Gender, migration: The family ministry as a center of agitation

You are reading an excerpt from the newsletter “The Other View” by NZZ Editor-in-Chief Eric Gujer especially for readers in Germany. Subscribe to the newsletter for free. Not resident in Germany? Benefit here.

Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock are rightly applauded for their stance on the Ukraine war. Their policies are consistent because they leave no doubt as to who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. At the same time, it is pragmatic, since dogmas no longer apply to the question of energy supply. What a pleasant contrast to the wispy duo of Scholz and Lambrecht.

What is a success in foreign policy becomes a risk in domestic policy. While all eyes are on Ukraine, Greens are pushing ahead with social restructuring. Whether it’s gender issues or migration, the former environmental party is concentrating all the more on identity politics as wartime demands many compromises. So she boldly replaced the lack of Russian gas supplies with coal and gas from the Gulf, thus pursuing sober realpolitik. When it comes to identity issues, on the other hand, the party polarizes and promotes extremes. The Greens’ control center for their re-education program is the Department of Wokeness, formerly known as the Department of Families, Elderly, Women and Youth.

The crime of Arab clans should be hushed up

The personnel of the designated anti-discrimination commissioner Ferda Ataman illustrates how the party proceeds. Family Minister Lisa Paus proposes a candidate to the Bundestag for election who denigrates Germans as “potatoes”.

Discrimination is good as long as it is directed against mainstream society, but satisfies left-wing immigration politicians and activists. They believe that white Germans are generally privileged – whether they are on welfare or multi-millionaires. Discrimination against Germans is therefore not discrimination, but only the accelerated creation of equal living conditions.

It’s not about dialogue and balance, but about confrontation and shop window politics. The journalist Ataman belongs to an association that has pilloried other journalists because they use the allegedly xenophobic term clan crime.

According to the will of Ataman and her like-minded friends, it should not be reported in Germany that Arab clans in Berlin and other cities are among the dominant forces in the underworld. What must not be, cannot be. Ideology and approval in a red-green Justemilieu are more important than facts.

If it were a question of finding solutions instead of managing a topic in a left-wing populist manner, the phenomenon of clan crime in particular would lend itself to differentiated consideration. Because this shows how a short-sighted policy on foreigners can create serious social problems.

In the 1980s, large Turkish and Lebanese families used the GDR as a gateway to the West. The Stasi state allowed them to enter the country provided they moved on to the West immediately. West Berlin could not deport the migrants, but would have liked to get rid of them. So the families received a toleration, which prohibited them from taking up work or even going to school, thus literally forcing the families into illegality. Although they were only temporarily tolerated, they never left Germany.

Democracy shrinks into a service agency for minorities

This migration story would be an ideal example to explain why the traffic light coalition is reforming the law on foreigners. Tolerated people should be given permanent status after five years, provided they are well integrated. This is reasonable because it avoids unnecessary suffering. The state must act against illegal migration, but four years and 364 days is enough time to expel a person from the country.

But the prospective anti-discrimination officer is obviously not interested in explaining and promoting understanding. She would rather scandalize and indoctrinate. Whoever reports on the long-ignored migrant crime should be silenced.

When I was still researching the subject as a correspondent 15 years ago, a detective at Berlin’s police headquarters told me that people didn’t like her giving information about it. That contradicts the image of multicultural Berlin.

Multiculturalism no longer exists, today it is called diversity. Viewed with common sense, this means nothing other than recognizing social diversity and living it as a matter of course. This is not enough for red-green identity politicians. They claim that true diversity and democracy will only be achieved when all people, largely independent of their origin and length of stay, can have a say.

This idea represents the distorted image of a democracy that has mutated into a hands-on club for everyone who just wants to get involved. The state would only be an accidental assembly, without commitment and without obligations. The individual only has rights and claims against the state to “inclusion” and “participation”.

The social contract is no longer a mutual contract, but a unilateral agreement in which the individual formulates his wishes. Democracy is shrinking into a service agency for all those minorities who articulate their demands the loudest.

Medical risks must be discussed – even if this contradicts gender ideology

Unlimited individualization is the program of the Greens and, to a lesser extent, also of the FDP. This is reflected in the coalition agreement. He promises individuals total control over their bodies, regardless of social conventions, legal or medical objections. Any person over the age of 14 should be able to change their gender by simply declaring their will, including chemical and surgical treatment.

Anyone who speaks out against it, for example with reference to the developmental psychology of teenagers, is insulted in the same wild way that degrades Germans to potatoes. The Family Ministry, the agitation center of the otherwise cosmopolitan party leaders Habeck and Baerbock, always leads the campaigns.

The state secretary in the ministry, Sven Lehmann, railed against “homophobia and transphobia” and “fake news” just because several authors had pointed out in a guest article for “Welt” that gender reassignment in pubescents can affect their health. They also warned against reporting in the media that downplayed the risks.

With any other treatment, it is the doctor’s legal and ethical duty to provide information about possible side effects. Only in the case of gender reassignment do green identity ideologues turn Hippocratic truthfulness into “group-focused enmity”. No television advertisement for harmless venous ointment can do without the slogan: “Ask your doctor or pharmacist about risks and side effects”. Only in the case of an irreversible intervention should this not apply.

A completely different kind of misanthropy is also conceivable: activists immunize a treatment method against any criticism. The media amplifies the fringe phenomenon of the social trend, and careless physicians don’t need to be told twice to reach for the scalpel. Such an operation is certainly lucrative, and it would not be the first time that unscrupulous doctors have placed themselves in the service of a misguided zeitgeist.

When medical practitioners and scientists question the wonderful world of modern medicine, which is as beneficial as it is sometimes frightening, it deserves respect. That should be true even if you don’t share their arguments. Science is based on argument and counter-argument and the willingness to falsify any hypothesis.

Even during the pandemic, however, “the” science mutated into a creed, with which those who thought differently could be excellently excluded. The Corona experiences show that verbal disarmament promotes social cohesion. Unfortunately, the knowledge bounces off the armor of ignorance that all enthusiastic right-holders wear – whether left or right.

The green combat brigade does not notice the paradox of their actions. She demands tolerance and equal rights for minorities, but meets all objections with intolerance. Anyone who dares to contradict Lehmann or Ataman is a potato or a misanthrope. This is the language of cultural revolutionaries and not of politicians who want to take a society with them on the long road to change.

One thing is certain. When the Ministry of Wokeness completes its program, the Republic will be unrecognizable in some places.