Opinion

Cologne Won’t Wake Up Germany’s Leaders

Scott Greer Contributor
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Germany finally cracked down on a large gathering of people authorities believe are a threat to the public peace. Unfortunately, that crowd of folks was a demonstration against Cologne’s rape gangs — not against an actual rape gang.

The German nationalist group Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) hosted a rally in Cologne on Saturday which drew more than 1,700 people. Things at one point got a little too rowdy for the riot squads patrolling the event and the police turned water cannons on the crowd.

The fact that water cannons and fully-militarized police were used against people protesting the rapes while the authorities did nothing to stop Arab and North African men from wreaking havoc on New Year’s Eve is emblematic of the political system’s priorities.

The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on the nationalist demonstrators as they chanted at charging officers, “Where, where, where were you on New Year’s Eve?”

In the aftermath of New Year’s rape gang catastrophe — which witnessed 1,000 men of Arab appearance sexually assault and rob over 100 women in Cologne and other cities throughout Germany — the European country’s leaders have tried to evince a tough demeanor.

Cologne’s chief of police was sacked for his ineptitude and Chancellor Angela Merkel has vowed to deport migrants who commit crimes in Germany. But that still leaves the little problem of allowing tens of thousands of unvetted migrants to settle in the country.

In 2015, Germany took in over a million refugees and Merkel still plans on letting thousands more in during 2016. Her plan to deny refugee-status to known criminals is not sitting well with Germany’s left-wing parties (Merkel and her party, the Christian Democratic Union, are considered center-right) and may not actually go into effect. (RELATED: Merkel Threw Her Country Under The Bus And All She Got Was This Crummy Time Magazine Cover)

So if the new law deporting criminal migrants doesn’t go into effect, Merkel’s government would have nothing to show for its efforts to calm public anger in the wake of New Year’s chaos. It’s also a government still committed to a refugee policy a majority of the country opposes and, as evidenced by the large number of recent arrivals involved in the Cologne attacks, may now threaten the the safety of millions of citizens. (RELATED: The Migrant Rape Culture The Political Elite Wishes Were Fake)

Not surprisingly these same pro-migrant officials and their friends in the media tried to do their utmost to veil the true nature of the rape gangs.

Leaked documents show that police dragged their feet on announcing the sexual assaults to the public until the media did the job for them and their official statement on New Year’s Day said the prior’s night atmosphere was “relaxed.” Police acted this way because the reports of most of the suspects being Syrian made announcing the crimes “politically awkward.” (RELATED: German Police Allegedly Covered Up ‘Syrian Refugee’ Status Of NYE Sex Assault Perpetrators Because It Was ‘Politically Awkward’)

Then Cologne’s now-departed police chief said at a January 5 press conference that authorities had no idea what the attackers’ backgrounds were, which was directly contradicted by officers who were there New Years’s Eve. The city’s mayor tried to ridiculously assert that the North African appearance of the suspects proved they weren’t refugees. And the largest TV broadcaster in the country knew about the ordeal well-before it became an international scandal, but refused to break it to the public. (RELATED: Germany’s Largest Broadcaster Apologizes For Not Reporting Sexual Assault Attacks)

Meanwhile, government and media elites are trying their hardest to suppress anti-immigrant sentiment. Besides the water cannons, Merkel’s administration is trying to get all social media posts it considers “hateful” toward migrants eradicated. Germany already legally punishes public speech the courts find offensive, and being found guilty of hate speech can result in jail time. Spy probes are being called for against Pegida, and all nationalist leaders can expect to be raked over the coals by the press.

What we’re seeing in Germany disturbingly resembles the practices of the old communist German Democratic Republic. East Germany, being a very undemocratic republic in spite of its name, made sure to manipulate and deceive the public in order to bolster its policies. Failed measures would be greeted with reports of great success in the state-controlled newspapers. Those same publications would keep to the government-approved line and dissidents would be shamed… or worse.

Not only that, but demonstrations the government didn’t like would be brutally suppressed.

Of course, there’s no Stasi for the liberal democratic Germany and no one is being executed or sent to labor camps for speaking out against migrants. Additionally, the unified Germany has a thriving, post-industrial economy — a thing never dreamed possible in the GDR.

But the fact remains that the German elite will resort to illiberal means to protect their disastrous refugee embrace. Instead of allowing the people to have a voice in the matter, the political elites are keeping the decision process all to themselves.

No wonder the nationalist protesters have embraced the slogan of the demonstrators who brought down East Germany’s out-of-touch regime: “Wir sind das Volk!” (We are the people.)

It is interesting and contrary to East Germany that German leaders would maintain this posture in the face of an issue that jeopardizes public order. Merkel’s nation is seeking to curtail otherwise non-threatening behavior in order to obscure the rampant criminality of non-citizens living in the country off the government’s dime.

That insane discrepancy is best explained by the term anarcho-tyranny, and Germany is not alone among liberal democracies in practicing it. What better else explains a government that seeks to criminalize “Islamophobia” but throws its hands up in befuddlement at Islamic terror? (RELATED: Hunting Down Islamophobia While The World Burns)

The sad thing is that more crimes like the New Year’s eve chaos are likely to occur in Germany — if the refugee intake continues unabated. As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat pointed out in his Sunday column, allowing in tens of thousands of single young men into a strange country is a recipe for disaster.

The only hope for Germany is for its people to find new leaders who will stand up for the nation’s future and close its borders to the flood of unvetted migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

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