“Whatever is unacceptable”
Merz gives a new definition of leading culture
March 18, 2024, 11:10 p.m
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The Union has been working on a definition of a dominant culture for a long time. Merz apparently sees something quite simple in this: a consensus among citizens that certain things are unacceptable. The CDU leader doesn’t want to outright declare “multiculturalism” dead.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz has called for an intensive discussion of political Islam in Germany. The fact that there is no contact person for written Islam in Germany is a problem, criticized the Union faction leader at a CDU event on the topic of integration. The background to the statement was also the demonstrations following the attack on Israel by the Islamist Hamas on October 7th, during which Israel was denied its right to exist. As long as the relationship between state and religion is not clarified in the sense of a strict separation, “we really have a real construction site in our society.”
When asked how he would define a guiding culture that migrants would also have to adhere to, Merz said it was about everyday tolerance and a “cultural minimum” – for example in dealing with women or homosexuality, “which you have to internalize.” . Cultural influence is “not something fixed, it is not something that is once set in stone. It is something that changes in a society.” The dominant culture includes, for example, the understanding that “certain things are not acceptable in our country,” said Merz. In the draft for its new program, the CDU advocates, among other things, a commitment to a dominant German culture.
“Define and adhere to the cultural minimum”
When asked whether multiculturalism was dead, Merz replied: “The multicultural society is a successful society when it has commonalities. If it has no commonalities, it inevitably fails.” If there is only a lack of linguistic integration, this is “exactly a multicultural society that is doomed to fail.” Language skills are “the cultural minimum that children, young people and growing adults need in order to succeed in a society.” Multicultural society fails “if it foregoes every cultural minimum in its dealings with one another. Multicultural society can be a great asset if it defines this cultural minimum together and also adheres to it,” added the CDU chairman.
The CDU wants to become more visible to the public on this issue with a network for migrants in the party that was founded in 2012 and has now been revived. The chairwoman of the network is the Bundestag member and former North Rhine-Westphalia Integration State Secretary Serap Güler.