Increasing Hostility to Germans

JLH has translated an op-ed from the German newspaper BILD about the growing hostility and aggression against Germans by Arabs and Turks in the more culturally enriched areas of Berlin. The translator includes this introduction:

Heinz Buschkowsky is the long-serving mayor of the Neukölln section of Berlin. He grew up there, in a truly multi-ethnic milieu. As mayor he still has the reputation of walking the streets and greeting people as he did when he was younger. He is SPD, and regarded as a benign but pragmatic force there.

He was a young person there a bit earlier than the author Güner Balci, whom he mentions, but has obviously also seen the effect of the imams and the mullahs.

He mentions the judge Kirsten Heisig who had strong opinions about how to approach youth criminality. She wrote a book about her views and shortly thereafter was found dead.

Buschkowsky has harsh words about some things in Thilo Sarrazin’s book but it is clear that he too sees immense problems.

He writes a regular column for BILD, which is illustrated and attuned more to ordinary folks.

The translated column from BILD:

Buschkowsky: Straight Talk

Children Are Mocked As “Potatoes” in the Schoolyard

October 5, 2010

Hatun Sürücü had just been executed by her brothers. In a Neukölln school, students thought that was completely okay, because “she had lived like a German.” This happened years ago.

Conditions have not improved — on the contrary. When Neukölln author Güner Balci made two films about Islamism and racism in students in Berlin and Essen who have an immigration background, the spin doctors were immediately indignant. The warnings of youth court judge Kirsten Heisig were also acknowledged only begrudgingly.

Meanwhile, it is no longer possible to deny an increasing tendency by Turkish and Arabic young people toward hostility to Germans and the bullying of German students. Kreuzberg and Neukölln superintendents, like teachers, publicly complain about the conditions. They tell of mosque clubs that try to turn students to Islamism. Even the GEW cannot avoid dedicating a meeting to the subject.

There are stories about students who learned in daycare already to be as invisible as possible. Just-do-not-attract-attention is the word for those who want to be left in peace, to learn and to behave themselves. Children do not want to go into the schoolyard, so as not to be mocked as nerds, pork-eaters or potatoes, or endure even or worse.

The guilty party, as always, is society — that is , you and I — we allegedly discriminate against these macho types, prevent them from learning; we do not give them perspective, and so we make them into losers. It is all a social question without the slightest cultural or religious background. This displacement (of responsibility) helps no one.

If the perpetrators are constantly excused as victims instead of being confronted, nothing will change.

No, these de-socialized young people are not the victims of a hostile society. They are the product of parallel societies, of anti-integration and alienation from education. They are the result of a lack of upbringing in families who, to be sure , live among us, but have never arrived. They show us the consequences of religious fundamentalism and our uninformed observation. Democracy is not an instruction manual on randomness. When will we finally realize that?