The inhumanity of 'forgotten' people

Shocking interviews on TV with both refugee families in Germany, and local Germans who voted for AfD, the extreme-right, one could say: almost neo-nazi party, who play the card of German national identity and the 'threat' that refugees form for the 'Germanness' of 'Das Volk'. You see very young refugee children, full of life and joy (because of ignorant of the fragility of their position, with only temporary permit), speaking German already, and worrying parents because of permit issues, work issues and hostility of the locals, and seemingly civil, simple German people, who feel threatened by foreigners, fear for their childrens' future ('will this then still be Germany?'), and who calmly, friendly but pertinently explain that 'these people' don't belong here and should go home. That their home no longer exists, is not their problem, it's the foreigners' problem. Question: 'And the children being born here, going to German schools, speaking German, must they go too?' The answer is also calmly and steadfastly given: refugee children, even if they are born here, are and will remain foreign and will never be German, because being German means background, which has been built-up over generations, they have no roots and will not get roots. All without any hint of awareness of the inhumanity, cruelty, and thoroughly un-European, un-civilized nature of their opinion. When the interviewer says: 'What you say, isn't that just racist?' then they are shocked, oh no, this is not racist at all, race does not come into question, these people just have to go.

Now, strictly speaking, such opinions are not directly racist, but they are cruel, uncivilized, primitive, and come from a layer of society of simple, hardworking people, who do not have any intellectual background which would enable them to understand the time in which we live and the bigger questions of Europe and the world. You will have to accept that these people watch the news, see the endless streams of refugee families with little children on the shoulders, ploughing through barren lands in an effort to save their lives, and it does not touch them in the least, because that is not happening in their backyard. It is a grave deficit of imagination and humanity, on a very basic level. One of these Germans said - a worrying house wife: 'We never get the feeling that the government listens to us, that we have a voice'. That there are also other voices, which may have something better to say, simply does not come-up into such minds. These are the people who do not consider themselves neonazis or extremists, but they partake in massive rallies screaming: 'We are the people!' (the regular 'pegida' rallies). No awareness of history, of the wider world, of Europe. Just primitive instincts.

To my feeling, the mistake by European politicians was - and is - not that they take-in refugees, that is only normal and absolutely necessary given the wider context and Europe's identity as a civilization - that is why the resistance against accepting refugee numbers by EU member states is so embarrassing, although again understandable from a historic perspective: eastern Europe has been isolated from the world for half a century. No, the mistake was and is, that the political parties don't stress the process of Europeanization enough or just not at all. Immigrants in the USA have, mostly, two identities: that of their culture and the American identity, and that combines quite well. A Chinese family in Kentucky has the American flag in the front yard and eat Fu Yong Hai for dinner (their children may opt for a Big Mac). Since culture is different from the political and social context, Europeanization can be achieved in such a way that the original culture of immigrants are left untouched - except where it is in conflict with Western civilizational values, like sharia, genital mutilation, or burning of widows and killing the neighbour when he makes a risqué joke to your wife. Within Europe, mixing of nationalities and cultures is going on already for a very long time, but of course, the differences between north- and south-Europeans and West- and East-Europeans is not so big as - presumably - between a Danish bourgeois family and a Syrian one (although I bet these differences are not at all as big as people may think). People who fled death and destruction can adapt easily in Europe, if they are helped and educated in European ways of life, and most of these ways are entirely beneficial, especially for women and children. Of course there are, and will be for a long time, problems of assimilation and employment and education, but Europe is certainly able to handle them - it is in its own existential interest, failing is no option.

This wave of rightwing extremism and entirely outdated nationalism, which threatens to undermine all the achievements of Europe since the Second World War, is also - and maybe foremost - a reaction against a modernity which has neglected two important things necessary for a normal, balanced and civilized society: culture (in the widest sense) and the cultivation of home, of feeling safe and belonging to a place, a location. Both elements are not entirely rational but mainly emotional. It is the elites who, without financial worries, easily travel from one place to another, within or outside Europe, who enjoy holidays on the Fuji Islands or go on safari in Kenya when bored, but the majority of people focus on the everyday burdens and consider everything that does not directly affect their life, as something happening far away, as if on another planet. If they are feeling at home in their environment, and their income is not threatened, the information coming from the media about 'life out there' is consumed but not digested - why should it? But if there are not enough reassurances from the state, and appropriate measures taken, to convey the message that Europe will continue to be Europe, and Germany and any other European nation will continue their identity, because newcomers will become Europeans, there will be rebellion. It is all about insecurity and the lack of reassurance.

All this has influence upon culture: where orchestras and opera houses confront cuts in their subsidies because they are considered no longer representing a cultural 'centre' of some community, of a shared civilization, and are seen as 'no longer relevant for modern times', this would reflect the giving-up of an age-old, highly developed cultural identity, which does not need to be xenophobe to maintain its viability. It is not relevant whether every type of civilian does or does not visit concerts or operas; it is the sheer presence of cultural institutions and the art forms they represent, which is the point. From this centre of cultural identity, education and Europeanization can open the institutional doors to people from other cultures, and we see this already happening on a small scale.

Decennia of leftwing social engineering, mixed with populism and a superficial, 'progressive' idea of modernity, have eroded Europe's cultural identity, and such things trickle-down to the base of the human pyramid, there where levels of education and intelligence are lowest. And now these levels protest - without understanding that in fact, while they think they only raise their voice, on the longer term they are damaging their own interests and the interests of the whole of society. It is a protest against an eroding modernity which, in combination with an unfair globalism and sudden appearances of a head scarf in the local street, creates instinctive reactions rooted in primitive feelings of being threatened - understandable but very dangerous. Hence the inhumanity of those simple Germans, who think they are defending Blut und Boden by voting for an extremist party and feel no qualms in wishing innocent children to meet their hopeless fate amidst the ruins of a destroyed country and continuing death threats. If such thing would happen to their own children, they would take to their axes and knives and hammers and anything that would provide a weapon - but then, 'that would be something different'. In other circumstances, they would wholeheartedly vote for the nazis, as they did in the thirties, when they were really threatened by existential problems on a hughe scale, and did not mind the craziness of the nazi ideology because they lacked the imagination to understand what they meant.

One can only hope for the other Europe, the other Germany: that of the humanist tradition, of civilizational values and imagination, which has given the world one of the greatest flowerings of the human mind. Rightwing extremism has to be opposed with all the available forces, political, cultural, intellectual, educational, and its causes be tackled.