OPINION:
Resentment of open-door immigration is growing across the Western nations, and Hillary Clinton will get no tips, hints or reassurance from Angela Merkel. The German chancellor has unique immigration headaches, and they arrived through an open door much like the one that Barack Obama wants to leave as his legacy and that Hillary promises to keep if she returns to the White House, this time as the president.
The chancellor’s problems are peculiar to Europe, which unlike the United States has a significant Muslim population, much of it home-grown. Ms. Merkel created her problems with her open door. More than a million Muslims have come through it since the latest wave of refugees began.
In Germany, as in other European countries, political parties proliferate, and now Ms. Merkel has to contend with a growing anti-immigrant party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, that is within range of becoming the third-largest party, with national elections scheduled for next year.
AfD is new, and German politicians are still trying to define it. Thomas de Maiziere, the Interior minister who is a Christian Democrat, describes it as “right-wing populist,” which is regarded as something less formidable than “right-wing extremist.” But, whatever it’s called, it’s bad news for Ms. Merkel’s coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats. Some of the people in AfD sound pretty scary.
The “co-leader” of the party, Frauke Petry, thinks border guards should be permitted to shoot refugees if they attempt to get in illegally. It gets scarier. Beatrix von Storch, a deputy national leader, attempted to help Frau Petry climb down from her shoot-the-refugees assertion. Sort of. She first said border guards should be permitted to shoot women and children. When that sounded a little harsh even in her own ears, she said “the use of firearms against children is not permitted. Women are a different matter.” Who says women can’t be tough?
The abiding fear in Germany is of a resurgence of the hatred of the Jews that became the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism continues to lurk just beneath the skin of the body politic. The other “co-leader” of the party, Jorg Meuthen, denounced a book written four years ago by a party parliamentarian who called Judaism the “internal” enemy of the “Christian West,” and said he would quit the party if the author was not expelled from AdF. They’re both still in place. This could require months, and by then maybe everyone will have forgotten about it.
Germans skeptical of Ms. Merkel’s runaway good intentions are no longer intimidated by accusations that they’re bigots, racists, nativists and worse. Some Germans are skeptical that she has the kidney to confront the AfD. The Frankfurter newspaper Allgemeine Zeitung complains that she looks more like a secretary-general of the United Nations than a chancellor. That stings.
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