The following critical overview of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies was written by a German leftist and published earlier this month in FAZ. A surprising amount of his analysis agrees with my own views and those of other “right-wing extremists”.

JLH, who translated the piece for Gates of Vienna, includes this prefatory note:

As noted in the concluding biographical summary, Wolfgang Streeck is a dedicated leftist and academic. This results in a style characterized by sentences riddled with semi-necessary emphasis particles and adverbs, which envelop whole paragraphs and pages. My apologies in advance to anyone who feels strongly that the original style should always be preserved. I can only plead that Mark Twain would have sympathized. On the other hand, where I was unable to sectionalize a monster sentence, my apologizes to those who do not enjoy following grammatical bread crumbs.

The translated article:

To each country its own ways, one might say. But the national peculiarities of German politics in the close quarters of Europe have the most destructive imaginable external effects. The core of the new German ideology is a self-image of German policy as European policy — policy derived from the European identity for European interests. And that is because there can no longer be German identity and German interests. This is connected with a moral claim to the fealty of all other Europeans — a claim that can only evoke resistance, intensified by the unpredictability of a German governing style run as a “one-woman show” following the imperatives of internal, power-political policy that is at least as exceptional as that of any other country. And so the changes of position inherent in System Merkel, which are confusing enough in Germany, penetrate allied countries. The claim upon European and member state policy for German purposes, the incorporation of other European countries in the course of the re-labeling of German identity and politics as European, is becoming an international source of danger.

This kind of maneuver is eased in Germany by a parliamentary system that does not require the chancellor, like the British prime minister, to stand across from the leader of the opposition and submit to cross examination. In place of the Prime Minister’s Question Time, we have Anne Will’s talk show. Such maneuvers are most successful when they move in the direction of opposition traffic, whose discipline as a coalition partner hastily relinquishes anything that could boost the disheartened, faithful standard bearers of the government camp.

Personalization provides the legitimacy lacking in a rudderless policy created by successive, power politics-driven changes of programs and coalitions, by presenting them as a personal life’s journey. Necessary for this is a public with a short memory, a scanty intellectual grasp of consistency and a low sentimentality threshold, restricted by institutional or moralist exclusion of critical questions. An example is how the “atomic chancellor”, who had pushed secession from the hard-fought Red-Green campaign to leave atomic energy until the day before Fukushima, because she was convinced, as a “trained physicist”, that the residual risk of Chernobyl — as it had been long contemplated at that time — was acceptable. But just a week after Fukushima — still the trained physicist — she became the chancellor of the Energy Turnaround [Energiewende].

Behind all this is an opaque, closed, political system, held together by a multiplicity of bans on speech, thought and questions, defended with “all democratic means” and come into its own in a ten-year maturity process, as “System Merkel”. Its centerpiece is the ruling technique of “asymmetrical demobilization” and the transformation of the office of chancellor into a kind of personal presidency. Asymmetrical demobilization is supposed to prevent voters of other parties from voting by avoiding public confrontation with their goals. Personalized governance depends on the post-ideological turning maneuver experienced as a personal conversion, which the citizens may follow and discuss, guided by government’s PR machine and aided by the more or less government-friendly media

Anyone who hesitates to salute is risking exclusion from the protections of the constitution, because he is “aiding and abetting the Right” — provided he is not simply relegated to it — and then, only in the most favorable instances to the AfD. And thus the government and opposition, organizations and media alike, make sure that the national Europa discourse recognizes no interests, certainly no German ones, but only ideas, and really only one idea — the “European” one. Believing in this idea is a moral duty of member states, even those whose economic blood is being sucked out by the euro in the interests of the German trade balance.

What if what is happening in Europe is about “Europa”? Anyone who has observed for a sufficient time is aware that every European country — depending on its national experiences and interests — has a different conception of “Europa” and what Germans in their idealism call the “European idea”. What was some time ago dubbed the “sacralization of Europa” goes hand-in-hand in Germany with the routine excommunication of those who have doubts about the EMU (European Monetary Union) and the EU and branding them as “euro-skeptics” or even “anti-Europeans”. The Geßler’s hat [1] that demands obeisance in this case is “the word of the chancellor”: “If the euro fails, Europe fails” — an attempt to retroactively sacralize the miscarried construction of the (partially) European currency.

With refugee policy as with the salvation of the euro, the destructive dynamic of the “new German” separate path is illustrated. This starts with the alienation nearly everywhere outside of Germany from the German “welcoming culture”, and is far beyond normal international anxiety. This is heightened by a national culture of consensus — perceived from outside as creepy — which makes the acceptance of the most astounding claims collectively obligatory.

In Germany, for example, it is compulsory to believe, or indeed to profess — at any rate, not to doubt, under threat of exclusion from democratic communication, that borders between countries in the 21st century can no longer be maintained. And that successful closing of borders is contrary to human rights, when it occurs in Hungary or Macedonia, but not when it occurs between Greece and Turkey under German supervision. And that there is no difference between asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants. That when it comes to immigration, there is only push and never pull. That refugees are refugees, even the discharged interpreters of the American army in Afghanistan whom their previous employer did not find reason to admit into their own country. That an immigrant’s need for assistance is measured by whether he has enough money to pay the smuggler and the strength to negotiate the Balkan route, and by how far along that route he gets. That there can be no ceiling on the admission of immigrants. That the measures undertaken with the would-be dictator of Turkey to end the refugee stream are not in contradiction to this. That the same applies to estimating the number of Syrians who will be admitted on humanitarian grounds, with reference to the number of their compatriots captured at the maritime starting point of the now closed Balkan route. That the closing of the Balkan route in time proximity to the Cologne New Year’s “celebrations” was accomplished by “Europa” under the leadership of the German chancellor, and not by Austria or Slovenia, and therefore is in agreement with “our values”, which would ordinarily be different.

No Ceiling

The decision to open the German borders certainly had nothing to do with a political necessity for image-correction following the destruction of the Greek healthcare system by German foreign policy, and just as little to do with plans for preferred 2017 coalition-building, or even with the insuperable resistance in Merkel’s own ranks against an immigration law and the foreseeable consequences of this resistance for employment and pension policies. This decision was entirely due to a personal, moralistic impulse of the chancellor and therefore no cabinet decision, no governmental declaration, no law and not even a written directive to the appropriate authorities was necessary.

The political constriction of German public opinion must seem even more threatening to the members of the EU, when it is demanded that they accede to it without protest. To be sure, every national consensus community tends to imagine the outside world as an extension of its inner life. But German policy combines its self-definition as European with the expectation that its smaller neighbors will emulate its bizarre backs and forths. For example, when Germany seeks “European solutions” which are German ones for everyone else. So the German-European answer to the pressure of immigration was originally expressed in the call to allow immigration “with no ceiling” and distribute the immigrants in upwardly flexible “contingents” to all member states of the EU.

Half a year later, on the other hand, it contained the originally discounted closing off of European exterior borders with the help of Turkey, in exchange for the prospect — offered by the German head of state in the name of “Europa” — the previously rejected admission of Turkey into the EU and the dropping of the visa requirement in EU member states for Turkish citizens . The cardinal principle was the ban on nations going their own way, excluding Germany, of course. As at the time of the Energiewende, Germany suspended the Dublin regulation without consulting the other European countries, and it was only because of solo actions of other states — at first moralistically condemned and then co-opted by “Europe” — that Germany managed the feat of keeping its borders unrestrictedly open and simultaneously ending the influx of immigrants

The Unity Party — Pressure to Conform

Only a German used to System Merkel does not get vertigo. In other countries, there is the devastating impression of a diminishing acceptance of capricious political and intellectual expectations by an implicitly docile German public, for whom sacrificium intellectus[3] is a duty. Besides the governmental apparatus, what has been contributing to the virtually one-party conformity pressure that maintains the German refugee discourse is the left and left-liberal milieu, which routinely supports national discipline by using the threat of relegating dissidents who cannot perceive the “chancellor’s new clothes” to the rightist, beige-to-brown [i.e., Nazi] category.

Thus intimidated, no one wanted to inquire what could have been meant, when Merkel let it be known that the refugees would “change our land” and indeed, “for the better”, which was followed a few weeks later by the euphoric declamation of her soon-to-be vice chancellor that that “our land would become more religious” through immigration.

Elsewhere, such conversion plans would at least call for a parliamentary question hour. In Germany, the subject was left to “the Right” and alternatively, anyone who insisted on the subject was considered to be a part of the Right. The same is true for the legal organization and legal basis for opening the border. And for the consequences of the government-driven immigration of “our future fellow citizens” and for their homelands. And for the puzzle of why the government does not fly the neediest out of the camps, build schools and hospitals for the others, and — as to those alleged 500,000 annually needed by the German economy (April, 2016 prognosis) — do as Canada does and use a point system to seek them out and fly them in.

Kitsch and Non-Kitsch

Even in retrospect, it is astonishing to contemplate a public discussion in which it was impossible to distinguish humanitarian obligations from economic interests and our own needs from those of the refugees, so both could be better taken care of. Cf. the detailed suggestions by George Soros(!) in a brief, astute article in the New York Review of Books. Instead, common sense is declared to be “right radical”, running the risk that rightist radicals may appear as the foremost or even the only representatives of common sense.

Large swaths of the German quality press, to say nothing of the openly rightist media, have forgotten that it is a task of political commentary to investigate the narratives produced by political machines as they relate to underlying networks of collective and particular interests, rather than acting as cheerleader for a wave of charitable enthusiasm, which we all know will not last. Instead of critical analysis, we all too often have psychologizing, obsequious reports — both pre- and post-modern — on-the-road-to-Damascus experiences of a party leader who, unlike Saul-become-Paul, is capable, ever anew as occasion demands, of doing it again, from Fukushima to Budapest to Istanbul.

It is probably futile to hope for Shakespearean meaning in lunacy or simply the ability to distinguish kitsch from non-kitsch. For instance, when the Green governor of Baden-Württemberg, Winifred Kretschmann, shares with us that before going to bed he prays for the head of the party whose coalition partner he wishes to be. Or — after the election debacle — when the “parties represented in the Bundestag” announce in concert that all is well; after all, 80% voted for “Angela Merkel’s refugee policy”. Or when the head of a democratic government announces in monarchic tones that the country whose citizens have elected her time after time could no longer be “my country” if she could not continue to show its “friendly face”.

Europa Must be Worth That to Us

Supposedly, you can become used to anything. The latest twist in German-European refugee policy seems to be that the member states allow the German head of state with the council presidents in tow to negotiate “European” treaties with whomever, without intending to feel bound by them later. That is certainly better than the spread of increased hostility against a perceived German imperialism, economic, moralistic or both. Perhaps, by anticipating it, this is preparing for the loosening of the lateral coupling of member states with the volatility of German policy.

Ultimately there may be a political constitution appropriate to the European constitution, in the framework of which the Germans could do as they wish without everyone else participating. Here too, it is imperative in the interests of neighborliness to work on a sustainable expansion of the thematic and persuasive spectrum of German political public life, although flouted by the thought prohibitions from the royal purveyors of the milk of piety and the defamations they use in their defense. Europa must be worth it to us, to undergo the risk of being excluded as “anti-European” or “National Socialist” by people who have never been out of Germany,