an unlimited period as well as being entitled to social services just like every other German citizen’ (p.399).
6. In 2030 a decision is taken not to provide any breakdown by immigration background in the publication of the PISA tests. This development was greeted favourably since the gaps had become much worse because of the increase in immigration:
The Association of Progressive Teachers had repeatedly complained about the public discussion of the performance differences, arguing that this amounted to “objective discrimination” against immigrants. The negative self portrait which was created undermined the confidence of the immigrants in their own ability so that poor performance became a self-fulfilling prophecy. One must stop once and for all to talk about performance differences then these differences will disappear by themselves. The public discussion of performance differences regardless whether they were real or not encouraged a racist state of mind and for that reason should be prevented. The Conference of the Minister of Culture was bound by this morally and pedagogically compelling argumentation (pp.399- 400).
7. Another development was the introduction of American-style affirmative action for Turkish, Arab and African students in 2035. Local businesses were going bust and since value-added tax (sales tax in the USA) was already at 25%, income tax had to be raised. From 2040 there is a marked increase in the number of affluent people leaving Germany. Alongside the exodus of Germans the number of towns and cities under the control of immigrants increased such that over a half of the Bürgermeisters were now of Turkish, Arab or African origin. Naturally, this has a major impact on local politics.
8. In 2045 there was another fire in the Duchess Anna-Amalia-Library in Weimar. The local administration says that such is the burden of welfare payments that it is unable to provide any financial assistance. The head Bürgermeister of Weimar, an Arab immigrant, announces that the living have a greater claim to money than the dead. The limited funds available are to be used for a new mosque and for the redevelopment of a municipal Koran studies college. In the decades that followed churches, castles and museums fell into disrepair. As Sarrazin notes, ‘The growing number of Muslims were not interested in these cultural places’ (p.401).
9. In 2080 a desperate attempt is made by the German government to secure funds for the protection of Germany’s cultural artefacts. A member of the Grey Panthers objects. On a trip to Istanbul at Easter 2095 the German Minister for Culture has something of a brain wave when he sees the Saint Sophia Church which for over 600 years has been used by the Turks as a mosque. This, he concludes, is the model for the great German cathedrals. From this arises the first experimental trial in which Germany’s most famous churches and cathedrals, among them, Cologne Cathedral and the Munich Frauenkirche, are to be loaned on a permanent basis ‘to the Islamic religious community for future use as mosques’ (p.402). In order not to offend Muslims the crosses were either removed or covered up. This lease plan was successful and in the years ahead other famous German churches such as the cathedrals at Mainz, Wurms and the Marienkirche in Lübeck were converted to mosques.
10. But the language problem would not go away. In a landmark legal decision of Germany’s Constitutional Court handed down in 2035 the court ruled that it constituted a violation of the principle of equality enshrined in the German Constitution when an applicant with an immigrant background was not considered for a job because of German-language deficiencies. Major changes in education then follow based on the claim that it damaged the self-esteem of immigrants when they were expected to speak in broken German instead of being allowed to speak in their native languages.
11. Sarrazin concludes this nightmare scenario with a retrospective glance:
In 2100 a historian casting a critical glance on the past could note with satisfaction that Germany had solved its demographic problems in an exemplary, and from a multicultural perspective, correct fashion. True enough, Germany in terms of living standards had fallen way below China, and even India had overtaken Germany in per capita income but the Germans had shown the world that the problems could be solved peacefully.
Some Muslim hotheads were now demanding a new national flag, one with a black background, a red crescent and a gold star. That was perhaps a bit too much. But, on the other hand, they had the right: they were indeed the democratic majority. And Germany would at least remain black, red and gold (p.404, emphasis added).
The Salvation Scenario
12. Since 2010 the European political establishment had become alarmed by the growth of populist right-wing parties all across Europe. Europe’s voters were well aware that their living standards had dropped and that the Schengen agreement left Europe wide open to illegal immigrants. The prospect of securing generous welfare handouts continued to act as a driver of immigration from the Near East, Middle East and from Africa. A terrorist attack in Berlin in May 2013 led to a dramatic tightening of Europe’s border control regime. In the same year, after the election of a new government, measures in the areas of the family, integration and education were introduced: raising the number of children born to high IQ women; tightening the terms according to which the families of immigrants were allowed to come to Germany; compulsory attendance at schools for all children; for immigrant children there is a special emphasis on the acquisition of German; throughout Germany the required standard in the primary school curriculum for German and mathematics is standardised with that which obtained in 1970. These measures started to deliver the necessary results. From 2025 onwards Germany started to improve in the PISA Test rankings. Reforms in the social welfare payments led to a situation in which the fertility of immigrants dropped. Exemptions from sport and swimming based on religious grounds were denied in 2030. School uniforms had already been introduced in 2020 and headscarves banned. In those parts of German cities long known for housing immigrants women in headscarves were far less visible. Immigration restrictions, the reduction in the number of migrants seeking a life on welfare handouts and the continual moving out of the economically successful was clearly having an effect. The migrant quarters in the big cities were shrinking and far lass Turkish and Arabic were heard on the streets. Germany has been brought back from the brink. Sarrazin concludes:
Integration seemed to be complete. Historians saw a parallel here with the integration of Polish migrants in the Ruhr in the first half of the twentieth century. So, as then, the essential memory remained the foreign-sounding names of some prominent football players (p.407).
13. Finally, what makes Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion so valuable to any thinking German patriot who has had to endure politically correct lying over so many decades on anything to do with immigration and race is Sarrazin’s fearless, rational honesty. Germans reading Germany Consigns itself to Oblivion must have experienced something similar to that experienced by a Russian reading a samizdat version of Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago during the Cold War: an exhilarating sense of moral and intellectual liberation which only the honest search for, and confrontation with, truth can deliver. I salute Herr Sarrazin for his moral courage and intellectual acumen: and God bless his great nation in the struggle to save itself from oblivion. Nun aber los!
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