►http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/29/opinion/29Habermas.html?pagewanted=all
“The real cause for concern is that, as the Sarrazin and Wulff incidents show, cool-headed politicians are discovering that they can divert the social anxieties of their voters into ethnic aggression against still weaker social groups.”
“To be sure, the bad habit of stirring up political prejudices is a phenomenon reaching far beyond Germany. In Germany, at least, our government doesn’t, as in the Netherlands, have to rely on the support of a right-wing populist like Geert Wilders. Unlike Switzerland, we don’t have a ban on building minarets. And the comparative European survey data on hostility toward immigrants do not show extreme numbers for Germany.
But social and political developments in Germany, given its ghastly history, do not necessarily have the same significance as in other countries.”
“’To the present day, the idea of the leitkultur depends on the misconception that the liberal state should demand more of its immigrants than learning the language of the country and accepting the principles of the Constitution. We had, and apparently still have, to overcome the view that immigrants are supposed to assimilate the “values” of the majority culture and to adopt its “customs.”
” That we are experiencing a relapse into this ethnic understanding of our liberal constitution is bad enough. It doesn’t make things any better that today leitkultur is defined not by “German culture” but by religion. With an arrogant appropriation of Judaism — and an incredible disregard for the fate the Jews suffered in Germany — the apologists of the leitkultur now appeal to the “Judeo-Christian tradition,” which distinguishes “us” from the foreigners. “
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