Thilo is back: Europe Doesn't Need the Euro

Why does Thilo Sarrazin matter so much? It's not so much his message as where he comes from: the center-left. And center-left is relatively far-left by American standards. He made waves with his anti-immigration book in 2010, and now he's out with an anti-euro screed, arguing that the euro is based on German Holocaust guilt and that it's time to get over it. I covered his earlier work here and here.

German Author Says Berlin Is Hostage to Holocaust in Euro Crisis

In his latest work, the combative politician, a maverick member of the opposition center-left Social Democratic Party, controversially argues that Germany is being pressured to bail out the euro zone because it perpetrated the Holocaust.
Sarrazin writes that supporters of euro bonds in Germany "are driven by that very German reflex, that we can only finally atone for the Holocaust and World War II when we have put all our interests and money into European hands," according to excerpts published in German media ahead of the book launch.

Politicians lined up to dismiss the comment as an attempt to whip up publicity for his book launch with crude rhetoric laced with far-right undertones.

"It is pitiful that he invokes the Holocaust to secure the maximum possible attention for his theories on euro bonds," the parliamentary floor leader of the opposition Greens, Jürgen Trittin, told the newspaper Die Welt on Monday, adding that Sarrazin was engaging in "deutsche mark chauvinism."

The European left's response to a left-winger, Sarrazin, talking up "right-wing" ideas is to persecute him. This is a crystal clear example of why the right is ascendant and the ideological left is headed for major political losses in the future (not necessarily the next election). The left is reflexively and extremely anti-nationalist, nationalism being the sentiment that a people deserve self-determination. That idea was the cause of two world wars and countless other wars, as people declared independence and formed their own countries in the 20th Century. In the West, the idea became associated with racism and inverted itself, to the point where defending the native culture was considered racist. Now, the tide is turning against this extreme idea.

Carsten Schneider, a budget policy spokesman for the SPD, said: "Sarrazin is once again trying out the usual provocation. His criticism of the euro is nationalist and reactionary." Volker Kauder, the parliamentary group leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said: "Sarrazin is wrong again. The euro is a success story and will remain so."

Ha!

But whether intended or not, his phrasing chimes with the line of argument often cited by far-right politicians of the National Democratic Party -- that Germany is being cowed by its Holocaust guilt, and that it has done enough atoning.

It comes as no surprise that the NPD issued a statement this week praising Sarrazin and criticizing Germany's "psychopathological guilt complex that makes it fulfil almost every wish of self-interested foreign countries even 67 years after the end of the war."

Germany's agreement to bail out Greece reveals its "susceptibility to blackmail," Sarrazin wrote, alluding to crimes committed by the Nazis before and during World War II. "This policy is turning Germany into a hostage of all those in the euro zone who may in the future, for whatever reason, need help," he said.

Germany does have a Holocaust guilt complex, but it is fading among the youth. Which politicians stand to gain in the future? Those who use German guilt to push forward an unpopular political integration with Europe, or those who say enough is enough?

Nevertheless, many of Sarrazin's arguments are widely accepted. He says it was a mistake to launch the currency before Europe had a common fiscal policy, and that it was wrong to let countries like Greece join because their economies weren't ready.

He concludes that Europe can only get out of its mess if it rapidly moves towards political union, which he opposes, or that the union should be transformed into a looser formation that allows troubled member states to quit so that they can regain competitiveness through currency devaluation.

One cannot even use the term nationalism in the West without invoking the idea of the Holocaust because they have been inextricably linked. However, nationalism at base is the desire for self-determination for one's cultural/ethnic/racial group. Nationalism was the source of war and conflict during the 20th Centure because different groups were living together under the same government. The war in former Yugoslavia was a repeat of the European world wars , and as with those wars, ended with ethnic groups relocated to new ethnic states.

The new nationalism isn't as threatening because there isn't an Empire breaking apart that is filled with different ethnic groups. Germany will not invade Poland or the Czech Republic on the pretext of Germans living there, since the Germans are now in Germany. What will happen though, is native cultures will express themselves more robustly. Unassimilated immigrants may be asked to leave, and in the case of European political integration, it means nation states will say no. The latter is the more important case. The European elite is left-wing and pro-European integration. They view nationalism as an existential threat to the European project and their opposition is tactical, rather than strategic. They don't have an intellectual response to his arguments and they will grow more shrill as the ideological right gains ground, eventually sweeping the left from power. It could come with a victory for a right-wing party, but just as likely, and more so in Germany, the victory of a left-wing politician who creates a larger political majority by incorporating right-wing ideas.