Spring Fundraiser 2013, Day 5

The wise statesmen of the United Nations have taken a short break from their condemnation of Israel — which is normally a full-time job for them — to fire potshots at Thilo Sarrazin for his “racism”.

Mr. Sarrazin, as you will recall, got himself into hot water back in 2010 by writing a book (Deutschland schafft sich ab or “Germany abolishes itself”) in which he criticized Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration. Mr. Sarrazin was denounced by the political class for his heresy, called a “Nazi”, and eventually forced to resign from the board of the Bundesbank.

“But, Baron,” you say, “You’re supposed to be begging for money right now — this is your fundraiser! What does Thilo Sarrazin have to do with it?”

Hang on, I’m getting to that.

The theme of this quarter’s fundraiser is “putting our heads over the parapet”, and if anyone has stuck his head up above the sandbags, it’s Thilo Sarrazin.

He isn’t “one of us” — he’s not a conservative, but rather a Social Democrat, and is presumably loath to find himself in some of the company he is forced to keep nowadays. He is simply an intelligent fellow who speaks his mind, saying, among other things, that — horrors! — importing all those immigrants has lowered the average IQ in Germany. This is a simple fact, and anyone can verify it using statistical data collected by the German government. But facts like this must not be publicly discussed, and Thilo Sarrazin had to be disciplined for his impertinence.

The punishment administered to him by polite society, however, was apparently not enough for the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations, which has now demanded that Germany do something about Mr. Sarrazin’s dreadful “racism”. According to Der Spiegel:

Battling Racism: UN Body Reprimands Germany Over Sarrazin Comments

When former Berlin politician Thilo Sarrazin made critical remarks about Muslim immigrants four years ago, many found them offensive, though prosecutors rejected complaints, citing free speech laws. A UN committee disagrees, however, and has accused Germany of violating an anti-racism convention.

A United Nations committee has reprimanded Germany in strong language, saying that the country had violated an international anti-racism convention.

At issue are controversial statements made in 2009 by Thilo Sarrazin, a former finance senator for the city-state of Berlin, about Turks and Arabs, who he said sponged off the state and were incapable of integrating, among other things. But a complaint submitted to public prosecutors in Berlin was rejected on grounds that the comments were permissible under Germany’s freedom of expression law. An appeal to the decision was rejected as well.

According to the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), however, this constituted a violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, because it failed to conduct an “effective investigation” into the matter.

“This is a historic decision,” said the TBB Turkish Union, the cultural organization that submitted the case to the committee, in a statement on Thursday. “CERD has determined that Mr. Sarrazin’s comments touch on a feeling of racist superiority or racial hatred and contain elements of incitement to racial discrimination.”

CERD also issued an ultimatum to Germany, giving the country 90 days to inform the committee of the measures it will take to address the committee’s opinion. It also recommended that the country “review its policies and procedures in cases of alleged racial discrimination” and widely distribute this information to prosecutors and judicial bodies. [emphasis added]

Notice what happened here: a principled decision by German jurisprudence acknowledged that Thilo Sarrazin was free to say what he said, and his civil liberties were then reaffirmed by a higher court.

But that wasn’t good enough for the United Nations.

The U.N. does a lot more than trick-or-treat for UNICEF these days. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) effectively controls decisions made by the General Assembly, and it has also packed most of the commissions, committees, task forces, and all those other busy-bee talk shops in Turtle Bay and Geneva.

As a result, one of the primary tasks the Modern Multicultural UN has set itself is to enforce the sharia-based prohibition on the defamation of Islam. Anything that offends Turks by extension also defames Islam, which is why Thilo Sarrazin has to answer to CERD for his crimes.

Do the decisions of UN bodies trump national constitutions?

CERD obviously has no inherent ability to enforce its “ultimatum”. But will the German government cave, and accommodate it anyway? That is the $64,000 question.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Thilo Sarrazin. I may be cynical, but I think that the Berlin will do whatever is politically expedient. If necessary, other prosecutors and other judges can be found to tackle the problem. A new law may even be required.

If you live in a country that is relatively respectful of the right to free speech — and there are fewer of them than there used to be — I wouldn’t count on my government protecting me from the UN, if I were you. All of our governments have signed treaties that oblige them to respect official decisions of the United Nations, and national governments may not find it in their interest to resist the mandarins of the UN, no matter how illiberal and repressive their diktats are.

Places like Switzerland and Denmark have generally been more respectful of free expression than, say, Sweden or Belgium. But how long will that last? When the UN jackboot kicks in the door, will those traditions be swept away?

We’ll see.

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