Top Exec At Bundesbank Defends Racism By Referring To His Math Skills
Courtney Comstock | Aug. 30, 2010, 1:29 PM | 3,105
Bundesbank's Thilo Sarrazin is one of the most unabashedly racist people we've encountered.
And yet, despite the many accounts of his irrational prejudice (like in October, when he said that Turks were "conquering Germany in exactly the same way the Kosovars conquered Kosovo: with a higher birth rate." And that "A large number of Arabs and Turks in this city (Berlin) ... have no productive function other than selling fruit and vegetables."), Bundesbank, the German central bank, has allowed Sarrazin to remain on the board.
His remarks have outraged the public before but are now making international news because he just published an book, Deutschland schafft sich ab, or “Germany Is Self-Destructing," about immigrants - particularly Muslim immigrants - causing Germany's decline.
One of the problems - more below - with Bundesbank allowing him to remain on their board is that he's using his perceived role as an intelligent "math" man on the board of the German Central Bank to give his arguments clout.
He believes things like this:
* Intelligence is up to 80% genetically determined
* “All major cultural and economic problems have concentrated themselves in the group of 5—6 million migrants from Muslim countries."
* There is a "German national identity" with an "inborn intelligence."
* He has definitive proof of the threat to the "national identity" and "the level intelligence."
The proof he "has" is in the statistical tools that he used to prove that immigrants are multiplying at a faster rate than native Germans. He calls himself "a numbers man," according to the Hindu:
I am not racist, but rather "a numbers man" who isn't afraid to reveal the truth.
He also thinks he's proved the existence of a Jewish gene, according to the Hindu:
Angela Merkel called his comments about a “Jewish gene utterly unacceptable."
He retorted: “I doubt if the chancellor has read my book." He referred to studies published in science journals Nature and the American Journal of Human Genetics which, he said, “reveal the common genetic roots of today’s European Jewry."
Now that he's compiled his rants into an entire book, it *might* be the last straw for the bank, which is apparently considering thinking about removing him from the board, according to the AP.
In response to two statements from Angela Merkel or her right-hand that the bank should remove him, the bank made a vague statement that didn't address his removal:
The bank said it "decisively distanced itself" from Sarrazin's views, adding: "The board declares that Dr. Sarrazin's remarks are damaging to the reputation of the Bundesbank."
"The Bundesbank is an institution at which discrimination has no place ... the board will hold talks with Dr. Sarrazin immediately, listen to him and quickly decide what steps to take next."
But here's what Sarrazin thinks this PR-speak means about his future at the bank:
Sarrazin said he had not spoken to [the bank's president] for more than a week and was "relaxed" about his continued service at the Bundesbank.
And why he doesn't think the bank should fire him.
"I, like any other employee of the Bundesbank ... have the right to express my opinion." Link
lupercal wrote:So is Sarrazin a self-hating crypto Muslim or what?
According to his interview (see below) with the right-wing zionist organ The Weekly Standard, no; he tellingly describes himself as a mixed French, English, Italian and Polish "mongrel". (As opposed, presumably, to those who are of pure French, English, Italian or Polish race.) Note how casually both the interviewer and Sarrazin refer to adherents of the Muslim and Jewish faiths in racial terms, as though they were not followers of different religions but genetically distinct species. And pay special attention to where he implies that the real problem with the Nazis' racialism is that it promulgated the "myth of the superiority of the German race" and suppressed the reality of the superiority of the Jewish race, which he himself promulgates. Apparently the Weekly Standard has no problem with ignorant and fucked-up racist claims about Jews, as long as these proclaim Jews' genetic superiority to other "races", for example the, uh, Muslim race.
The Saracen and the Jews
A Bundesbank official stirs controversy again.
1:07 PM, Sep 1, 2010 • By JOHN ROSENTHAL
Firstly, the interview coincided with the publication of a new book by Sarrazin titled Deutschland schafft sich ab, which can be roughly translated as “Germany is Consigning Itself to Extinction.” The six words appear to have been exploited by Sarrazin’s opponents as the perfect “gotcha!” moment, in order to trouble the book launch. Never mind that Sarrazin’s prior record of comments about Jews is far more obviously philosemitic than anti-semitic. Thus in last autumn’s interview, for example, he described the Nazi expulsion and extermination of Germany’s Jewish population as “an enormous intellectual bloodletting” from which the country (and, in particular, the city of Berlin) has never recovered.
Secondly, the hysteria can be presumed to be driven by bad conscience. In fact, the German constitution, or Grundgesetz, continues to employ an ethnic definition of “Germanness” (or “deutsche Volkszugehörigkeit”) that is explicitly distinguished from “mere” possession of German citizenship. The distinction, which appears in Article 116 of the Grundgesetz, has massive consequences for the functioning of German society. Critics like the historian Wolfgang Wippermann of Berlin’s Free University have long criticized it as an obstacle to the successful integration of “non-Germanic” immigrants and have called for the suppression of Article 116.
The operational definition of ethnic “Germanness” in German law is contained in Article 6 of the so-called Federal Law on Expellees from 1953. It reads as follows: “A member of the German nation [Volk] in the sense of this law is whoever has in his or her homeland avowed adherence to the German nation, to the degree that this avowal is confirmed by definite characteristics such as ancestry, language, education and culture.” As the German sociologist Nora Räthzel has pointed out, this definition reproduces nearly word-for-word the definition contained in a Nazi-era German Interior Ministry directive, which was issued on March 29, 1939. The Nazi-era version, however, continues: “Persons of alien blood [artfremden Blutes], in particular Jews, are never such members of the [German] nation, even if they have hitherto described themselves as such.”
In his interview with Die Welt, Sarrazin insisted, as he has in the past, that intelligence is largely (“from 50% to 80%”) genetically determined. This in-and-of-itself seemingly banal assertion prompted the following exchange:
Die Welt: Pardon me, but one could see a certain closeness to Nazi ways of thinking.
Sarrazin: Utter nonsense. Intelligence tests were prohibited under the Nazis, because their results disproved the myth of the superiority of the German race. I am myself a European mongrel. On my father’s side, the family is descended from [French] Huguenots from Lyon. I have an English grandmother, somewhere or another an Italian great-great-grandmother, and you can see from my Slavic cheekbones that my mother comes from West Prussia [i.e. what is nowadays part of Poland].
Die Welt: Is there also some Muslim element in there somewhere?
Sarrazin: My name is common in the South of France. It is derived from the Arab pirates that were called “Saracens” in the Middle Ages. As a young man with a black mustache and thick black hair, in a parka and jeans I looked more Turkish than many Turks.
And then referring to Berlin’s most famous Turkish neighborhood, the former chief of the city’s finances added, “I would not have stood out in Kreuzberg at all.” Link
The most insightful summary of the Sarrazin phenomenon, in my opinion, was articulated in this excerpt from an essay entitled "The Joy of Despising Other People" by the Austrian journalist Robert Misik:
...it is not Sarrazin's ideas that are the most scandalous.
Much worse is the reaction to them. Why does this botch-job end up being distributed via a preview in Spiegel magazine and popularised in talk shows, why does such an addled brain deserve the honour of a two-page interview in the weekly Zeit – instead of being ignored?
Of course it's because the papers know there is an echo chamber in our society for the cold, hard misanthropy that Sarrazin expresses. Because there are milieus in which this racism has long been flourishing. Because the self-appointed and ever-present spokespeople for these milieus are of the bizarre conviction that they are victims of "political correctness" and therefore proudly wear the badge of voicing "suppressed" opinions, claiming it takes courage to speak the "plain truth", and that they have this courage.
Daring heroes who "call a spade a spade". As if there were any idiotic opinion that goes unprinted in our society, or is not broadcast into every last living room via trashy TV.
No, it does not take courage to insult other people. The ostentatious joy of despising others gets you onto the bestseller lists nowadays. Stupidity, if not hereditary, is certainly profitable. Link
After his comments about the Jewish "race", Sarrazin was fired from his banking job but not his job in the so-called Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) where he has called for drastic cuts in social spending on the poor and unemployed and, in 2009, as Finance Minister,
"recommended that the government prepare older citizens for a 'long term decline to the level of subsistence.' It seems that whoever is most vulnerable becomes a target of the "brave" Thilo Sarrazin.
I'll go out on a limb here and predict that Mr. Sarrazin has a bright financial and political future ahead of him, notwithstanding his unpopularity with losers guided by such outdated principles as rationality, fairness and basic human decency. His book is a runaway bestseller and his views are apparently shared by many powerful individuals both in and out of Germany. The guy has made a name for himself attacking the unemployed, the elderly, immigrants and Muslims -- in today's world, that's a recipe for success! Besides, even his belief in a "Jewish gene" finds support in some (not very surprising) quarters:
Published 13:40 29.08.10
Latest update 13:40 29.08.10
'Jewish gene' theories make waves in Germany, go unnoticed in Israel
German politician Thilo Sarrazin and the Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai both believe in 'Jewish genes,' but only Sarrazin is castigated for his belief.
By Akiva Eldar
Yesterday's Hebrew edition of Haaretz reported a remark by a German politician that sparked a political and public furor. The foreign and defense ministers, among others, sharply criticized the remark made by Thilo Sarrazin, a member of the German Social Democratic party and a board member of the German central bank.
What is the nature of the comment that is causing a stir in Germany? Here is a quote from Sarrazin's interview with the paper, Welt am Sonntag: "All Jews share a particular gene that makes them different from other peoples."
A Jewish gene? It is unbelievable that race theory continues to hold sway in Germany.
Now read the following pearl: "A convert, if he converts through the Orthodox, he has the Jewish gene. If he doesn't convert through the Orthodox, he doesn't have the Jewish gene. As simple as that." This quote is taken from an interview the interior minister of the Jewish State and the Shas party leader, Eli Yishai, gave to the editor of The Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz (August 8, 2010 ).
Basically, anyone who monitored Yishai's comments on foreign workers and their children need not fall off his chair. This is the place to note that Yishai, a member of the secret group of seven, refused on Sunday to say a thing about Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's comments about the Palestinian people.
A week earlier, the "Jewish gene" was proudly cited by singer and actor Yehoram Gaon. On his weekly radio program on Reshet Bet, he told listeners about a scientific study that shows that the Palestinians have "a Jewish gene" and some of them were even graced with the "Cohen gene."
Biologist and Machsom Watch activist Michaela Bahat wrote to the station's manager, Arieh Shaked, that "Judaism is not a genetic trait and no one has ever heard of a genetic trait of cohanim (priests ) - although there is a school (that is controversial ) which maintains that among Jews there are shared DNA sequences, but the use of 'genetics' for the purpose of establishing social or political positions is dangerous, just as any doctrine that tries to link blood and race to human rights is."
A synopsis of Gaon's response: "Take things in proportion. It's just a radio show, not a cabinet session, or even a biology class."
Jewish genetics is apparently a hot topic now because it turns out that John Hagee, the Evangelist preacher whose name recently made headlines as the one who funded Im Tirtzu and decided to withdraw his support for the organization, is an expert on Jewish genetics. In his book, "Who is a Jew?" Hagee claims that Hitler was a half-Jew and a descendant of Esau. In May 2008, at the height of the U.S. election campaign, a tape was distributed in which Hagee claimed that Hitler fulfilled the will of the Lord to bring the Jews back to the Land of Israel, in accordance with the Biblical prophecy. The Republican presidential candidate, John McCain, decided to disassociate himself from Hagee's public support.
A few weeks earlier Hagee was the guest of honor of the city of Ariel. The pro-settler news outlet Arutz Sheva described the "tribute ceremony" by Hagee's supporters in the sports hall named in his honor. "Hundreds of Ariel residents, led by city officials and Mayor Ron Nachman, were moved by the outpouring of love from the Christian friends of Israel and responded in kind with warm applause and embraces, which reached a peak with the singing of the Israeli and U.S. anthems." ... Link
Posted: Sat Oct 23, 2010 5:35 pm