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What a nice and heartwarming read! I'm german, and really hope we can pivot away from the rise of the far right. How that can be done, I don't know. I just hope we can do so before we start scaring away people like him who would otherwise come here, decide they like it, become germans, and end up making it a better place for everyone.

(Part of it is I think we should make it easier and more incentivized to learn the language early so not just people in english-dominated tech jobs can have a positive experience. Cold start problem. It shouldn't be too hard for the gov to commission a RosettaStone like german learning app ((suboptimal, i know)) that works somewhat well and give it out for free, right?)

But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it. It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics. It's probably one of the cognitive "exploits" in the human mind, that finding a scapegoat (the foreigners) to blame for everything being such an effective tool to rally people with grievances behind yourself and slowly turning them into hateful monsters.

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> It shouldn't be too hard for the gov to commission a RosettaStone like german learning app ((suboptimal, i know)) that works somewhat well and give it out for free, right?)

Deutsche Welle (DW) is funded by German taxes and has materials for learning German: https://learngerman.dw.com/ as well as regular new materials aimed at learners, such as the news spoken slowly https://learngerman.dw.com/de/langsam-gesprochene-nachrichte... -- although I found it easier to listen to the normal news (e.g. tagesschau) slowed down slightly. (W-h-e-n p-e-o-p-l-e s-p-e-a-k s-l-o-w-l-y i-t c-a-n b-e h-a-r-d-e-r t-o l-i-s-t-e-n t-o!)

Not state-funded, but I recommend https://www.easygerman.org/ -- they have lots of good youtube material, a nice podcast, and an app I've not used. Most of the material is free with bonus materials for supporters.

> although I found it easier to listen to the normal news (e.g. tagesschau)

Tagesschau also has a version in "simple German" and you can turn on subtitles: https://www.tagesschau.de/tagesschau_in_einfacher_sprache

Also promoting German language and culture (I think technically an independant charity but I guess there's a lot of government financial support):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe-Institut

There's no way to say this without sounding like an old crank; but I think putting down your phone when on the U-Bahn and just reading the news and/or ads on the little in-train screens helps a surprising amount!

> It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics. It's probably one of the cognitive "exploits" in the human mind, that finding a scapegoat (the foreigners) to blame for everything being such an effective tool to rally people with grievances behind yourself and slowly turning them into hateful monsters.

The Rene Girard special

> But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it.

Indeed. I left the country recently for this and many other reasons. I don't even think the problem is with party politics. The people are too comfortable with the promises that have been made to them and who don't want anything to change. The situation is even worse in France especially with regard to pensions. Any change that is necessary will be fought against with tooth and nail.

The last government to do long-term reforms was under Gerhard Schröder. His party, the SPD, paid a heavy price. The far left wing of the party split off into the WASG, which in the meantime has become Die Linke. The voters don't reward but instead punish long-term reforms.

So now the divided party politics have learned their lesson and just deliver what the divided people are demanding. Best of luck.

When people came from Algeria, Jamaica and Suriname to Europe they were not foreigners they had French, British and Dutch passports.

Germany's lack of such a colonial empire kept the country from transitioning into a true multicultural society. It explains Germans special branch of racism.

So "Germans are special in their racissm" because they had no "luck of such colonial empire"??

Im glad that this country didnt play a larger role in colonialism! Your sentence is the first I hear in decaded advocading for "if they had colonialism as well, it would be a much better country because then they wouldnt be racist"??

By the way - Poland or Hungary also had no "luck of colonial empire" - what about them? As well as tons of other European states?

I didn't read that post as saying "there is no racism in France/Britain/Netherlands thanks to their past"; I understood it as "the _kind_ of racism there is _different_ than the one in Germany, for historical reasons".

That strikes me as... kind of true? Poland's issues with racism are also pretty different than in the countries mentioned.

Just FYI, it says "lack", not "luck"

Germany had a colonial empire though

A small one, and we do not have any ties no more to these states, really (in contrast to Spain, France and whatnot)

The German colonial empire was the 3rd largest at the time, just after the French and the British ones. There are still cultural ties.

I meant only the colonial empire, but you could also include nazi Germany colonial projects, they also had a lasting impact

> When people came from Algeria … to Europe they were not foreigners they had French … passports.

That’s not true at all for France with Algerians. The history of hate towards them has been horrible and is still very recent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Paris_massacre

>But a struggling economy, questionable planning for many years now, the "educated middle class" he mentioned in the post shrinking don't bode well for it. It's a prime breeding ground for scapegoat politics.

I think one of the issues is that for the past 2 decades over here in Belgium as I think in Germany and other places there has been no middle ground left for people who didn't want this to the current extent. I feel that way even tho i meet lots of people like the blog writer and I meet lots of people who aren't like him too. I've met the average religious ultraconservative erdogan voting turk in w-europe, the quick money wanabe hoodlum who mostly hangs out with maghrebis but who can be quite friendly if you get to know him well, the Turk who feels integrated but to me always feels like an americanised cosmopolitan. I don't even blame some of them on that front. It's incredibly easy to not surround yourself with locals and local food, experiences, etc.

You have conservative parties who pay lip service but don't really make any effective change on the migration front and other parties who....act like there's no harm at all. Even the leftist framing where most migration leads to some wage supression is starkly absent. There is no option to say 'you either do it well or do a lot less of it' without getting pushed to the far right.

In the meantime i can go and visit mannheim and feel like i'm in a bad facsimile of germany. It's easier to find turkish food than german food. That one street with all the gathered Turkish wedding shops starkly reminds me of a similar central spot in Istanbul.

In Brussels where my grandparents lived and my dad was born I am routinely the only local at parties. When I walk the streets I routinely feel like a foreigner. Numbers that were called fear mongering a decade or 2 ago are just reality. My grandmother cried seeing the changes done to the listed buildings she lived in and alongside. The migrants and people left there don't see the significance. She doesn't go to a specialist anymore because old people get targeted by pickpockets.

And it expands, it can no longer be stopped. Our politics are fragmented, migrants and descendants off don't vote similarly to the local ethnicities and with our fragmented politics the anti migration vote is a lost cause. Since it's a lot smaller than germany's my culture is waiting to die, when you notice it suddenly you start noticing it everywhere and for those that care about it it becomes something that draws single issue voting because all the other important things can be undone with some work but even their single issue voting will be drowned out eventually by the change set in motion.

>You have conservative parties who pay lip service but don't really make any effective change on the migration front

Net migration to Germany has fallen sharply since 2022: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SM.POP.NETM?locations=D.... In particular, that includes significant drops in asylum claims and migration from Syria and Afghanistan. Anti-immigration sentiment is almost purely vibes-based. There is no amount of objective reduction in migration that (i) could be achieved by sensible policies and that (ii) would make you feel the vibes that you want to feel. So your position is effectively an extremist one, even if you find extremism distasteful.

>There is no option to say 'you either do it well or do a lot less of it' without getting pushed to the far right.

This option is exactly who you currently have as chancellor. He's doing about everything that's reasonably possible (together with a few things that go beyond the reasonable) to reduce illegal migration. But he's not going to forcibly shut down Turkish-owned businesses. So let the far right do the dirty work. You had no choice but to support them because mainstream politicians couldn't make the Turks magically disappear.

It's the same in lots of places in the UK. We have MPs that care more about the building of an airport in Pakistan than they do about the UK.

When I discussed voting with Germans (looking forward to my first), the reaction has mostly been about not voting for the party that they are unhappy with. I even have an immigrant friend telling me he will vote for the AfD and could not answer me why he's voting for the party that will kick him out of the country. His reason was more because he's unhappy with how the current situation is and wants changes and doesn't really think what change will help.

He knows the face-eating leopard party is not going to eat his face.