The Political Mainstream
2009/10/09
According to the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bundesbank board member, Thilo Sarrazin (SPD) has been riding "a wave of appreciation" since he declared 20 percent of the population of Berlin for economically superfluous, defamed the lower social strata of immigrants ("headscarf girls") and called for their being excluded from state social welfare services. The journal, one of Germany's pacesetting dailies, draws this conclusion not only from the tenor of the large influx of letters to the editors it has received, but also from its knowledge of the "mainstream parties," whose "fear" until now has kept them from "standing by" Sarrazin. "The political mainstream," which is sick and tired of being "insulted as xenophobic simply because they no longer go along with the dogmas of an unsuccessful multiculturalism" has expressed its approbation. Germany "needs politicians like Sarrazin" the journal writes.[1]
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's plea includes Sarrazin's demands for halting the immigration of lower class migrants. For decades, these demands have been the state's criteria for fighting immigration,[2] but until now the leading circles have avoided such openly racist formulations. One should break out of this "cage of permissible opinions and formulations commonly known as 'political correctness'," the newspaper writes in unison with journals of the Springer publishing house. The racist public dialogue that has now begun to surface is suited to preparing the groundwork for a further radicalization of Berlin's policy.
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