"A grand burlesque of mutual deception"

At PJ Media Spengler writes,

Starting in 2016 Germany absorbed over a million migrants, many of them victims of the Syrian civil war but also economic migrants from all over the Islamic world. Germany’s long-serving Chancellor Angela Merkel declared, “Wir schaffen es!” (“We can do it!”) and Germany mobilized to demonstrate its good-heartedness and generosity—not so much to the world, but to itself.

Tuvia Tenenbom is the Jewish world’s answer to the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. …Praised as an expression of German leadership and denounced as capitulation to Muslim invaders, the great migration is neither. In Tenenbom’s account, bored refugees eat bad food and contract skin rashes in the overcrowded, unsanitary facilities where the German government has dumped them. They are happy to complain to an Arabic-speaking journalist and spill their hopes and dreams—to marry a German blonde, to get rich, to get back to Syria or Afghanistan or Pakistan where they can find edible food. Most are just bored; a few are suicidal, but there is a one-year waiting list to see a German psychiatrist.

…Gradually, it dawns on the reader that the German body politic wants to show that Germany really has changed, and that the Germans have become responsible world-citizens rather than nasty nationalists—but without the trouble and expense of caring for a million and a half new dependents. Many of the refugees came to abuse what they imagined was German generosity, and instead found overcrowded camps, awful food, scary sanitation and, worst of all, nothing at all to do. It is a grand burlesque of mutual deception in which neither side appears particularly good or evil, but rather confused and feckless.

…If public officials are feckless, private business is hilarious. “Integration” is the hinge concept in the refugee issue. Germany’s native working-age population is declining due to its low birth rate and the government justified the refugee influx on the grounds that Germany needs more workers. No-one appears to be working, though; at every refugee camp Tenenbom visits—out-of-commission ships, airline hangars, provincial hotels—the new arrivals have nothing to do.

…“Hello Refugees” offers more subtlety and compassion: The Germans wanted to feel well about themselves, but end up feeling ridiculous; the migrants hoped for a new life under German sponsorship and find themselves utterly and hopelessly lost.

“Hello Refugees” was commissioned by the German publisher Suhrkamp. The English language edition appears largely self-published. It deserves better treatment, including more thorough proof-reading.

Read more here.