Gregory Hood, American Renaissance, January 1, 2016

Our White Renegade award goes each year to the white person who could have been a champion for his people, but instead did the most harm to white interests. The 2013 recipient was Rand Paul; 2014 was Bill Gates. This is our third annual award, and our first to a woman. Angela “The Iron Frau” Merkel this year distinguished herself in her willingness to submerge her people in a wave of unassimilable Muslim “migrants,” and for that, we name her White Renegade of 2015.

It turns out Enoch Powell was wrong. It seems that the supreme function of statesmanship, rather than providing against preventable evils, is to provoke them.

This is what this year’s honoree, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, has done. And no political leader has been so widely celebrated by the mainstream press and the global elite. She is Time and AFP’s Person of the Year, the Economist’s “indispensable European,” and “Mother” Merkel to a million of Syrian “refugees” and to the journalists who shill for them. She exemplifies the great dream of the post-European ruling class of the West: a political figure beyond politics, a national leader indifferent to nation, a moral visionary who defends the establishment. And just as medieval aristocrats could count on the Church to sanctify their power, so can Merkel count on today’s secular sermonizers to bless her efforts to turn Europe into a cheap-labor playground of bankers and merchants ruling over an Islamic underclass.

Mrs. Merkel began the year by ruling out debt relief for Greece, saying, “There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors; banks have already slashed billions from Greece’s debt.” Her insistence that Greece essentially cede its freedom over fiscal policy in order to get a bailout and stay in the Eurozone led to catastrophic consequences. Unemployment in the Hellenic Republic is at about 24 percent, and a shocking 39 percent among people ages 25 to 34 with a college degree.

Of course, Greece is not without responsibility–even the main responsibility–for the crisis. But Mrs. Merkel’s primary goal seems to have been to protect German banks from the consequences of their own reckless lending. She hasn’t shown much sympathy for suffering Greeks.

Thus, the transformation from bankers’ enforcer to paragon of altruism has to be regarded with suspicion. And one can’t help but suspect Merkel had motives beyond moral signaling when she invited an unlimited number of Muslim immigrants into the Fatherland. When the crisis arrived on her doorstep, it was an opportunity to increase the power of the European Union over its member states.

In a sense, she was right to demand a common European response to the crisis, because Europe helped cause the crisis. The decision by European (and American) leaders to oppose Bashar al-Assad and to destroy the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya breached Europe’s outer protections and unleashed swarms of “migrants.” Greece, Italy, Macedonia, and other nations have been unwilling or unable to control their borders.

But the threat was always a preventable evil. The continent is under perpetual demographic siege from Third World nations that can’t compete economically and want to export their surplus population. If there was ever a time for Europe to unite in the face of a common threat and assert its right to survive as a distinct cultural entity, it was now. It could have been Mrs. Merkel’s finest hour.

Instead, she suspended Europe’s own rules on processing refugees in the first country of arrival and welcomed newcomers directly into Germany–as many as would like to come. Just as Barack Obama’s unilateral amnesty in the United States unleashed an unending wave of “refugees” seeking to escape from their own countries, Mrs. Merkel’s announcement triggered an unlimited crisis. According to the United Nations, an estimated one million refugees will have entered Europe by year’s end, and the numbers are likely to increase next year.

Instead of solving this problem by committing to a common European border defense, Mrs. Merkel granted the desires of “migrants” to participate in the German welfare system. This created a powerful incentive for EU member-states to pass along their migrants to Germany rather than detain them or send them back. She betrayed her civilization by massively increasing the scope of the invasion, all but ensuring the influx would spiral out of control.

Mrs. Merkel also tried to use the refugee crisis as a weapon against the independence of European member-states. She has called for compulsory and permanent refugee quotas for EU countries, even though it was her policies that prompted so many to come. She wants more EU authority over border control and perhaps even a common levy to pay for it. Needless to say, centralized EU border control would not create a perimeter against migration, but would ensure that no nation was allowed to escape demographic destruction.

Mrs. Merkel actually warned that closing national borders would lead to war in the Balkans. She lectured Eastern Europeans that “fences don’t work,” and invoked the memory of the Iron Curtain, seemingly oblivious to the differences between fences that keep people out and those that keep people in. Her plan for “refugee quotas” was an attempt to force nations such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia to accept unwanted people as part of the price for staying in the EU. As this is written, Germany is exploring legal action to force Eastern European nations to accept unwanted refugees.

Mrs. Merkel is not known as a forceful personality or an ideologue, but she has been strangely impassioned about the moral necessity of her policy. She has said that the question of accepting Muslims is “not negotiable.” She has framed the response to the refugee crisis as something “which can make us proud of our country,” implying Germans had nothing to be proud of before. Indeed, Mrs. Merkel, who was once captured on video showing disgust at the sight of a German flag during a campaign rally, bragged that the refugee influx “will occupy and change” Germany. She has repeatedly assured Germans that “we can do it.”

But why does she think Germany should take on this burden? Here we see the combination of two powerful forces, both working against the survival of the German people.

The first is the post-German stance of Mrs. Merkel and the European political class. Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union is ostensibly a center-Right party but under her it has become a kind of absence of politics. Merkeln, the new verb “to Merkel,” was a joke among German young people meaning to do nothing, or to fail to make decisions. Mrs. Merkel’s entire political approach has been reactive, with notable flip-flops on key policies. Indeed, only months before she became “Mama” Merkel, the Chancellor was savaged by the media for making a Palestinian girl cry after telling her she could not prevent her deportation from Germany.

But Mrs. Merkel has been consistent about centralizing the European Union and guarding against nationalism. And here, she is protecting what the corporate leaders of Germany see as their interest. Some bureaucrats and businessmen have even convinced themselves that “refugees” are just what the economy needs to solve a “labor shortage,” even though experts have determined that they are essentially unemployable. In the eyes of the economic and political elite, the refugee crisis is a problem only if it endangers the European project of the free movement of goods and peoples.

This meshes nicely with the second factor, the “Anti-German” national identity of modern Germany. To be German, in the eyes of official society, is to be constantly on trial for the actions of your forebears. It’s not unusual to walk through university towns and see stickers proclaiming, “Death to Germany”–put up by Germans. The “Anti-German” movement features demonstrations in support of the bombing of Dresden and open calls to abolish the nation. Not surprisingly, it supports refugees because mass migration is bad for the country.

But the “Anti-Germans” are simply the most extreme manifestation of the official ideology. The German center-Right does not make even the implicit appeals to white identity common in America or France, partially because of what Bloomberg News called a “three-pronged attack from government, civil society, and the media” against anti-immigration sentiment. Mrs. Merkel herself is highly sensitive to anything that smacks of the “far right,” and a huge number of ordinary Germans are eager to help the resettlement process, or at least to be seen as helping in the effort to “atone for historical crimes.” Indeed, although the latest polls show that 57 percent of Germans oppose the open-door-to-migrants policy, a substantial 42 percent support it.

Unlike the “Anti-Germans,” Mrs. Merkel opposes cultural segregation and parallel societies. However, she has unlimited faith in the ability of non-white Muslims to assimilate to European society, saying “religion” and “skin color” should not matter.

On December 31, 2015, Mrs. Merkel devoted her televised New Year’s address–which was to be posted online with Arabic subtitles–to the refugee crisis. She conceded that integrating over a million newcomers would take “time, effort and money,” and she’s right. Germany’s 16 states, many already struggling to balance their budgets, expected to spend $18.5 billion on migrants in 2016, and that figure was based on projected arrivals of only 800,000. But she assured her people that Germany had the economic power needed to meet the crisis.

The chancellor also had a warning for anyone who disagrees with her policy: “It is important not to follow those who, with coldness or even hate in their hearts, want to claim Germanness solely for themselves and exclude others.” She looked forward to the challenge of turning Muslims into Germans, concluding that “next year is about one thing in particular: our cohesion.”

But if the German past is a source of shame and if ethnicity and religion are not sufficient to define a people, what is the focus of cohesion? To what should immigrants assimilate? The answer seems to be to the economy. Mrs. Merkel, who is childless, seems to think Middle-Easterners and Africans are the solution to Germany’s aging population and low birthrate. Since discussions of racial reality and cultural difference are all but illegal in Germany, she may well believe what she is saying.

But knowing Mrs. Merkel’s short-term approach to politics, it’s doubtful she has ever had any real plans. The refugee crisis was a way for her to burnish her image, reinvent Germany as a “humanitarian superpower” like Sweden, and consolidate power in the European Union. She has not entirely succeeded.

For the first time in the 10 years since she took office, Mrs. Merkel’s own political base is threatened, as major cracks are forming in her coalition. She may have lost control over her policy, since members of her own party are now forcing her to consider a quota system for refugees. As nations such as Hungary and Slovakia hurry to build border fences, border controls may even be introduced within the Bundesrepublik itself: The interior minister of Bavaria is calling for the region to retake control over the migrant flows in its territory.

Mrs. Merkel has also unleashed powerful forces on both the Left and Right. Now that she has established asylum as a sign of Germany’s moral rehabilitation, the Left sees any restrictions as virtually treasonous. And the German “far right” is hardly idle. Refugee centers keep going up in flames, and the 800 reported crimes against immigrants recorded in 2015 were four times the figure for 2014. What is more, 70 percent of the perpetrators were unknown to the police. This is important because Germany operates a highly intrusive surveillance system against even peaceful “far right” activity, and is constantly recruiting new activists as informants. The refugee crisis has given rise to a totally new, unaffiliated–and violent–resistance movement.

Mrs. Merkel also can claim responsibility for fueling the growth of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party, which has recovered from infighting to become the third largest party in the country according to some polls. Needless to say, the fanatical German Left is fulfilling its traditional role as the street soldiers of the establishment by making it hard for the party to put on demonstrations, and the German government rushed to pass a law that changed campaign finance regulations so as to cut off much of its funding.

Perhaps the most encouraging consequence of the mass migration has been the reawakening of the PEGIDA movement, which had been dormant following a series of PR blunders and leadership resignations. By the fall, thousands of Germans were again taking to the streets to protest Islamization.

The refugee crisis has given real momentum to the German Right, but unless change comes swiftly, it may be too late for Germany. From the indulgence of Sweden to the assimilationist efforts of France, European nations have taken a variety of approaches in their shared determination to make a multiracial society work. All have failed. Indeed, Mrs. Merkel herself had declared “multiculturalism has utterly failed” in 2010, and the only thing that has changed between then and now is the increased risk of terrorism from followers of the Islamic caliphate.

Mrs. Merkel grew up in East Germany and participated in Communist Party activities as a young woman. Occasionally there are mutterings that she is somehow dedicated to “destroying” Germany or is fulfilling some long-term scheme. This is unlikely. She is heaping up the funeral pyre for her own country for the most utterly banal reasons. Her belief that anyone can adapt to the European way of life, that national identity is an obstacle to be overcome, and that everyone is fundamentally the same are the common wisdom of educated Westerners. The profound tragedy of our times is that perfectly ordinary and well-meaning people are hastening the destruction of their own societies.

So what is to be done about the refugee crisis? The cliché answer is to combat the “root causes of migration.” But the root cause of migration isn’t civil war or “climate change.” It’s inequality–of culture, religion, and ultimately, race. Less developed peoples will always want to “secure a better life” in the developed world. The only choice for developed societies is to resist demographic incursion or surrender. Disguising surrender as an act of moral virtue does not change the final result.

Mrs. Merkel is not a stupid woman, or, up until this point, an incompetent leader (by modern standards). But even a brilliant person will make foolish decisions if they deliberately refuse to consider certain information. The catastrophe unfolding in Germany and throughout most of Europe is the result of trying to wish away reality. And just as the Soviet Union collapsed because the markets don’t obey some bureaucrat’s decree, so will the current system collapse because human beings don’t act in accord with a liberal college student’s feelings. People are different. People aren’t equal. Race is real and has consequences–a truth as stark and immutable as death itself.

Unfortunately, death may be Mrs. Merkel’s legacy. She may have shown the End of History will itself end, as the Last Man (and Woman) invite catastrophe rather than secure Europe as a postmodern paradise. The Islamic incursion is an existential threat not just to Western Civilization, but to the Eurocrats’ vision of a cultureless continent-wide shopping mall. The status quo cannot last.

There is no guarantee the white race will survive this transition. Whites could submit to a new order rather than fight for self-determination. The long-term demographic consequences to Germany of this wave of refugees could be fatal. Mrs. Merkel may accomplish what the Thirty Years War, the Red Army, and Henry Morgenthau could not, and destroy the Fatherland once and for all.

If there was ever a time for Europeans to unite against a common threat, it is now. This invasion should be the catalyst for Western Man finally to cast aside the disputes and short-sightedness that have brought us to the brink of disaster. Unfortunately, Mrs. Merkel has transformed the main institution of ostensible European unity–the European Union–into the most dangerous weapon in the hands of our opponents. If whites survive, it will be thanks to the bravery of independent national leaders such as those in Hungary, Poland, and other Eastern European countries still fighting to preserve their freedom from Brussels. Even the refugee crisis has become, in the end, yet another intra-European struggle, yet another sickening brothers’ war.

For that reason, more than any other, Angela Merkel is White Renegade of the Year.