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Colonization by Immigration

Germany’s Immigration-Skeptic Party Beats Merkel’s Ruling Party in State Election

In the district that Merkel herself hails from, the Alternative for Deutschland party reduced Merkel's party to a third-place showing.

BY CounterJihad · @CounterjihadUS | September 5, 2016

Germany has a Federal system of government, in which a number of states exist and govern areas of the country, while an overarching Federal government handles foreign affairs and other powers.  The next general election for Germany’s Federal government is just over a year away, and between now and then there will be votes in the several states.

In one such vote this weekend, Germany’s current ruling party was reduced to third place.  It happened in the state that Prime Minister Angela Merkel has served for 25 years.

What does this new, successful, insurgent party want?  The Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) wants a Germany that remains German.

In May 2016, the AfD adopted an explicitly anti-Islam policy, and its programme (in German) has a section explaining why it believes “Islam does not belong to Germany”.

There is no room for Muslim practices and beliefs that go against “the free, democratic social foundation, our laws and the Judaeo-Christian and humanistic bases of our culture”, it says.

So the AfD would ban foreign funding of mosques in Germany, ban the burka (full-body veil) and the Muslim call to prayer, and put all imams through a state vetting procedure.

“Moderate” Muslims who accept integration are “valued members of society”, the programme says. But it argues that multiculturalism does not work.

Naturally the international press is understanding this German nationalism as a sort of echo of Nazi politics.  The BBC report cited above mentions that AfD members often clash with the press, calling them “‘Luegenpresse’ (‘lying press’), which has echoes of the Nazi era.”  This is one of those occasions when Nazi analogies turn out to be unreasonably weak.  Accusations that the press has been unfair in its coverage of them are universal among insurgent political parties of any ideological stripe, and are often warranted.  As invaluable as a free press is to a free society, it has the same human tendencies to curry favor with the powerful and dismiss those seen as ‘on the fringe’ as anyone else.

Meanwhile, the concerns over mass immigration have a rational element to them, reports none other than Al Jazeera:

“I am voting AfD. The main reason is the question over asylum-seekers,” a pensioner and former teacher who declined to be named told AFP news agency.

“A million refugees have come here. There is money for them, but no money to bring pensions in the east to the same levels as those of the west,” he said, referring to the lower retirement payments that residents of former Communist states receive compared with those in the west.

If it is already the case that Germany is suffering from an official inequality in its welfare system that it is unable to rectify, it makes no sense to swell welfare rolls.  Likewise, the AfD plan to insist that Muslims who come to Germany must endorse its version of the Constitution — “the Basic Law” — as binding regardless of religious views is merely to ask of immigrants what is asked of everyone else.  It would be impossible to manage a stable society with a large and growing element that rejected the basic law of the land where it conflicted with their religious values.

Hungary’s Prime Minister, who has very similar values, has called for a referendum on the question of whether it is appropriate for a European country to value its ethnic and religious heritage.

“We don’t want to change the character of our country,” Orban said. “We want to remain Hungarian, to keep our religious and ethnic composition. That view isn’t popular in Europe nowadays, at least among politicians.”

A clear referendum result would help to convey that message to Brussels, he said. “They want to force rules on member states that are in conflict with their interests, including Hungary’s. We are preparing for a conflict,” he added.

Hungary’s “basic law” actually contains a provision mandating that the government always view Hungary as chiefly the home for Hungarians.  The question that Merkel’s influence in Europe is bringing to the fore is whether such a constitution is permitted any longer in the new Europe.  Orban and the AfD argue not only that it is, but that it ought to be.  Voters seem to be coming around to their view.

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