A Response to David Goodhart’s Review of Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen. By Dr. Frank Ellis

A Response to David Goodhart’s Review of Thilo Sarrazin’s Deutschland schafft sich ab: Wie wir unser Land aufs Spiel setzen (Germany Abolishes itself: How we are Putting Our Country at Risk, 2010)

© Frank Ellis 2010

David Goodhart’s review of this all important book in Prospect Magazine fails to do justice to Sarrazin’s achievement. The obvious comparison is not, as Goodhart would have us believe with Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time, it is with Charles Murray’s and Richard J. Herrnstein’s, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994). It is also quite clear that Sarrazin has carefully studied the work of Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, specifically, Richard Lynn’s Dysgenics: Genetic Deterioration in Modern Populations (1996); Eugenics: A Reassessment (2001); Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis (2006); and The Global Bell Curve: Race, IQ, and Inequality Worldwide (2008); and the two studies which Lynn co-authored with Tatu Vanhanen: IQ and the Wealth of Nations (2002); and IQ and Global Inequality (2006). It is, among other things, Sarrazin’s mastery of the secondary literature that makes Deutschland schafft sich ab so effective in demolishing the cult of multiculturalism.

The way Sarrazin was treated by Germany’s equivalent of the Guardian-reading classes underlines yet again the totalitarian impulses of those, who, without any mandate, want to impose multiculturalism on the indigenous populations of Europe. Angela Merkel’s public acknowledgement that multiculturalism has failed merely confirms what has been obvious for the last forty years all over Western Europe. Why has it taken so long for Europe’s politicians to face up to the truth? And why indeed do they hate the truth?

Goodhart claims that: ‘Nowhere in Europe is the gap between public opinion and published opinion as wide as in Germany’. This is a ridiculous claim. The gap is just as wide in Britain and not just between published opinion and public opinion. In Britain, as in Germany, politically correct activists in the broadcast media endlessly lie about the real costs and damage inflicted by multiculturalism. On issues of race, the scale and nature of black crime, multiculturalism and legal/illegal immigration the BBC and universities simply cannot be trusted. There is nothing liberal about liberalism either in Germany or in Britain. Given Germany’s National-Socialist past, the Germans have something of an excuse for the zeal with which they have pushed the United Nations ideology of multiculturalism. But for how much longer are Germans going to torment themselves about 1933-1945 and to tolerate being harassed and bullied by xenophile fanatics? Nie wieder and ich bin Deutscher und bin stolz darauf can happily coexist. It is high time that Germany’s nation-hating left woke up to this fact.

Goodhart is wrong to suggest that indigenous Germans are in any way to blame for the failure of Turks and other immigrants to integrate. Sarrazin makes it quite clear that the reason masses of immigrants from Third World slums and failing states are attracted to Germany has nothing to do with Germany’s cultural and intellectual achievements and everything to do with the fantastic levels of welfare provision available in Germany and a standard of living that would be impossible in their own countries. Without the welfare handouts these immigrants would not have come to Germany and they would not have stayed. They would have found another host.

‘The intelligence story’, to use Goodhart’s words, offers by far the most convincing explanation for the failure of Muslims to meet German standards in Germany. In the case of Britain, it explains a whole range of undesirable outcomes associated with the underclass (immigrant Muslims and blacks and indigenous whites), as demonstrated in The Bell Curve. On a global scale the low mean IQ of Sub-Saharan Africa – circa 70 – explains why so much of Africa exists in a wretched and savage condition. That Muslims tend to come from ‘poor, traditional societies’ is part of the problem, but Goodhart explains nothing by telling us this. Why are these societies poor and backward? Why is Sub-Saharan Africa poor and backward, despite its vast mineral wealth? What do unskilled Turkish and African immigrants bring to an advanced First World economy such as Germany? Germany’s left will claim that indigenous Germans are being enriched by the diversity. So what is it like for an indigenous German to go through parts of Berlin and other German cities experiencing all this life-enhancing diversity? Does he feel enriched? Sarrazin suggests otherwise: ‘A German going through these districts would feel like a foreigner in his own country’ (Deutschland schafft sich ab, p.300). I know the feeling Herr Sarrazin. Even if the Christian Democratic right refused to accept that Turkish guest workers would not go back to Turkey, as Goodhart claims, they bear no responsibility for the failure of Turks to adapt to Germany. That failure falls squarely on the Turks themselves and the nation-hating agenda of Germany’s middle-class left. Of them Goodhart notes: ‘As for the anti-national left, the idea that the exotic Turks should be forced to learn the language of the SS was equally abhorrent’. I wonder whether Germany’s home-grown nation haters would object to German immigrants in Russia being expected to learn the language of the NKVD.

Sarrazin’s arguments on IQ and the consequences of Germany’s mean IQ being lowered – a demonstrable dysgenic effect – are not provocative. They are well founded. Sarrazin offers data and explanations which the left in all Western states are too frightened to contemplate because leftists despite all the public propaganda know that all men are not created equal; that some people are more intelligent than others and that this has real-world consequences which cannot be explained by racism and other ad hoc explanations. In chapter 7 (Immigration and Integration: Expect More, Offer Less) Sarrazin, contrary to Goodhart’s assertion, does provide a comprehensive definition of the underclass in its Muslim variant and one that would be instantly recognizable in Britain. Its main features are as follows: (i). below average integration in the employment market; (ii). above average dependence on welfare and handouts; (iii).above average fertility; (iv). spatial segregation with a tendency to create parallel societies; (v). above average religious adherence with an attraction to fundamentalist Islam; (vi).above average criminality (street crime) and participation in terrorism (Deutschland schafft sich ab, p.264). Strip out the Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism and we have most of the features of the immigrant black underclass as well.

Germany is very fortunate that it has produced a man of Herr Sarrazin’s calibre. His moral courage and intellectual ability are obvious. In Britain we have no politician of comparable ability and honesty who will tell the truth about multiculturalism and its dire consequences. On these issues our own political class is cowardly and mendacious. In writing this book Sarrazin has rendered his fellow Germans a great service: and not just his fellow Germans. Deutschland schafft sich ab is also an absolute must read for all the white, indigenous populations of Europe who are being racially, culturally and physically dispossessed in their ancient homelands, who are, in other words, being consigned to oblivion.