Chancellor Merkel’s star is ascendant. Diversity is working just fine. The CDU will rule again after September’s elections. And the only flies in the multicultural ointment of the German Utopia are those vile native Germans…

Many thanks to JLH for translating this op-ed by Hans Heckel from the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung:

A Brown Wind Blows

How Merkel got on top again, how Käßmann found her way to racism, and how reality shifted in Cannes

The Week in Review, by Hans Heckel
June 3, 2017

How everything can change! Like he swift end of the “Twilight of Merkel,” that we saw coming not even a year ago. The chancellor has scaled heights which even her most mindless cheerleader could hardly have imagined.

Angela Merkel now represents the “Archimedean point of liberal democracy” around which other national chief executives fall away, drools Ulf Porschardt in Die Welt. The strong woman from Berlin, he says, is shining brighter than ever, and the “movers and shakers of the free world” are pushing and shoving among themselves for a place near her. So we Germans are puffed up with pride in our chef executive who has, so to speak, elevated us to the leading power of the Gutmenschen of the world. The view from up here on the tiny Trumps, Mays or Putins down in the rough-and-tumble feels wonderful. It is no secret how we got up here. We filtered the world through our own wishful thinking so long and so thoroughly, that it looked as we wanted it to.

In this alternate universe, conferences and German laws can control the world’s climate. Border controls are unnecessary, because the Federal Republic will improve the living conditions of a billion Africans to such an extent that the root causes of flight will disappear into thin air. “Developmental Aid” in this universe is identified as a defensive act, because drilling wells and building cookhouses in the Third World is a much better method of securing our safety (and furthermore much nicer) than actual defensive activities.

Angela “We can do it!” Merkel has completely internalized this marvelous zeitgeist. And that is why we Germans — in an access of spiritual affinity — will re-elect her in September.

In this, our squeaky-clean, filtered world, the euro is a success story, Greece is already almost healed, and radical Islamist terrorism is nothing more than a series of individual incidents, which have nothing to do… etc. The only problems arise from “the Right,” (multi-culti skeptics, climate deniers, gender doubters, euro critics, Islam denigrators or the rest of that scum) and, OK, Germans.

Germans? In general? Yeah, we didn’t know that either, until Margo Käßmann, at the Evangelical Church (EKD) Party Convention, opened our eyes. The AfD’s desire for Germans to have more children is like the “little Aryan paragraphs of the National Socialists” she thundered to the ecstatically roaring 5,000-strong audience in Berlin. How did she arrive at that interpretation? “Two German parents, four German grandparents. That is how we know where the brown wind really blows from,” explains the official ambassador of the EKD Council for the 2017 Reform Jubilee.

We are grateful to Mrs. Käßmann for this statement. We have had the feeling for a long time now, that leftist “anti-fascism” is somehow all of a piece with anti-German racism. But, indeed, the ex-chair of the EKD council has illuminated as never before the closed circuit between these two ideologies.

Anyone who wishes to evade the suspicion of having been puffed into the world by the “brown wind,” must be able to display an impeccable genealogy with a modicum of multi-cultiness. Woe to that one who only has Germans in the family tree. That is how Käßmann closed the circle from National Socialism through anti-fascism to contemporary neo-racism — to the ecstatic approval of 5,000 in the imperial capital.

But let us not be too hard on her. Käßmann was probably really bothered that the AfD especially wants more “German” children. Then, in her wild anger, she stumbled unaware into the abyss of racial policy. Prevailing dogma is that distinguishing between Germans and non-Germans calls for the maximum penalty. There can only “human beings,” whose identity or origin must be ignored. In this context, the indignation of the EKD politician is understandable. At least if we exclude unfiltered reality, which, for good reasons, has no place at church reunion days.

This ugly reality includes parents of children of foreign origin complaining that there are hardly any indigenous German children in their children’s classrooms anymore. This impedes the integration of their offspring and reduces their chances of advancement. In other words, concerned immigrants see their children threatened by an increasing absence of Germans. Some, like a Kurdish acquaintance of mine, purposely enroll their children in schools where “real” German students (in other words, per Käßmann, what was blown in by the “brown wind”) supply the linguistic “background music,” instead of leaving them in a school where immigrants dominate.

Are you piqued by the idea of confronting Margot Käßmann, with this development, to hear what the good lady might have to say? Wouldn’t that be exciting? Would she find herself pressed to find some explanation — possibly even to think about it?

Well, maybe all hope is lost. I’ll tell you what we’re in for. The “Lady Ambassador of Reform” chewed us out, because we “misuse the cares and misery of immigrant families as political mottoes.” So there!

Let’s not fool ourselves. The [Nazi] club is ready to hand, to flatten anyone who dares to pipe up about actual reality.

Even at the Cannes film festival, we could see how sturdy the bastions against the “outside world” are. The correspondent for German state television showed herself to be rather disappointed. Certainly [she said] the weather was fantastic and there was a long list of very good films. But the festive atmosphere which had always elevated the film festival to an intoxicating experience, was hardly detectable this time. In 2017, everything was militarily screened off; heavily armed security forces everywhere; barriers against the possibility of attack by truck; and checkpoints, checkpoints, checkpoints. The film festival was clouded by the fear of a radical Islamic attack that would leave many dead, as in Nice and Berlin and just recently, in Manchester.

Cannes, of course, is known for the fact that there is no superficial cinematic trash here, but serious, artistic, high-quality and especially politically critical films. One such film — albeit in a very contemporary German way — was the German entry, Out Of Nothing, by the celebrated Berlin director, Fatih Akin.

While entire battalions were drawn up outside against the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, Out Of Nothing lunged at that small area which fully filtered merkeltruth has identified as the source of ubiquitous danger for everyone: Nazi terrorism.

This really almost calls for a frivolous kind of admiration. How did Akin and his colleagues even manage to slip through the powerful anti-terrorism barriers of Cannes without the slightest suspicion that their own focus could perhaps be ever so slightly askew? In the face of all this, might a certain feeling of desperation take hold of a person: They will not learn, no matter how reality slaps them in the face. But perhaps they just need a little more time. Who knows?