Mein früherer Kollege Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, seinerzeit Washington-Korrespondent dieser Zeitung und heute Chef der politischen Programmabteilung beim German Marshall Fund in Washington, hat sich mit dem globalen Echo von Angela Merkels Rede zum „Multikulturalismus“ beschäftigt. Offenbar ist die Sache auch in Amerika hauptsächlich als Absage an Einwanderung und Diversität, als Rückkehr eines unheimlichen, geschichtlich nicht erfolgreichen deutschen Wunsches nach Homogenität gewertet worden.
Kleine-Brockhoff widerspricht und gibt eine andere Deutung der Rede – und ich möchte gerne glauben, dass er Recht hat:
„Angela Merkel is not the woman she is currently made out to be. It is time to consider what she really said and really meant. It is time to put her remarks into context.
A good place to start is the quote itself, the full quote, in a translation as colloquial as her speech: ‚We are a country that invited guest workers to come to Germany in the 1960s. Now they live among us. For a while we kidded ourselves. We said: They won’t stay, they’ll be gone at some point. But that is not the reality. And most certainly the approach failed to say: We’ll do a multi-kulti thing here; we’ll just live next to and detached from each other and declare how happy we are with each other – this approach has failed, utterly failed.‘ Germans are not known for their humor, but they do do irony and sarcasm. Both traits rarely convey in translation. But the video of the speech reveals that Merkel displayed utter sarcasm when she disparaged the ‚multi-kulti thing‘ as a hippie vision of peace, love, and brotherhood, as some sort of German adaptation of a multi-ethnic Haight Ashbury.
The German term ‚multi-kulti‘ is commonly translated to mean ‚multiculturalism‘. But multiculturalism has two meanings. As a descriptive term, it simply refers to cultural diversity. As a normative term, it implies a positive endorsement, even celebration, of communal diversity, typically based on certain group rights and the absence of pressure or even incentives to assimilate. The German term ‚multi-kulti‘ only captures the second, normative meaning. That’s why ‚multi-kulti‘, to Merkel, is a synonym for leftism and early Green utopianism. She thinks it has produced not-so-benign neglect and, as she has put it multiple times, will lead to “parallel societies” of immigrants that have no connection to German mainstream society. Not even the German language is spoken in the neighborhoods that she pictures when using this term.
Angela Merkel is a conservative. A ’salad bowl‘ approach to integration is not hers — too hands off. She would not endorse a version of a melting pot in which cultures integrate with each other to create a new society. Her concept sees immigrants who integrate into a culturally dominant mainstream society. Her conservative party takes an aggressive, state-centered, and hands-on stance toward integration best summed up in six words: assimilate — take it or leave it! It is debatable whether this concept is appropriate for a multi-religious, multi-ethnic Europe, in which the free movement of people is the norm. But the end of cultural pluralism it is not, racism it is not. And that makes all the difference. In fact, in the very same speech, Merkel emphasized that ‚Islam is now a part of Germany.‘ She is preparing her party and her country for more, not less, immigration, and she is explicitly rejecting the views of the populists and the anti-islamic hatemongers.“
Das mag sein. Es ist aber schon ein Problem, wenn diese Botschaft nirgends ankommt. Oder: Wenn bei den Migranten und ihren Kindern ankommt: ok, auch die will uns nicht. Und bei den Sarrazinisten: siehste wohl, langsam kommt sie rum.
Und dass nur Leser von Thomas Kleine-Brockhoffs Blog die Botschaft hören, liegt daran, dass Merkel überhaupt kein Konzept von der Zukunft dieses Einwanderungslandes hat. Eines Landes, das, wie ich nicht aufhöre zu betonen, ein neues WIR braucht.
Wo will sie, wo will ihre Koalition mit dieser Gesellschaft hin, die derzeit (nicht nur an der Nahtstelle Einwanderer/Inländer) auseinanderreißt. Ich kann Menschen nur für „more immigration“ einnehmen, wenn ich dazu eine Vorstellung formulieren kann – zum Beispiel in Form eines neuen Einwanderungsrechts nach kanadischem Vorbild.
Nur eine selbstbewußte Gesellschaft traut sich so etwas zu, und Merkel befördert durch ihr ängstliches Taktieren in der Integrationsdebatte eher die Verunsicherung.