“We Must Protect Our Own Population”

JLH has translated an interview with Thilo Sarrazin that was published in Germany last month. The translator includes this introductory note:

Thilo Sarrazin (SPD) is a former member of the executive board of the Bundesbank, previously senator of finance for Berlin, and was removed from all these affiliations after publication of his book Deutschland schafft sich ab (Germany Is Abolishing Itself), which was followed by Europa braucht den Euro nicht (Europe Does Not Need The Euro).

He may be less than well informed about the US-Mexican border, but he is admirably steadfast in concentrating on the good of his own people, and not being distracted by the bleeding heart-arguments from the reporters.

The translated interview from Die Zeit:

Thilo Sarrazin: “You Are Welcome to Ask Me What I Would Do if I Were Head of Frontex”[1]

Interview with Thilo Sarrazin by Tina Hildebrandt and Heinrich Wefing

September 13, 2015

Die Zeit: Mr. Sarrazin, what thoughts go through your mind when you see pictures of refugees in Europe?

Thilo Sarrazin: I do not see these pictures because I watch absolutely no news. The image of a person in dire straits is always bad — whether in Cambodia or on a Sooth Sea Island. But I try not to be influenced by coincidental media images.

Die Zeit: The difference between a person in need in Cambodia and a person in Budapest, Vienna or Munich is that he is closer to us and we can do something for him. Does that imply responsibility?

Thilo Sarrazin: People arriving in Vienna now are not in need, but in security. Life and limb are not threatened. They are fed and treated medically.

Die Zeit: They come to Germany to be safe, because before they were in distress.

Thilo Sarrazin: If they came by way of the Balkans, they started out in secure northern Iraq or in secure Turkey. They are already out of the dangers of war. If they decide to go to Germany, there are other reasons. It is just more pleasant to be a refugee in Hannover than in Erbil.

Die Zeit: Do you fear the immigration of these people?

Thilo Sarrazin: Everything I wrote in Germany Abolishes Itself has not only been confirmed, but is far worse.

Die Zeit: For example?

Thilo Sarrazin: The [indigenous] birth rate continues to fall.[2]

Die Zeit: The most recent figures contradict that.

Thilo Sarrazin: Those are small fluctuations in the trend — insignificant. The radicalization of Islam proceeds, the widening gap in educational achievement, the transformation of city districts — all continue unabated. All of that will be amplified by immigration. So I am naturally concerned.

Die Zeit: If the experience with integration in Germany is as disastrous as you say, how do you explain the population’s overwhelming readiness to help?

Thilo Sarrazin: First of all, it is good that people help other people. But the question of readiness to help must be separated from the question of what is right for our state and our society in the long run.

Die Zeit: What would be right in the long run?

Thilo Sarrazin: No country in the world can solve the problems of another country. That must come from the country itself.

Die Zeit: And if it does not succeed, do we leave the people to their misery?

Thilo Sarrazin: We must protect our own population and our social model from external threat. That includes an excess of unregulated, culturally alien immigration. And as for the rest, countries where things are going badly have the obligation to correct things themselves. In1960, Singapore was poorer than Ghana — both were British colonies at that time. And look at where Singapore is today, and where Ghana is. Singapore owes that to no external power, but only to itself.

Die Zeit: There could be long arguments about that and about the causes of fleeing one’s country. But what should we do about the people who are already here? We are expecting 800,000, possibly a million immigrants this year alone.

Thilo Sarrazin: I was not speaking of doing away with the causes of flight from other countries — we cannot do that. I was speaking of how we protect ourselves from the consequences of conditions in other countries. That must come first.

Die Zeit: But those who have been here for a long time! We must concern ourselves with them, now.

Thilo Sarrazin: Please, allow me to look at that differently, It is a scandal of political incompetence and fantasy that the political establishment — thirty years after the Schengen Agreement — does not understand that it is only possible to take down internal border controls if the external border can be controlled effectively. And that is technically absolutely possible.

Die Zeit: What then? Do you want fences and naval units everywhere against refugee boats?

Thilo Sarrazin: Walls and fences are not bad at all if you want to control borders. The Chinese empire developed its culture behind a 10,000 meter long wall which lasted 1800 years. The Roman empire successfully protected itself for 400 years against immigrants from the wilder regions using their limes.[3] All over the world, civilizations and cultures that were materially advanced have protected themselves against unregulated immigration

Die Zeit: Except for perhaps North Korea, there are no border controls that function,

Thilo Sarrazin: But of course, no one goes to China if China does not want them to.

Die Zeit: Isn’t it just the opposite — no one wants to go to China, and that is why no one goes? As the mightiest military power, the USA can’t manage to control its border with Mexico.

Thilo Sarrazin: The Americans control most unwanted immigration. At any rate the Americans do not have our quantitative problems. Africa, which has 1.2 billion people now and will have 4.4 billion by year 2100, is not a monkey on their back.

Notes:

1.   Frontex = Management of European External Borders
2.   A detailed statistical article in Der Spiegel of October 27, 2013 is cited.
3.   A marked, walled or fortified border.
 

13 thoughts on ““We Must Protect Our Own Population”

  1. There’s a second page to this interview on Die Zeit’s webpage that the translator did not get to…

  2. I would disagree with the following statement by Mr Sarrzin: “I was not speaking of doing away with the causes of flight from other countries — we cannot do that.”

    Germany, as a big and strong country could do (or could have done) something. For example, it could stop any assistance whatsoever to so-called “democratic oppositions” in Muslim countries and support their secular dictators who keep a lid on Islamic terrorism. Right now it could and ought to do all in its power to support Bashar Assad. It could and ought to stop hostile gestures towards Putin over what he is doing in Syria.

    It also could do something in support of Christians, Yazidis and other persecuted minorities in Muslim lands. It could also give preferential treatment to non-Muslim refugees from those lands.

    The same is true of all European countries and the EU as a whole. If they had not supported the pernicious “Arab spring”, if they had refused to co-operate with the US in its disastrous war against Iraq, if they had not been instrumental in the overthrow of Qaddafi, if they had from the very start refused any aid to soi-disant democratic militants in Syria and helped Assad to get rid of them, if they had strongly condemned Saudi Arabia’s aggression in Yemen, the present migrant invasion might have been prevented. For Iraq, Libya and Syria were quite livable countries with not so bad living standards before the West started bombing them into democracy. Libya also served as a shield against sub-Saharan migration.

    Europe is reaping what it has sown.

    • Bravo, Anton! Dead right. Maddening that the west keeps talking of islam and democracy in the same breath, when they are polar opposites.

    • Totally agree. Gadaffi even warned Europe that they’d be overrun with black africans should they get rid of him. Libya kept them out.

      This is the borderless world that these imbeciles want to create. All they can see is their own peer group made up of educated, hardworking and considerate people.
      If only everyone had the chance they did then everyone would be like them- it’s a very arrogant, egotistical, ethnocentric way of looking at things.
      I recall one of the ISIS fighters came from a good background and was studying to be a doctor in Cairo; not everyone has the same desire to be a latte sipping sophisticate.
      The rationale of the EU polity is akin to a sci fi trope. Robots built to protect humanity realise that humans are our own worst enemy so humanity must be wiped out. We’ll save Europe by destroying any concept of Europe so there is nothing to fight over.

    • ” Europe is reaping what it has sown.”

      Elites/traitors who are inviting these invaders are reaping huge salaries. It is always the common people who will pay the high price.
      Elites do not live where invaders live. They don’t deal with them and their feces and rags. Traitors have their own isolated lives and body guards. They have the power to destroy, common people want to build but have no authority ergo power. They are sheep under elites’ knife.

      “We Must Protect Our Own Population”

      That’s the most difficult things for European mind/brain: Elites “have mush for brain”
      Just Traitors seem not to know what’s reasonable and logical. Every perverted idea and concept seems to them logical. No faith no conscience no honor. And they are being voted into office again and again.

  3. Sarrazin is right that a government’s first duty is to protect its own people and social model. European governments have failed to do this, and are continuing to fail. They have thus broken the social contract between them and their employers, the tax-payers.

  4. “The Chinese empire developed its culture behind a 10,000 meter long wall…”

    Should this not be kilometres? 10,000 meters would not be a very long wall!

    But yes – come to think of it, walls are used in many aspects of life. At home, to protect gardens. Even the office where I work has a fence around it… why didn’t they think to be “open and tolerant”?

    And back in the days when I was on my computer 24/7, playing (among other games) Age of Empires II, I would build a wall across the most suitable location (short patch of land, around minerals etc), to prevent enemy attacks… As long as I had enough stone to build the wall, it usually did it’s job – and I could safely build an army behind it, to go on the attack when ready to do so. Incidentally, my army was usually the Byzantines – and my opponents, more often than not, Saracens!

  5. Sarrazin is correct about the US-Mexico border, not uninformed. The US has the tools and resources to control/stop *unwanted* illegal immigration (reference Minnesota and the self-inflicted Somali wound). The problem that we have is the perceived political weight of the Hispanic vote, trade agreements with Mexico just looking to kick all their illegal immigrants north, and the citizen’s guilt associated with necessarily rending thousands of families apart. Therefore there is the perpetual and obstinate unwillingness of any administration to build any kind of lime, so to speak.
    From that point liberal, immoral stupidity shuffles the dregs of our illegal civilisation (who are in large proportion children) around to high school gyms other “refugee” centers, sanctuary cities, etc.

    This is not an uncontrollable situation. Every rectification is ugly and uncomfortable.

    • There was no problem in earlier times with mass Mexican immigration because the Mexicans knew it wouldn’t be tolerated. Day Labourers came and went home again.
      Same with the situation in Europe. No one bothered before in such large numbers because they knew they wouldn’t be accepted. Now European navies pick these people up just off the shores of North Africa and Turkey, the “refugees” barely have to brave the Mediterranean anymore.

  6. ” population’s overwhelming readiness to help?”

    How did that journalist justify this question? He didn’t have to and that’s just the problem. Cue a dramatic but staged picture of a drowned toddler and media acts as the guardians for the bleeding-heart brigade.

    The folly of it all. I’m glad that people willing and able to speak up for the disfranchised population.

  7. “Die Zeit: Except for perhaps North Korea, there are no border controls that function”

    Can journalists on Germany’s mainstream dailies really be this stupid? Has nobody on Die Zeit been to Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India .. or just about any other country outside the west?

  8. The stupid “leading” questions of the two interviewers disclosing their partisan position on the issues under discussion does not surprise me. What does surprise me is their ignorance disclosed tangentially: they state that nobody from North Korea wants to go to China??? The numbers of North Koreans trying to escape to China is huge, many a killed doing so, many more imprisoned for trying and many hundreds of thousands have made it over the years. The society and economy of eastern Manchuria has been altered by this phenomenon, yet these ignoramuses from Die Welt are not only completely unaware of it, they blithely assert the opposite in an attempt to trip Sarrazin up! Note that he disregards their assertion.

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