Germany's 'Right-Wing Extremists' Reinvent Themselves as Grassroots Activists

It's always right-wing political groups who're branded as "extremists."

Far left-wing Stalinists are "liberals," to hear the idiots in the mainstream press.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Tapping Fears Over Migrants, Germany’s Far Right Expands Influence":

#WSJ Migrant Crisis Re-Energizes German Far Right: After failing at the ballot box, Germany’s right-wing extre... https://t.co/0SEBl6QHk5

— guynextdoor (@guynextdoorRVA) December 29, 2015

BERLIN—For years, Klaus Armstroff, head of an obscure German far-right party that calls for sweeping nationalizations, the death penalty and the return of lost pre-World War II territories, struggled to market his ideas. Now he can hardly keep up with demand for his “propaganda material.”

“People call us who have nothing to do with our party. But they order material to wake up their neighbors,” said Mr. Armstroff, who founded the party, called The Third Way, in 2013. Chancellor Angela Merkel, he said, “is playing into our hands.”

Public angst about the government’s decision to open the country’s doors to hundreds of thousands of migrants and the absence of a counterproposal from Germany’s mainstream parties have energized a far-right scene that, until recently, had appeared on the verge of political extinction....

Ballhausen, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, is one of many towns and villages where far-right activists have harnessed anxiety about the migrants to push their agenda, as Dorothea Schröder, a 59-year-old social worker, found out recently.

When Ms. Schröder and her local church decided to help refugees this autumn, she first turned to neighbors in Ballhausen for support. But it wasn’t forthcoming. After she and the local parish announced that they would host a migrant family in a house owned by the church, Ms. Schröder and her few supporters found stickers from The Third Way opposing refugees on mailboxes and doors. The village’s bus stops are currently daubed with a swastika and the runes of the Nazi Waffen-SS unit.

Known far-right activists turned up at a meeting on the issue that the church organized last month. The gathering soon descended into a shouting match, and police had to intervene to restore order.

“Some said the migrants should all drown in the Mediterranean, they should all be put into mines and be buried, or that they should fight in Syria and help to rebuild their country just as the Germans did after 1945,” Ms. Schröder said.

The NPD, the most well-known of Germany’s few, small extreme-right parties, had limited electoral success regionally in the past decade but has since become marginalized. Now, local politicians say, its former and current leaders are often among the organizers of the anti-migrant and anti-Muslim protests that have popped up across the country this year, particularly in the former communist east. And police said they suspected neo-Nazi activists of coordinating a rising wave of attacks against refugee shelters, which have quadrupled to more than 800 this year from 2014.

Cologne's Muslim Rape Gangs Spark Bitter Debate on Refugees in Germany (VIDEO)

Here's the headline at the Telegraph UK's front page, "Anti-Islam protest as Merkel warns Germany will deport migrant sex attackers and police admit 'majority' of suspects were refugees."

Heh, sexual savagery in Germany is fomenting a major backlash.

Here's Der Spiegel, "Chaos and Violence: How New Year's Eve in Cologne Has Changed Germany" (via Memeorandum):

New Year's Eve in Cologne rapidly descended into a chaotic free-for-all involving sexual assault and theft, most of it apparently committed by foreigners. It has launched a bitter debate over immigration and refugees in Germany -- one that could change the country.

A lot happened on New Year's Eve in Cologne, much of it contradictory, much of it real, much of it imagined. Some was happenstance, some was exaggerated and much of it was horrifying. In its entirety, the events of Cologne on New Year's Eve and in the days that followed adhered to a script that many had feared would come true even before it actually did. The fears of both immigration supporters and virulent xenophobes came true. The fears of Pegida people and refugee helpers; the fears of unknown women and of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Even Donald Trump, the brash Republican presidential candidate in the US, felt it necessary to comment. Germany, he trumpeted, "is going through massive attacks to its people by the migrants allowed to enter the country."

For some, the events finally bring to light what they have always been saying: that too many foreigners in the country bring too many problems along with them. For the others, that which happened is what they have been afraid of from the very beginning: that ugly images of ugly behavior by migrants would endanger what has been a generally positive mood in Germany with respect to the refugees.
As inexact and unclear as the facts from Cologne may be, they carry a clear message: Difficult days are ahead. And they beg a couple of clear questions: Is Germany really sure that it can handle the influx of refugees? And: Does Germany really have the courage and the desire to become the country in Europe with the greatest number of immigrants?

The first week of 2016 was a hectic one. Tempers flared and hysteria spread. It should be noted that an attack would have triggered similar national emotions, or the murder of a child in a park or any other crime that touched on our deepest fears and serviced our long-held stereotypes -- any crime in which a foreigner was involved. On New Year's Eve in Cologne, it was -- according to numerous witness reports -- drunk young men from North Africa who formed gangs to go after defenseless individuals. They humiliated and robbed -- and they sexually assaulted women.

Their behavior, and the subsequent discussion of their behavior in the halls of political power in Berlin, in the media and on the Internet, could easily trigger a radical shift in Germany's refugee and immigration policies. The pressure built up by the images and stories from Cologne make it virtually impossible to continue on as before. That, too, is a paradox: The pressure would be no less intense even if not a single one of the refugees and migrants who arrived in 2015 were among the perpetrators...

You gotta love how Spiegel's all trying to be even handed. The fact is conservatives predicted these very outcomes from the beginning. For the left, they think the conservative reaction confirms their warning of "fascism." In the end, it's the voters who get to decide. Angela Merkel's gonna find out she made a huge mistake. Epic.

But keep reading.

Germany's Gender Quotas for Corporate Boardrooms Get Collective Yawn

They're so progressive over there (*cough, cough*).

At Der Spiegel, "Boardroom Quotas: The Slow Pace of Gender Equality in Corporate Germany":

Germany's statutory gender quota for supervisory boards took effect at the beginning of the year, yet the ratio of women to men is still alarmingly low. Many companies don't even seem to realize that the new law applies to them.

Sometimes, in cases when the present seems less than appealing, remembering the past can be helpful. Take the year 2001, for instance. Deutsche Bank's then-CFO and eventual supervisory board chairman Clemens Börsig was appearing before a congress of European businesswomen when he took the liberty of advising the approximately 1,000 participants to orient their career ambitions not only vertically, but "horizontally" as well. There are plenty of positions to be had in middle management, he said, women don't always have to set their sights on the highest positions.

When the women in the audience started laughing, Börsig apparently didn't even understand why.

It's comforting to think that no board member at Deutsche Bank -- or any other major industry player for that matter -- would dare suggest such a thing today. It goes without saying that women are as deserving of a place in the upper echelons of Europe's largest economy -- and that they are as qualified academically and as esteemed -- as their male counterparts. Political and societal pressure is just too great to deny women's access to leadership positions, top jobs and, consequently, power.

Oh, really?

In May last year, the so-called "Law on Equal Participation of Women and Men in Leadership Positions in the Private and Public Sector" came into effect. It was meant to ensure that at least 30 percent of all supervisory board positions in Germany's largest companies are held by women. Since Jan. 1 of this year, these firms must fill vacant board positions with women until that 30 percent threshold is reached. Furthermore, around 3,500 other public companies are also required to present a strategy for getting more women into top jobs.

It's a law that above all shows one thing: Not a whole lot has changed since Börsig's revealing remarks about the advancement of women. It has been known for two years that a binding quota was imminent, yet the ratio of female to male board members at the 102 companies that are either listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange or that have employee participation in decision-making still stands at 23.1 percent. For all the talk of inclusion in the last year, that number has risen by only 1.8 percent...

Well, I'm sure they'll have plenty of Muslima refugees flooding into the workplace pipeline in no time. I mean, isn't that the intent of the whole "welcoming" thing, to relieve the stress on the German economy from declining population ratios?

Actually, who knows? Everything's all pretty much fucked up nowadays, thanks to radical leftist ideology and craven political correctness.

But keep reading, FWIW.

Cologne Mayor's Advice on Mass Assault Stirs Outcry (VIDEO)

Following-up from Tuesday, "Cologne, Germany, Shocked — Shocked! — by Dozens of Sexual Assaults on New Year's Eve (VIDEO)."

At NYT, "Cologne Mayor’s ‘Arm’s Length’ Sex Assault Advice Stirs Outcry."

Not so thrilled about all those "vulnerable" refugees now.

More at RT, "'At arm's length' Cologne mayor proposes code of conduct for women after NY attacks."

Cologne, Germany, Shocked — Shocked! — by Dozens of Sexual Assaults on New Year's Eve (VIDEO)

At Deutsche Welle, "A 'new dimension' of sexual assault in Cologne."

And at Der Spiegel, "New Year's Eve Attacks: Dozens of Women Sexually Assaulted in Cologne":

Dozens of women celebrating New Year's Eve in Cologne have said they were the victims of sexual assault. With a group of men with North African and Middle Eastern appearances under suspicion, the incident threatens to augment growing concern over Germany's refugee policies.

German politicians and officials are voicing concern on Tuesday over reports that dozens of women were harassed and groped in the heart of Cologne on New Year's Eve by a large group of men on the crowded square in front of the city's main train station. According to police, many also had personal items stolen and fireworks were also fired into the crowd of revelers. According to police, some 90 complaints had been filed by Tuesday morning, with witnesses saying that the perpetrators were young men between 15 and 35 years old and appeared to have migrant backgrounds.

"We will not tolerate such cowardly and abhorrent attacks," said German Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday. "This is apparently an entirely new dimension of organized crime." All of those involved, Maas demanded, must be "identified and made accountable."

At a press conference on Monday evening, Cologne's police chief, Wolfgang Albers, said that a quarter of the complaints made were related to sexual harassment or groping, with many others pertaining to theft of purses, wallets and mobile phones. He said that smaller groups of men repeatedly emerged from a crowd of about 1,000 young men to surround women, harass them and steal from them. According to the Cologne daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, many of the presumed perpetrators are suspected of being from a large group of men that has attracted the attention of police in the past several months. Prior to New Year's Eve, the group had been involved in theft and petty crimes in Cologne nightlife districts.

"The entire square was full of almost exclusively men with just a few fearful women among them being stared at," says Anne, a 27-year-old who was at the scene on New Year's Eve and who spoke to SPIEGEL ONLINE. "I can hardly describe it. I felt very uncomfortable." She says that she was groped soon after arriving to the square.

Careful Calibration

The attacks occur at a time when sentiment toward Muslims and foreigners in Germany appears to be becoming increasingly antagonistic. Even as the numbers of refugees arriving in Germany has slowed with the onset of cold weather, those critical of Chancellor Angela Merkel's policy of welcoming refugees fleeing war and violence have become more vocal. Indeed, groups critical of Islam and foreigners have been quick to seek to appropriate the events in Cologne for their own purposes. Pegida, for example, the Islamophobic movement that got its start in Dresden, has posted several comments about the Cologne attacks on its numerous Facebook sites, with supporters responding in a predictably offensive manner.

Many German politicians commenting on Tuesday about the events in Cologne have been careful to calibrate their responses so as to avoid playing into the hands of right-wing Islamophobes. "We will not tolerate organized groups of men from North Africa that debase defenseless women with brazen sexual attacks," said Ralf Jäger, interior minister of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. He added, however, that the authorities will do everything in their power to ensure that such attacks are not repeated. "We owe that to women as well as to those North African refugees who want to live peacefully among us."

Germany's integration commissioner, Aydan Özoguz, demanded a rapid investigation "because on the one hand, the women need clarity and on the other, refugees and foreigners are quickly becoming the focus of broad suspicion."

Despite such urgings, however, it will likely take some time before any of the perpetrators can be identified...

More at Pamela Geller's, "VIDEO Shows WILD MUSLIM CHAOS on New Years in Germany, Sex Attacks, Fireworks THROWN at Crowd."

Denmark and Sweden Tighten Border Controls to Staunch Tide of Jihadist 'Refugees' (VIDEO)

I don't know. Perhaps even some of the Scandinavia social justice loonies are starting to wake up. Of course, the prospect of being beheaded on the streets has a bracing effect.

At the New York Times, "Sweden and Denmark Add Border Checks to Stem Flow of Migrants":

LONDON — The continued flow of people along Europe’s migration trail, from Turkey and Greece to the Balkans to Scandinavia, faced new impediments on Monday as two of the northernmost destinations further tightened border controls in response to political, economic and logistical pressures.

Sweden, once one of the most welcoming of nations for refugees, introduced new identity checks on Monday for travelers arriving from Denmark. Fearful that migrants who otherwise would pass through on their way to Sweden would now be unable to leave, Denmark swiftly moved to impose new controls on people traveling via its border with Germany.

The moves by the two Scandinavian countries represented another step in the erosion of the ideal of borderless travel across most of the European Union, amid rising concerns about the costs imposed by the tide of migration and fears that terrorists are seeking to enter Europe masquerading as refugees.

In recent months, Scandinavian countries, like other countries in Europe, have expressed increasing concern about the scale of the influx of migrants seeking to reach prosperous Northern European countries known for their generous welfare systems and for relatively welcoming attitudes.

The arrival of migrants — roughly one million reached Germany last year alone, though a significant minority were from other parts of Europe rather than from Syria, Iraq and other conflict-ridden nations — has gradually led European countries from south to north to seek to stem the tide.

Hungary built a razor-wire fence along its border to keep migrants out. Denmark has cut benefits to new arrivals by about 50 percent and has introduced tough language requirements for those seeking permanent residency. Finland has issued news releases in Arabic detailing additional restrictions, apparently with the aim of warning would-be asylum seekers that the country is not a paradise.

Under the temporary border controls introduced Monday in Sweden, travelers to Sweden from Denmark will have to show valid identification with a photograph, like a passport, for the first time in more than half a century. The move raised the prospect of continuing delays in travel between the two nations, especially on the Danish side of the Oresund Bridge, a major link between Copenhagen, the Danish capital, and Malmo in southern Sweden, a popular gateway for migrants seeking to enter Sweden.

The new border controls in Sweden are likely to present a hurdle to thousands of would-be asylum seekers, many of whom lack official documents. (The Oresund Bridge has also gained a foothold in popular culture, being at the center of the hit Scandinavian crime television series “The Bridge,” which starts with detectives from the two countries teaming up to investigate the murder of a woman whose body is found on the structure.)

Still more.

Shunned by Canada and Sweden, Unmarried Syrian Muslim Woman Opts for Sensuality-Drenched Brazil

Well, I guess those Canadian and Scandinavian welfare states aren't so welcoming after all.

At the Los Angeles Times, "FLEEING SYRIA: Refugees find dizzying freedoms and unexpected dangers in Brazil":

Soon after she arrived, she began to feel conspicuous. On the street, on the bus, in the subway, people looked. They didn’t seem hostile, just puzzled. Even in Latin America’s biggest city, a woman in a headscarf stood out.

“Everyone was staring, and I was feeling alone,” says Dana Balkhi, 27. “I felt like I was choking.”

She had come to Brazil by herself, an anomaly among unmarried Muslim women. In Syria, she had studied English literature at Damascus University and loved the novels of Jane Austen.

After a missile hit her house, she fled to Turkey with her sister, but couldn’t find work there.

Canada said no, then Sweden said no, and in the winter of 2013, she faced a choice. She could return home, as her sister did, even as civil war obliterated the country. Or she could try Brazil, which was handing out fast, low-hassle “humanitarian visas” to Syrians escaping the carnage.

She went on Google and typed: Sao Paulo Arabic community helping refugees, and found some Brazilian-based Muslims who offered to help.

Who would she be coming with? they wanted to know.

Just me, she said.

They picked her up at the airport in December 2013 and gave her a bed. She learned to brace herself for the questions, when local Muslims discovered she was on her own.

“Not everyone respects my choice,” she says. “They’ll say my family doesn’t care about me, or I’m not a good girl. Of course, there are other girls that did that, but not many.”

Who knows?

Maybe she'll hook up with a bisexual fitness club down on the Copacabana? Who needs that hijab when you can be strutting a hip monokini down the beach?

Still more.

The Rape of Sweden

Condell seems to produce one vlog per per month, so it's probably still a week or two until he comes out with his next one, no doubt on the Paris attacks.

But we'll see. We'll see.

This one's perhaps hard-hitting enough, man.

Stopping the European Migrant Invasion

This is good, "How to Solve the European Migrant Crisis in 5 Steps":

Via Bare Naked Islam, "HUNGARIAN Prime Minister accuses George Soros of stoking the Muslim invasion to weaken Europe."

Sweden Strains to Handle Massive Influx Muslim Migrants (VIDEO)

The video's at PBS News Hour, "Migrant-magnet Sweden strains to shelter unexpected influx." (Transcript.)

And see this devastating report at the Gatestone Institute, "Sweden Close to Collapse."

Germany Shows Signs of Strain from Mass of Refugees

At Der Spiegel, "'We're Under Water': Germany Shows Signs of Strain from Mass of Refugees":

The unceasing influx of refugees is creating tremendous uncertainty in Germany. Many towns and cities are calling for help and the government appears to be rudderless. Pressure is mounting for Chancellor Angela Merkel to act.

The road to the reception camp in Hesepe has become something of a refugees' avenue. Small groups of young men wander along the sidewalk. A family from Syria schleps a clutch of shopping bags towards the gate. A Sudanese man snakes along the road on his bicycle. Most people don't speak a word of German, just a little fragmentary English, but when they see locals, they offer a friendly wave and call out, "Hello!"

The main road "is like a pedestrian shopping zone," says one resident, "except without the stores." Red-brick houses with pretty gardens line both sides of the street, and Kathrin and Ralf Meyer are standing outside theirs. "It's gotten a bit too much for us," says the 31-year-old mother of three. "Too much noise, too many refugees, too much garbage."
Now the Meyers are planning to move out in November. They're sick of seeing asylum-seekers sit on their garden wall or rummage through their garbage cans for anything they can use. Though "you do feel sorry for them," says Ralf, who's handed out some clothes that his children have grown out of. "But there are just too many of them here now."

Hesepe, a village of 2,500 that comprises one district of the small town of Bramsche in the state of Lower Saxony, is now hosting some 4,000 asylum-seekers, making it a symbol of Germany's refugee crisis. Locals are still showing a great willingness to help, but the sheer number of refugees is testing them. The German states have reported some 409,000 new arrivals between Sept. 5 and Oct. 15 -- more than ever before in a comparable time period -- though it remains unclear how many of those include people who have been registered twice...

Astonishing, really.

As Pat Condell said recently, Germany's committing suicide to assuage its guilt from the Holocaust. It's not good.

Former English Defence League Leader Tommy Robinson Speaks at Massive PEGIDA Rally in Dresden (VIDEO)

At Blazing Cat Fur, "Tommy Robinson Speaks to 40,000 Strong Crowd at the Pegida Anti-Muslim Invader Rally in Germany."

And watch, via Ruptly:



PREVIOUSLY: "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West."

Hungary Arrests Migrants in Border Crackdown (VIDEO)

It's pretty interesting, at NYT, "Hungary Detains Migrants in Border Crackdown."

The crackdown is almost continent-wide at this point, because compassion!

Plus, video at Euronews, "'First arrests made' as Hungary cracks down on immigration."

America Can — And Must — Do More to Help Europe's Migrants. Really?

I don't know?

I'm sure we can take some, but we should be careful not to take too many. As Andrea Tantaros has warned, it'd be national suicide.

But see Julia Ioffe, at Foreign Policy, "Je Suis Refugee":

The reason I’m writing this in English — and that I have a column in Foreign Policy at all — is that 25 years ago, on April 28, 1990, my family arrived in the United States as refugees from the Soviet Union. It is a day the four of us mark every year because it was the beginning of a new, free, and prosperous life. Had it not been for the American Jews lobbying Congress and the White House on our behalf for years, had it not been for the Jackson-Vanik amendment, had it not been for the fact that the geopolitical struggle against the USSR was hitched up to its humanitarian ramifications, had it not been for Mikhail Gorbachev wanting to put a human face on socialism, I would be writing this in Russian. More likely, I probably wouldn’t be writing this at all.

I think often about April 28, 1990, and the two years my parents spent waiting in lines at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. It’s a moment that splits my life in two. What would my life have been like if not for all those political forces — and my parents’ foresight and dedication — that snapped my 7-year-old self on a radically different course?

I don’t know that my life would have been terrible, but I know that I would not have reconnected with my family’s Jewish heritage. I would not have gotten to follow my passion for history with some of the world’s leading scholars at Princeton. I would have a lot more health issues, and I would also probably be divorced with a couple of kids, living in a country that is increasingly hostile not only to its neighbors but to its own citizens. If I would’ve been anything like the friends and family we left behind, I would probably be scrambling for an exit — to Israel, Latvia, anywhere where the walls aren’t closing in like they are in Moscow.

Sometimes, my American life still feels like a dream and an accident. And in the course of it, I’ve come across many people whose lives are accidents, too — accidents far starker and more implausible than mine.

One of my closest friends is the son of a man who, at the age of six, was whisked out of prewar Prague by Sir Nicholas Winton as part of the Kindertransport that saved so many and yet so very few Jewish children. A friend from high school recently posted the desperate letters her German-Jewish grandfather sent to the United States, hoping someone would sponsor him as a relative, trying to escape the swelling sense of danger that was slowly squeezing him of oxygen. One of the first friends I made at college was a Bosnian Muslim refugee. We spoke sometimes of the sheer wonder that the two of us, two refugee kids randomly plucked from a bad place and planted in a good place, should end up at such an elite institution. Last fall, I attended the wedding of a friend, the granddaughter of Armenian refugees from the genocide, and a Bosnian refugee who had escaped Banja Luka on his own as a teenager.

All of these people’s lives in America are accidents of history and politics. Had war not come to Banja Luka or Prague or Berlin, had there not been rumors in 1988 that there would be pogroms in Moscow to celebrate the thousandth anniversary of the christening of Rus, we would’ve lived on in those places. Some of us would have been born as other people, sure, but we would’ve found a certain blinkered happiness in things because we would not have known an alternative life...

Hmm... Very moving, but it's not Jewish refugees by the tens of thousands --- even hundreds of thousands --- now flooding Europe's borders, and soon our as well. It's Muslim refugees, and if folks think they've got "no-go zones" in Europe now, just wait until after this latest wave of migration plays out.

It's a warning for the United States, that's for sure. Even warmhearted stories like Ms. Ioffe's can't mask the dangers of untrammeled migration flows to the U.S. Think of Kathyn Steinle, and then imagine Charlie Hebdo-style attacks on top of that. That's what's awaiting the U.S. if we succumb to suicidal compassion and open our borders to the Third World hordes.

Still more at the link.

Eastern European Nations Protest Massive Flood of Third World 'Refugees' (VIDEO)

All's not well with the migrant crisis in Europe, especially in Eastern and Central European countries.

Here's video, at Ruptly, "Czech Republic: Thousands rally against EU refugee policy," and "Poland: Thousands of nationalists rally against refugees in Warsaw."

At the New York Times, "Eastern Bloc’s Resistance to Refugees Highlights Europe’s Cultural and Political Divisions":

WARSAW — Even though the former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe have been asked to accept just a tiny fraction of the refugees that Germany and other nations are taking, their fierce resistance now stands as the main impediment to a unified European response to the crisis.

Poland’s new president, Andrzej Duda, has complained about “dictates” from the European Union to accept migrants flowing onto the Continent from the Middle East and Africa.

Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico, says his country will accept only Christian refugees as it would be “false solidarity” to force Muslims to settle in a country without a single mosque. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s hard-line prime minister, calls the influx a “rebellion by illegal migrants” and pledges a new crackdown this week.

The discord has further unsettled a union already shaky from struggles over the euro and the Greek financial crisis and now facing a historic influx of people attracted by Europe’s relative peace and prosperity.

When representatives of the European Union nations meet on Monday to take up a proposal for allocating refugees among them, Central and Eastern European nations are likely to be the most vocal opponents. Their stance — reflecting a mix of powerful far-right movements, nationalism, racial and religious prejudices as well as economic arguments that they are less able to afford to take in outsiders than their wealthier neighbors — is the latest evidence of the stubborn cultural and political divides that persist between East and West.

When joining the European Union — as the former Communist countries have done since 2004 — nations are asked to pledge support to a raft of so-called European values, including open markets, transparent government, respect for an independent media, open borders, cultural diversity, protection of minorities and a rejection of xenophobia.

But the reality is that the former Communist states have proved sluggish in actually absorbing many of these values and practicing them. Oligarchs, cronyism and endemic corruption remain a part of daily life in many of the countries, freedom of the press is in decline while rising nationalism and populist political movements have stirred anti-immigrant tensions.

“People must remember that Poland has been transitioning from communism for only 25 years,” Lech Walesa, who led that country’s independence movement, said in an interview. “Our salaries and houses are still smaller than those in the West. Many people here don’t believe that they have anything to share with migrants. Especially that they see that migrants are often well-dressed, sometimes better than many Poles.”

Few migrants, in fact, are particularly interested in settling in Eastern Europe, preferring to head to Germany or Scandinavia, where social welfare benefits are higher, employment opportunities greater and immigrant communities better established. In that sense, migrants are aligned with leaders in Eastern and Central European capitals, who frequently argue that the 28-member bloc should focus first on securing its borders and figuring out a way to end the war in Syria before talking about mandatory quotas for accepting refugees...

More.

Photo Credit: London's Daily Mail, "Eastern Europeans complain about the new migrants: 'Go Home!'"

The Third World on the Move — Germany Adds Border Controls to Stem the 'Migrant' Invasion (VIDEO)

John Derbyshire's got a must-read post at VDare, "The Third World Is On The Move. This Will Get WAY Worse Before It Gets Better."

And you know, they're coming to America. Andrea Tantaros tweeted the other day, "Taking Islamic refugees would be suicide. It's an easy way for ISIS to infiltrate US, & where does it end? We have enough immigration probs."

Well, in any case, humanitarian Germany, where the "migrants" were just welcomed with "open arms," has established "temporary" border controls to stem the invasion. At the Telegraph UK, "German border controls mark sudden shift in refugee policy":

Germany announces emergency border protections after weeks of leading Europe's response to the migrant crisis.

Germany’s announcement on Sunday that it was instituting emergency border protections marks a sudden shift in its response to the refugee crisis.

Chancellor Angela Merkel was hailed as a saviour after her government said last month it expected to take in 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers this year alone.

Germany also became the EU first country to suspend the so-called Dublin protocol, which mandates that refugees seek asylum in the first European country they enter, by declaring last month that all Syrian refugees could remain in Germany regardless of the country through which they entered...

Keep reading.

Tens of Thousands Demonstrate in Europe in 'Day of Action in Solidarity With' Refugees (VIDEO)

At WSJ, "Tens of Thousands Demonstrate in Europe in Support of Refugees":

Wave of sympathy contrasts with protest in Warsaw against plan to take in migrants.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators in Europe rallied on Saturday to express sympathy toward migrants seeking refuge in the region amid the largest migration of displaced people since the end of World War II.

About 30,000 people converged in Copenhagen, according to city police, carrying banners such as “Refugees Welcome.” The rally, as well as smaller gatherings in other Danish cities, was calm and peaceful, police said.

In Hamburg, Germany, more than 24,000 people demonstrated against xenophobia and racism, said a spokeswoman for the city’s police. She said they were mostly peaceful but police briefly used water cannons after some stones and firecrackers were thrown.

Demonstrators also marched in London to pressure the British government to take in more refugees. Among those in attendance was Jeremy Corbyn, just hours after being elected as leader of the U.K.’s opposition Labour Party.

The rallies further highlight the political rift created by the exploding migrant crisis in Europe. The hundreds of thousands of people seeking refuge this summer have left Europe divided between nations on transit routes on one side and those countries migrants see as preferred destinations on the other.

The president of Hungary, one such transit route, defended his country’s tough migrant policy on Saturday.

“These migrants don’t come from the war zone, but from camps in Syria’s neighboring countries Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, where they were in safety” and thus didn’t flee for fear of their lives, but for wanting a better life, Viktor Orban told German tabloid Bild in an interview. “Personally, I can understand this, but there is no fundamental right to a better life. There’s only a right to security and human dignity.”

Earlier this month, Hungary’s premier courted controversy by saying the country’s borders must be defended as Europe’s identity was rooted in Christianity, while most of the migrants arriving on the continent were Muslims.

Europe is struggling to handle its largest flow of migrants since the aftermath of World War II. Why is the crisis happening now? The WSJ's Niki Blasina explains.

Mr. Orban’s tough stance drew criticism from Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann.

“To put refugees on trains in the belief they would go elsewhere reminds me of the darkest time on our continent,” Mr. Faymann told weekly magazine Der Spiegel in an interview, in a reference to Nazi Germany. Mr. Orban “acts irresponsibly when declaring everyone a migrant for economic reasons. He consciously uses a policy of deterrence,” he said.

In the Polish capital, about 7,000 people led by fringe nationalist groups protested on Saturday against the government’s plan to take in more than 2,200 refugees over the next two years.

“It’s a war of two civilizations,” said one of the Warsaw rally’s leaders...

Still more.

Europe's Indifference to Syria's Refugees

Well, indifference, and "identity politics."

From Caroline Glick, at the Jerusalem Post:

The war in Syria broke out nearly five years ago.

Hundreds of thousands have already been killed in the conflict. Ten million people – nearly half of Syria’s pre-war population – have been displaced. For the past four years, millions of Syrians have been living in refugee camps in neighboring states – first and foremost in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Most of the refugees now arriving in Europe are coming from these camps, rather than directly from Syria. Rather than help them either resettle in the lands to which they fled, or take action on the ground in Syria to enable them to return to their homes, the Europeans largely ignored them.

Part of the reason Europe has ignored Syria, of course, is indifference. So long as it’s happening “over there,” the Europeans really couldn’t care less.

But indifference alone does not explain how Europe has been taken by surprise by a humanitarian disaster of the magnitude now unfolding at its borders.

Identity politics have played a key role in shaping Europe’s failed Middle East politics – in Syria and throughout the increasingly destabilized Islamic world.

Identity politics distinguish between various groups based on how they fall on a spectrum of “oppression.”

Western nations, led by Europe and the US, are all classified as “oppressors,” due to their “imperialist” past.

The Islamic world writ large is classified as “oppressed.”

All groups that receive “oppressed” status are immune from judgment, much less resistance from those who fall on the side of the “oppressors.”

Given this taxonomy, Europeans along with the sectors of American society that have embraced identity policies are incapable of recognizing, much less taking action against, radical Islamists.

Those who are oppressed by the “oppressed” of the Islamic world – the Yazidis, Christians and Kurds, for instance – can receive no sustained protection from their jihadist oppressors by the “Muslim-oppressing” West.

The immunity identity politics confers on “oppressed” population groups adheres even when those groups themselves engage in oppression...

More.

Hungary Prime Minister Warns of 'Far-Reaching Consequences' in EU's Refugee-Sharing Plan (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban Pushes Back Against EU Migrant Sharing Plan":

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Friday warned the European Union not to impose a plan for sharing migrants across the bloc onto his government, ahead of a key meeting of EU ministers to discuss the issue on Monday.

EU officials have said they hope the bloc will give the proposal, which would see 120,000 asylum seekers distributed among the bloc’s member states, political backing on Monday. Trying to raise the stakes, European Council President Donald Tusk warned he will summon leaders to Brussels later this month if Monday’s meeting fails.

Although Hungary could benefit from the plan, by seeing asylum seekers who have registered in the country moved elsewhere, Mr. Orban warned of “far-reaching consequences” if the EU pushed ahead with the plan on Monday without his backing.

“It’s not possible to make decisions without the elected national leaders,” Mr. Orban said in a news conference in Budapest.

The European Commission, the bloc’s executive, put forward its proposals on Wednesday in a bid to stem the biggest migration crisis facing the region since the aftermath of World War II. Under its plan, 54,000 people who have arrived and registered in Hungary, would be sent to other EU countries.

The plan needs approval from a majority of national governments, meaning it cannot be vetoed by Hungary alone. Top EU officials have said if the proposal wins political backing on Monday, it should be formally signed off in October.

Speaking in Cyprus on Friday, Mr. Tusk—who organizes and chairs EU leaders’ meetings—said that if ministers fail to agree on Monday, “I will have to call an emergency meeting of the European Council still in September.”

If the decision is passed on to EU leaders, the plan would need the backing of all heads of government, including Mr. Orban. It would also delay the implementation of the proposal.

For his part, Hungarian foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said his country wouldn't support the EU plan because the priority should be “to gain control over the outer border of the European Union.”

In the first eight months of 2015, Hungary registered 170,000 people who crossed its border illegally on their way from countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have come through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia to Hungary in hopes of reaching more affluent and asylum friendly states in the EU, notably Germany.

Diplomats in Brussels say Hungary also argues that the redistribution plan will end up attracting more migrants to the EU. They note that since many of the asylum seekers arriving in Hungary quickly leave the country, there may be little incentive for Hungary to sign up to the plan.

If Hungary doesn't participate, the diplomats said, Germany has said it would be happy to take Budapest’s quota—meaning people who have arrived in Germany could be moved to other EU countries like France or Belgium. A spokesman for the German interior ministry didn't comment...

Still more.

European Union Proposes Distribution of 160,000 Refugees

Yeah, that oughta work.

Shoot, Juncker was heckled.

And 120,000? 160,000? What's another 40 thousand or so asylum seekers, meh? We've got room to spare!

At WSJ, "EU’s Juncker Proposes New Refugee Quota Plan as Bloc Struggles to Respond to Migrant Wave":

STRASBOURG, France—A top European Union official on Wednesday proposed redistributing 160,000 refugees across the bloc, but acknowledged that wouldn’t go far enough to address the largest flow of migrants to the continent since the aftermath of World War II.

The EU has sputtered in its attempts to craft a coherent approach to the crisis amid competing national interests and insistence by some countries—particularly in the poorer east—that taking in refugees must be voluntary.

The new plan, which has to be approved by a majority of EU governments, is the second attempt by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to help Greece, Italy and Hungary, the three countries on the front line of the crisis. The plan also seeks to speed up procedures across the bloc to send back migrants who don’t qualify for asylum.

“I do believe that given the gravity of the situation we face, this proposal is quite modest,” Mr. Juncker acknowledged at a news conference, adding that nearly 500,000 people have made their way to Europe in the past year.

But he pointed out that earlier even more modest plans were rejected by EU leaders and that if “we had taken decisions back then, perhaps we would have saved a lot of lives.”

Over the next two years, most EU countries—excluding the U.K., Denmark and Ireland, who have opt-outs from Europe’s common asylum system—would be required to take in a total of 160,000 refugees in hard-hit Italy, Greece and Hungary.

Germany, which is the main destination for migrants entering from those EU border states, is one of the architects of the proposal and hopes to diffuse the stream of people who would try to seek asylum there.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her call Wednesday for the EU to agree to binding rules, saying Mr. Juncker’s proposal was a “first step of a fair distribution” but more is needed.

According to German government estimates, some 800,000 people are expected to apply for asylum there this year alone.

“It’s not possible to set a limit and to say ‘We don’t care beyond that and it is then an issue for two or three or four countries,” she said. “This must be a European responsibility and only then will all member states care about the causes of migration” and help address conflicts driving people to flee to Europe...

More.

Plus, at Der Spiegel, "A Continent Adrift: Juncker Proposes Fixes to EU's Broken Asylum Policies."