German Banker underfire for "racist" Jewish remark

[Green_Lantern]

Source: Huffington Post

Top German officials and immigrant leaders on Sunday condemned remarks by a board member of Germany's federal bank as racist and anti-Semitic. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Bundesbank should discuss dismissing the banker.

Thilo Sarrazin of the Bundesbank came under fire for telling the weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag that "all Jews share the same gene." He also said Muslim immigrants across Europe were not willing or capable of integrating into western societies.

Last year, Sarrazin, who previously served as finance minister for Berlin, told a magazine that "I do not need to accept anyone who lives on handouts from a state that it rejects, is not adequately concerned about the education of their children and constantly produces new, little headscarf-clad girls."

He later apologized for those remarks.

However, Sarrazin, 65, would know full well that his country has had little tolerance for anti-Semitic remarks since the Holocaust, and that many of Germany's immigrants have complained about racist remarks and xenophobic behavior.

On Sunday, several German lawmakers demanded that Sarrazin step down from his post as board member at the Bundesbank and resign his party membership of the left-leaning Social Democrats – demands that Sarrazin rejected.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/29/thilo-sarrazin-german-banker-jewish-remark_n_698301.html

---

The title should be say anti-semitic as Jewish isn't a race.

[boppers]

1. What's an "underfire"? (HuffPo has a different headline)

Current headline reads: "Thilo Sarrazin, German Banker, Under Fire For 'Racist' Jewish Remark"

As far as Jewish being a "race", the whole construct of "race", in and of itself, is an artificial superimposition of bigotry, but the point of noting something is "racist" is to point out that somebody is using those artificial constructs.

[Green_Lantern]

2. grammar police

Wow...I accidentally put under and fire together.

I put "race" because the article put 'race'.

Thanks professor...

[sendero]

3. Judaism is a religion..

.. not a race so it impossible to make a "racist Jewish" comment.

[davidinalameda]

4. so he's just a bigot and not a racist?

okay

[Name removed]

5. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[elleng]

6. 'They' don't discourage sufficiently; no subspecies here, izq!

[aquart]

7. Not really up on current DNA research, are you?

But it's good to know that you think Jews, as opposed to Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, Baha'i, Buddhists, or Taoists, might be headed for a distinct subspecies.

[BillH76]

27. "Ashkenazic? Chances high you carry altered gene...."

http://www.jewishreview.org/health/science/Ashkenazic%3F-Chances-high-you-carry-altered-gene

[Recursion]

9. "Jewish" is an ethnicity, though

Which is at least somewhat a separate question from Judaism as a religion (most religiously Jewish people are also ethnically Jewish).

[Green_Lantern]

16. I don't think it's even an ethnicity..

There are Jews of various ethnicity...Spanish, German, Ethiopian, Arab, Japanese, etc. The customs they have in common are mainly religious.

[Recursion]

18. Right, but if you're ethnically Jewish,

your maternal great-great-great-great-...-grandmother was Sarah, notionally.

[Green_Lantern]

21. I don't think the Bible is a good source for anthropology...

I'm betting one guy didn't start Judaism in a day. The Hebrew people were basically Canaanites lucky enough to survive it's demise.

[Recursion]

19. Also, I think "Hispanic" is a lot like what you said

And Hispanic is an ethnicity. One can be Hispanic but be of any race (which made the Sotomayor "wise Latina" comments kind of amusing, since Puerto Ricans are generally both Hispanic and white).

[Green_Lantern]

20. I'm not really sure but I think Jewish people can be any race or

Ethnicity at this point in time. At one time the Hebrew people were probably Canaanites who survived the collapse of the Canaanite state. But then Judaism expanded to other regions.

[Dappleganger]

13. O RLY?

Nice try but you lose.

[Green_Lantern]

15. well it's anti-Semitic and hate of Jews is based on a presumption

That it is a race. Anti-Semites view it as a different race in order to excuse the oppression of Jewish people.

[bemildred]

8. Gee, an anti-semitic anti-muslim. nt

[Frank Booth]

10. What he said about Jews may have been poorly phrased, but he was sort of

correct: http://www.thejc.com/news/world-news/33213/jews-share-a-genetic-signature

As for what he said about Muslims, there's no way to excuse that.

[Green_Lantern]

17. I think that study is treading dangerous territory trying to find

Genetic markers to identify Jewish people. I'm sure this German banker knows the history of German establishment trying to single out Jewish people.

[FMBM]

11. "all Jews share the same gene."...

Well he is right about that, but it's even worse than he feared.... in fact all humans share an amazing numbers of genes... it's what separates us from... say... dogs... but then I've heard that humans share about 98% of their genes with chimpanzees... but I don't really know... just rambling on aimlessly...

[pampango]

12. A 'Jewish Gene': Immigration Provocateur in Germany Crosses the Line

Source: Spiegel



Thilo Sarrazin, infamous for his controversial comments on Muslims and immigration, has unleashed a storm of criticism after positing the existence of a Jewish gene. Chancellor Merkel has had enough and many have called for him to be thrown off the board of the German Central Bank. Merkel was referring to a new book by Sarrazin, excerpts of which appeared in the German press last week. In the book, Sarrazin claims that Muslim immigrants are soon going to outnumber Germany's "autochthonous" (indigenous) population because of their higher birth rates. He also suggested that, because immigrants haven't proven to be as successful in school in Germany, the country is not only shrinking, but it is becoming less intelligent. He also said that Muslims were not interested in integration and hinted that they would prefer to work illegally off the books than to pay taxes.

Over the weekend, Sarrazin went even further. In an interview with Welt am Sonntag, Sarrazin waded into the frought field of genetics, saying "all Jews share a certain gene, all Basques have certain genes that make them different from other people."

The new book is far from the first time Sarrazin has hit the headlines with controversial comments about immigration and other controversial topics. In an interview with the cultural magazine Lettres International last autumn, he said that Muslim immigrants are incapable of integrating and "constantly produce little girls in headscarves." He also said that "a large number of Arabs and Turks in (Berlin) ... have no productive function other than in the fruit and vegetable trade." He also claimed that Turks were "conquering Germany ... through a higher birth rate."

In previous comments, he has blasted welfare recipients and suggested they could live on much less money than they currently receive. He has also called students "assholes" and said that civil servants are "pale and foul smelling." Of German plans to rescue the carmaker Opel, he said: "No one needs an Opel."

Read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,714567,00.html

---

Didn't realize that immigrants represent 18.4% of Germany's population. That's quite a bit higher than the 11.5% that immigrants represent in the US.

Sarrazin is a member of Merkel' own party. It will be interesting to see what she does about his seat on the German Central Bank.

[Javaman]

14. I see the Germans have their own tea baggers. nt

[Recursion]

22. This guy's a social democrat

Not exactly teabagger material. Remember that in a lot of continental Europe it's the Left that's reacting most strongly to immigration.

[Javaman]

23. I thought the social democrats in germany were the conservatives?

or am I confusing them with the Brits?

[Recursion]

24. I think of the Christian Democrats as the right in Germany

Though I may be misremembering, and the last class I had on German politics was before reunification

[pampango]

25. It's actually the right wing parties that are most anti-immigration: BNP in the UK, National Front

in France, Jobbik in Hungary, Peoples Freedom Party in the Netherlands, People of Freedom in Italy. Not that there aren't left wing individuals who are anti-immigration, but for the most part left wing organizations and parties and Europe are fight against the xenophobia that the right wing is displaying throughout Europe.

I don't know of any European country in which left wing parties are reacting more strongly to immigration than are right wing parties.

[Recursion]

26. I guess I was thinking of that Dutch guy

He's very far left. Though I don't know how well "left" and "right" translate across the pond.

[pampango]

28. If you mean Geert Wilders, I think he is pretty firmly in the right wing camp. He founded

the Party for Freedom which has a very conservative agenda.

The Party for Freedom combines economic liberalism with a conservative programme on immigration and culture. The party seeks tax cuts (€16 billion in the 2006 election programme), de-centralisation, abolition of the minimum wage, and limiting child benefits and government subsidies. Regarding immigration and culture, the party believes that the Judeo-Christian and humanist traditions should be taken as the dominant culture in the Netherlands, and that immigrants should adapt accordingly. The party wants a halt to immigration from non-Western countries. It is sceptical towards the EU, is against future EU enlargement to countries like Turkey and opposes a dominant presence of Islam in the Netherlands. The party is also opposed to dual citizenship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom

Some progressives may agree with his anti-immigration platform but the rest of his policies are pretty conservative. His party has joined the coalition of right wing parties in the European Parliament. Liberals in the UK got the UK government to ban his entrance into the country last year for an anti-immigration rally sponsored by the BNP.