Will Germany Succumb to Hate?
Anna Suerberry, Contributing Op-Ed, New York Times
2September 2015

Image: Credit Simon Prades

BERLIN — AMID the staccato ping of news generated by Europe’s migration crisis, perhaps nothing is more jarring than what is playing out in Germany. The country, which expects up to a million refugees to arrive this year and whose chancellor has been the Continent’s most outspoken advocate for accepting refugees, has also experienced more than 200 attacks, mostly arson, on homes for asylum seekers during the first six months of the year, according to the Ministry of Homeland Affairs.

It feels like staring at a strobe light, this bounce between humanitarianism and terrorism. Many Europeans, and especially Germans, are watching with a sense of helplessness: Will our urge to help let loose our darkest demons?

The good news is that although there are problems with Europe’s immigration policy, the fixes are clear.

First, the European Union has to fix the so-called Dublin mechanism, which says that the member state where an asylum seeker first sets foot has the responsibility for processing his claim. This is a recipe for disaster: With most of the refugees coming from Africa and the Middle East, their first stops are usually Italy, Greece and other economically weakened Southern European countries.

Also, the quota system by which refugees are spread around the union needs fixing. Many states are shirking their duties, with no sanction. And Europe needs a common standard for what counts as “dangerous” and “safe” countries, so that we all agree on who counts as a refugee and who doesn’t.

Individual countries have problems, too, but at least in Germany they’re being addressed. Germany’s federal government has already increased its assistance to state and local governments struggling to absorb thousands of migrants. Regulations are being reconsidered, procedures streamlined. Many things still don’t work. But there’s a political willingness to adapt to the new demands.

It’s the psychological dimension that is harder to tackle. Refugees are on everyone’s mind. A couple of days ago, at my son’s favorite playground in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin, a German boy, about 7 years old, was carrying a younger child on his back. “We are refugees,” he explained to his playmate. “We must cross the Mediterranean.” There’s not an after-work or dinner-table conversation that doesn’t turn to the “refugee question” sooner or later.

In a way, this is surprising. It’s not as if homeless refugees are scattered on the streets, or pensions have been cut to feed them. If you don’t live next to a temporary refugee home, migration is an abstract problem.

So why do many Germans still feel personally affected? For Germany, it is a return to history. Over the last decade many Germans have taken a siesta from politics, drowsing in economic growth and Angela Merkel’s reassuring royalty. German soldiers have died in Afghanistan, but not many. Now, dead bodies are washed ashore almost every day at Germany’s favorite beaches in Italy and Greece, brutally interrupting our oblivion.

Reactions are twofold. The outpouring of civic engagement is unprecedented. Retired teachers help Syrian students learn German. Physicians are treating refugees free. Families take in families.

But there are those who believe we face an apparent apocalypse. When I write about the topic in my newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel, I get angry calls from readers explaining that we will be “overrun,” that our prosperity and culture will be swept away by “the surge.”

The line between those who are simply afraid of change and those who happily greet the opportunity to give in to hatred is often hard to draw. Talking about a “surge” of refugees expresses the understandable (though unnecessary) concern that the costs of absorbing them can’t be met.

But regarding the refugees as an anonymous, threatening mass also bears the nucleus of “Menschenverachtung,” meaning roughly “contempt for humankind,” a word that is unique to the German language and a discipline of thought this country has excelled at in the past — and not only under the Nazi regime.

And yet we also have to put this, the darkest aspect of the current crisis, in perspective. It is not a force of nature. Though violence is on the rise and surveys show a decline in the willingness to accept more immigrants, the overall mood in Germany still favors the refugees.

Moreover, the hate speeches and riots are at least partly organized or supported by the National Democratic Party, a right-wing extremist group that has been losing members and apparently views the increase in migration as its last chance to survive. It is not the demons of the past rising, but contemporary political criminals at work. We don’t need an exorcist, but a police task force.

Whether Germany’s psychological condition remains stable depends on how well the practical dimension will be managed, but also to a great extent on how well our politicians handle the balance.

They have performed admirably. Contrary to the early 1990s, when many picked up on and amplified anti-immigrant sentiments, national leaders from across the political spectrum have taken care to express a common, welcoming concern. They have to walk a thin line, and it requires skill to make those afraid of change feel they are being heard, while at the same time leaving no room for even the slightest echo of racist ideology.

After taking her typical, cautious time, Chancellor Merkel has urged her fellow Germans to welcome the refugees; while acknowledging the scope of the challenge, she has denounced anti-immigrant extremists and insisted that, together, “We can make it.”

So far, most Germans agree.

Copyright: New York Times 2015

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