Source: time.com - Saturday, November 08, 2014 Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a different wall has taken its place. But instead of separating East and West, this other “wall” is the partition between those who are in German society and those who are on its fringes – namely, non-Western immigrants. Understanding the origins of this modern wall, which undermines cultural and social stability in Germany as well as in other parts of Europe, requires a look back at the past few decades. On the one hand, Germany isn’t all that different from other European countries in grappling with growing right-wing populism, which often targets immigrants and has racist undertones. But on the other hand, it is, and in a very obvious way: No other country in Europe knows better than Germany does how racially motivated hatred can lead to violence. That’s partly why the latest resurgence in anti-immigration and anti-Semitism is surprising, especially to outsiders. Between 2000 and 2007, the neo-Nazi terror cell National Socialist Underground (NSU) carried out a series of racist crimes, including murdering eight Turks and one Greek, all of whom were living in Germany. Thilo Sarrazin’s 2010 runaway bestseller Germany Does Itself In let the genie further out of the bottle, cautioning that immigrants have been steadily destroying German society. In September of this year, Germany’s upper house of parliament approved tighter rules for immigrants from Balkan states, which critics aAll Related
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