UK Edition
In the past seven days, German civilians have come under attack from four men of Middle Eastern or Asian origin. Three have been linked to Isil. The latest incident saw a Syrian blow himself up outside a Bavarian festival after pledging allegiance to Isil.
Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria’s interior minister, has suggested that such attacks raise questions about an immigration policy that has seen more than one million migrants enter Germany largely unchecked over the past year, many from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Raising such questions may appear logical and sensible, but Germany’s debate about migration issues does not always follow logic or common sense. Thomas de Maizière, the federal immigration minister, attempted to argue that the open door offered to migrants by his boss, Angela Merkel, is not relevant to the recent attacks.
While Mr Herrman’s attitude is more realistic, Mr de Maizière’s is more typical of Germany’s political debate about issues of immigration, integration and security. For many reasons, some of them historical and understandable, many German politicians are wary of acknowledging, first, that there are questions about whether all immigrants can smoothly integrate into Western societies and accept Western values and, secondly, that some voters have legitimate worries about the arrival in their country of people whose attitudes seem far removed from their own. This reticence should end, because it risks doing real harm.
Western democracies are now frequently experiencing political events that were previously considered unthinkable, at least by their political elites. If there is a common theme to Brexit, the candidacy of Donald Trump and the rise of the Front National in France, it is that political establishments which ignore and ridicule voters’ concerns about issues including immigration and cultural cohesion are simply storing up trouble for the future. Such concerns do not go away just because politicians refuse to acknowledge them, instead erupting unpredictably. To avoid these eruptions, those worries must be addressed sensibly and calmly by mainstream politicians. Otherwise the only beneficiaries are fringe factions more inclined to exploit social problems than solve them.
Too many German leaders remain in denial about the questions raised by Mrs Merkel’s open-door immigration policy. They must end that denial and start answering those questions, before less savoury elements offer their own answers.
Germany is in a dangerous state of denial about immigration, Islam and terrorism