Germany and the Paris Riots

A recent survey of regular readers of this blog found that 50% of them felt recent postings demonstrated a strong pro-German sentiment, bordering perhaps on Germanophilism. That is to say, my wife thinks I've gone a little soft on the Germans. (The other reader, fourteen year old Mike Dennis of Ashtabula, Ohio, is, unfortunately, still under the impression that this is a porn site. His only response to my survey was to complain that I won't give him the password to check out the "naked German babes." Mike, stop harassing me, or I'm going email your mother.)

So, I thought tonight, I'd let loose a little bilious grumbling about the Germans.

First, Berlin restaurants suck. It's almost impossible to find a good meal in this town for a decent price, and when you do find one, the place is likely to screw up everything the next time you come. The Berliners lack reverence for food, so there's really no point in restaurants getting into a sweat over "little things" like flavor or freshness. The immigrants to this city quickly learn about the natives' indifference and become just as slovenly in no time.

Secondly, the German response to the Paris riots has been mostly weird and obnoxious. On the one hand, there is a slight irrepressible touch of pleasure at seeing the French screw up. I gather this comes from something in the cultural bloodstream here. The Berliners still haven't gotten over Napoleon primping around Unter den Linden with his hand in his tunic, turning up his nose like Alice Waters at a Dönerkebab stand.

At the same time, there is palpable anxiety that similar riots could happen here.

How could riots happen here? Well, the logic goes, riots are caused by Muslims. Germany has lots of Muslims. Germany could have riots. There's very little informed discussion of France's riotiting youths -- and whether in fact Islam has anything to do with their anger. And there's very little informed discussion of Germany's Muslims -- who are predominantly Turkish and moderate.

One big problem is that German journalists rarely feel the need to engage in research or, god forbid, reporting. The papers are filled with airy speculation about "Arabia in France." This follows by only a couple months waves of articles on angry Pakistanis in England. Reporters make a point of quoting a few angry teenagers, but you never get the sense that they've whiled around the immigrant neighborhoods to get a feel for everyday life. It's the same kind of superficial in-and-out reporting that leads to the awful, stereotype-strewn reports on the USA, which then lead hyperventilating American reactionaries to accuse Germans of anti-Americanism.

Worse than the journalists on the topic of the Paris riots, however, are the politicians. Leaders of the German Conservative Party (CDU) are trying to take advantage of the riots to advocate their own dubious ideas about forcing the "integration" of Muslim youth into German society. They propogate the myth that Turkish migrants are systematically not learning German, while imbibing extremist ideas in the mosques. A leader of the CDU's parliamentary fraction, Wolfgang Bosbach, just said that it's time for "us" to "look and listen more carefully to what's being said behind closed doors at the mosques."

No evidence offered for this particular bout of paranoia. Just a feeling, apparently. Of course he might have read something in the paper.