The Quiet German: The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel

[Razgovory]

How is it she is so popular.

[jimmy olsen]

Germans indulging in personality cults? Shocking!

[Razgovory]

She strikes me as almost the opposite of a personality cult.  A dull but gifted bureaucrat.

[Capetan Mihali]

Interesting article, I didn't know much of her life story before this. Vhat do our German posters think?

Tim just posted a 10,454 word article, without highlighting any of it for us, and just a short comment including a lame german accent.

I'm laughing to keep from crying.

[jimmy olsen]

Interesting article, I didn't know much of her life story before this. Vhat do our German posters think?

Tim just posted a 10,454 word article, without highlighting any of it for us, and just a short comment including a lame german accent.

I'm laughing to keep from crying.

There ist nothink wrong vith my accent! 

[Martinus]

Since this is now a German politics thread:

Merkel allies want immigrants to speak German at home
BERLIN Sun Dec 7, 2014 11:26am GMT

(Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian allies have caused outrage by suggesting immigrant families that want to remain in the country should be obliged to speak German at home.

The Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party to Merkel's conservatives and a partner in her coalition government in Berlin, made the proposal in a draft policy paper that is due to be approved by CSU leaders on Monday.

In the paper, the party says: "People who want to remain here on a permanent basis should be obliged to speak German in public and within the family."

The proposal comes amid a sharp rise in immigration levels to Germany, driven by arrivals from eastern European Union members such as Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as a surge in asylum seekers fleeing the war in Syria.

Back in October, leading Munich-based newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung, reported that Bavaria could be forced to use tents from its annual Oktoberfest beer festival to house the large number of refugees.

Some members of the CSU are worried the rise in immigrants will lead traditional supporters of the party to flee to the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a new party which preaches a tough line on immigration. The CSU was the driving force behind a new law earlier this year that clamps down on immigrants who abuse Germany's generous social welfare system.

The CSU proposal on speaking German in the home was swiftly denounced by the other parties in Merkel's government, including a senior official from the chancellor's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

"It is not the business of politicians whether I speak Latin, Klingon or Hessian at home," Peter Tauber, general secretary of the CDU, said on Twitter.

Yasmin Fahimi, Tauber's counterpart in the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Merkel, called the proposal "totally absurd".

"The state has no role to play in deciding what language people speak within the walls of their own home," Fahimi told German newspaper Bild.

Because of its ageing population and low birth rate, Germany desperately needs more immigrants to ward off a demographic crisis that poses a threat to the economy and state pension and healthcare systems. But many Germans are uncomfortable with the idea that their country is turning into a "melting pot" for foreigners seeking better jobs and lives.

(Reporting by Noah Barkin; Editing by Mark Potter)

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/07/uk-germany-immigration-idUKKBN0JL0C620141207

Wow. Trust Germans to take your run-of-the-mill, garden variety racism and xenophobia, and take it beyond the pale.

[garbon]

That's what you consider "beyond the pale"? Not that they have any business doing that, but that seems rather tame as far as fiery rhetoric goes.

[Sheilbh]

That's what you consider "beyond the pale"? Not that they have any business doing that, but that seems rather tame as far as fiery rhetoric goes.

The rhetoric's tame but the legal idea's properly insane

[Martinus]

That's what you consider "beyond the pale"? Not that they have any business doing that, but that seems rather tame as far as fiery rhetoric goes.

I think telling people what language they must speak to each other, at home, is as illiberal and authoritarian as it comes, when it comes to language policies. Even the most rabid Quebecois do not go so far.

Sure, if your point is that "it is tamer than Holocaust", I guess you are right, but then everything probably is.

[garbon]

It might be that I'm not as histrionic as you.

Besides, unless they were to install recorders in every domicile, it would never even be feasible to police.

[Martinus]

It might be that I'm not as histrionic as you.

Besides, unless they were to install recorders in every domicile, it would never even be feasible to police.

Only because it is not feasible to enforce does not mean it is any less insane.

[garbon]

Insane statements are a part of politics. Hardly beyond the pale.

[Admiral Yi]

It's a retarded proposal.

[Syt]

It's a retarded proposal.

And it got slammed/ridiculed by all serious politicians.

You want outrage, look at  PEGIDA, or "Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes " (patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of Western Civilization). The protested in the thousands (actually reaching 10,000 in Dresden, where you have 0.7% Muslims, one of the lowest rates in Germany). Their organizer, with a checkered criminal record himself (while calling for deportation of criminal foreigners; he also called for the execution of a Green politician on Facebook) advises participants to not speak to journalists, because they twist their words, calls for dialogue with political parties and politicians (but refuses to talk to them) and rages against the lack of freedom of speech (which the group exercises with their protests). They're attracting a following from lower middle classes and below, and obviously from neo nazis (while trying to distance themselves from them) who have a diffuse fear of Islamization ("Christmas markets will be called Winter markets! The Dresden Christstollen (pastry) will have to be renamed!").

[Capetan Mihali]

Fits right into Sheilbh's "the new right-nationalist victimhood" theory, doesn't it?