Since September 2015 Germany has been in a weird state. It started with Chancellor Merkel’s unilateral and unconstitutional opening of borders to mostly uneducated young men from rather violent societies, without proper checks, sometimes without any checks. That state has continued unabated since then – only mitigated due to other countries further south, most notably Hungary, closing their borders very firmly. All the while crime and violence committed by migrants have risen sharply, including rapes and murders, with a few actual, deadly terror attacks mixed in for good measure.

But it gets weirder. Instead of driving her from office in utter disgrace, the Germans re-elected her last September. It is true, her party, the CDU, and the Bavarian sister party CSU, lost a considerable percentage of votes (8.6, ending up with a total of only 32.9 percent). So did her coalition partner, the Social Democrats. But these three parties still got more than enough votes (53.4 percent) to form a majority in the Bundestag and thus a new government for the next four years. If one includes the nominal opposition parties at the time, an overwhelming majority of the electorate, more than 80 percent, voted for parties that either supported, or did not oppose, the abolition of border control. Most of the rest voted for the ‘populist,’ anti mass-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which received almost 13 percent and managed to garner seats for the first time. Either the 80 percent did not understand what was happening, or did not care. Some of them, I am sure, understand exactly what is happening and actually welcome it.

This can be explained in part psychologically. Indeed it has to be, as it is manifest madness. Since the end of the Second World War, successive generations of Germans have been taught – in schools and the media – that the reasons for Hitler’s mass-murderous totalitarianism and expansionism lay deeply rooted in the history and character of the German nation. In an overzealous attempt to prevent ‘this sort of thing’ from ever happening again, they taught themselves, in other words, to hate themselves. No wonder then, that “Germany is abolishing itself,” as one prescient book title proclaimed in 2010 ('Deutschland schafft sich ab'). The author, Thilo Sarrazin, a former member of the executive board of Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, is now a pariah in the eyes of the German establishment. In his book, Sarrazin claimed that Germany’s immigration policy – ongoing since the early 1960s – had failed due to the manifest refusal of large sections of migrants and their offspring to integrate successfully into German society. At the time of its publication, and before she could have read it, Merkel was quick to denounce the book publicly as “unhelpful.” She has form in this. It took her a whole year after the terror attack on the Christmas market in Berlin 2016 to meet the relatives of the victims. The family of the Polish truck driver who was the terrorist’s first victim never even received a letter of condolence.

There are other reasons, apart from psychological ones, for many voters’ tacit approval of Merkel’s destructive and shameful behavior. One reason is the financial interests of the NGOs and churches which receive many billions of euros in government handouts for supporting ‘refugees.’ Another is the interest of people whose jobs more or less depend on continued rule by the establishment parties: Those employed by government or in subsidised industries – and their family members of voting age.

On top of that, it was, and still is, rather difficult to voice doubts about the alleged benefits of multiculturalism and mass immigration. As in many other western countries, the mainstream media either ignores or shouts down anyone disagreeing with the tenets of cultural Marxism, postmodernism and relativism.

Also, a particularly sinister development is the leftist ‘antifascist’ thugs, who threaten or actually use physical force against property and person of anyone they can reach, who deviates from the shining path to multicultural utopia. It’s actually quite absurd: Twenty or even ten years ago it would have been unthinkable that left-wing radicals would side with the establishment and the Chancellor of any party, let alone of the nominally conservative CDU. The explanation however is simple: These brainless goons, the true spiritual heirs of Hitler’s SA, are simply the pipers playing their bankrollers’ tune. This is not hyperbole. When Canadian journalist Lauren Southern observed the ‘black bloc’ in Hamburg during the G20 riots there last summer, she commented that the German thugs were in a different league from any North American antifa-goons, and likened them to the Uruk-hai from J.R.R. Tolkien's ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ The German government recently increased funds for ‘combating the right’ (by which they officially mean right-wing extremism, but unofficially anything right of Merkel) to 100 million euros per year. Some of these funds end up in dubious channels, where they are siphoned off to support full-time political thugs.

However, despite all the funds and thuggery, and all the media support Merkel receives, the tide of public opinion is now beginning to turn in Germany.

A group of intellectuals, publicists and authors have published a declaration. Its wording is brief and to the point. And it has hit a nerve. This is what it says:

“We are increasingly disconcerted to observe how Germany is being damaged by illegal mass immigration. We express our solidarity with those who peacefully demonstrate for the restoration of the rule of law at the borders of our country.”

What is remarkable about this declaration is, first, that it implicitly demands something that until recently was taken for granted in any western nation: the rule of law and the right to peacefully demonstrate. In effect this right has almost been abolished for some people in Germany, especially those who are “increasingly disconcerted” by official German policies. In the small town of Kandel “increasingly disconcerted” people demonstrate against Merkel’s politics on a monthly basis. On December 27, a 15-year old German girl was stabbed to death there by a migrant from Afghanistan whom she had jilted, who claimed to be 15 himself but more likely was already over 20. A recent counterdemonstration was attended by the federal state governor – and by a contingent of antifa thugs.

What is also remarkable is that the declaration is being headed by intellectuals and respected, middle class professionals and academics. University professors, physicians, dentists, lawyers, artists, artisans, engineers, teachers, theologians, small business owners – in other words, people from the backbone of society. Open protest against mass immigration, such as the weekly PEGIDA gatherings in Dresden since 2014, had so far been restricted mostly to a demographic that feels disenfranchised and sidelined.

But the most remarkable development is this: the declaration did not get shouted down by the media. There was an early sign that the tide was turning, shortly before the declaration was published. Uwe Tellkamp, a novelist, claimed in a public panel discussion in Dresden in early March that most of the recent migrants are not refugees from war and persecution. Instead, he said, “95 percent are coming to migrate into our welfare system.” However, when his publisher posted a message on Twitter denouncing his words, the usual hysterical agitation failed to snowball. Instead, even some leftists protested against the distancing, not against Tellkamp.

The above declaration was published shortly after that, on 15th March. Tellkamp is one of the early signatories. The initiator is Vera Lengsfeld, a civil rights activist in the dying days of the GDR, later an MP in the Bundestag and now again a civil rights activist – and a frequent contributor to ‘eigentümlich frei’ and ‘equity and freedom.’ The declaration has now been rephrased and transformed into a petition to the Bundestag, which has to date gathered almost 80,000 signatories.

Can it be that Germany is gradually waking up from its stupor? Some libertarians criticise the declaration/petition. They say it relies too much on the state as a problem solver to have any real transformative value. It’s true that there is no mention of the state as the main perpetrator of the migratory chaos that Germany has gotten itself into. However, the fact that the declaration has gained so much traction in so little time, plus the nonstarter of a witch hunt against Tellkamp days earlier, are serious indicators of a fundamental mood shift in Germany. A mood shift, moreover, among the middle class – people who usually just ‘go along to get along,’ who have a lot to lose if they end up on the wrong side of history. As soon as the middle class turns against the establishment, it’s usually game over for the latter.

The declaration by Vera Lengsfeld et al.: https://www.erklaerung2018.de/