JLH has translated and fisked an article by one of the Gutmenschen, a journalist originally from the DDR who now resides in the Czech Republic.
So You Think You Know What Happened in Cologne?
by JLH
Since you are reading this blog, you are probably a sour and angry person of limited mental capacity and distrustful of the more illustrious sources of news and opinion. Your thoughts, when you have any, rise directly from your viscera. What you need is exposure to an elite and enlightened view of the world, to help you unscramble your untidy reactions to what happened on New Year’s Eve in Cologne and other cities in Germany and beyond.
Good news! Here is just what you need, in the form of an introspective article by a cosmopolitan journalist. Born in East Germany, he lived there for the first ca. 45 years of his life. He studied journalism in Leipzig and joined East German radio, specializing in Eastern European politics and foreign affairs. In the 1990s, after the Wall came down, he moved to what was then Czechoslovakia, and is now the Czech Republic, where he still resides and writes for Die Sächsische Zeitung (Dresden), Die Welt (Berlin), a Czech news service and the German-language newspaper in Prague.
His article in Die Sächsische Zeitung will take you by the hand through the thoughts and feelings proper to this series of events. I will provide marginal remarks.
Am I a Racist?
Our correspondent in Prague is horrified by the events in Cologne. His opinion is that everyone has to assimilate in a foreign country — Everyone!
by Hans-Jörg Schmidt
The troubles in Cologne and elsewhere on New Year’s Eve recently impelled me to pour out my fury in a long comment on Facebook. I admit, not every word was chosen carefully. It was consistent: I had imagined how it would have been if women or girls from family or my friends’ or acquaintances’ families had been among the victims that night. I don’t believe I would have accepted that easily. Although naturally I see that vigilantism can belong at best in a plot for “Scene of the Crime.” And yet, my adult daughter could have been among those molested — even my two granddaughters. What a traumatic thought. You could blow your top. Fortunately only verbally.
In my rapidly written post, I became very agitated about the police in Cologne, who repeatedly failed to control the situation. When a policeman in a newspaper interview admitted he had been afraid, I thought, I’m in the wrong movie. How can it be that, in a country of laws, the police can tuck in their tails and look away when something goes completely haywire? Don’t misunderstand me. The police have many complex tasks to perform nowadays. That makes me think of the poor behavior of countless “soccer fans” on every weekend, wherever you are in Germany. None of that is any fun. I don’t envy the police their job. Nevertheless, they are the keepers of order on whom a citizen absolutely must rely.
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