Germany's "historically unique experiment"

Yascha Mounk is a German in his mid-30s who is a Lecturer on Political Theory at Harvard and describes himself on his website as "one of the world's leading experts on the crisis of liberal democracy and the rise of populism". Talking recently in an interview with German TV about the threat to democracy posed by populists he said populists thrive for three reasons. The first is economic stagnation and the third is the internet, which allows extreme politicians to be heard. The second reason is this:

"We are in a historically unique experiment. There is no example in history of a democracy founded on mono-ethnicity and transformed into a liberal multi-ethnic democracy. We are halfway, but certainly not arrived yet and have to feel in the dark."

He added that he was a strong believer in the experiment. The interviewer did not pick up on this statement.

Dr. Mounk went on to explain that being German had nothing to do with biology but to do with values. 

"Anyone who lives here, contributes, and abides by the rules is part of this nation. To be a true German in quotes, nobody needs to have a particular skin color, provenance or religion. That would be against the principles of our political system."

All people who live in Germany are German (presumably whether they are in fact German or foreigners) if they subscribe to common values, the values of liberal democracy. 

A German who has lived abroad for a long time does not count as German by this definition, but probably I am being pedantic. Thinking that Germans are less German if they are not ethnic Germans (biodeutsch) means not sharing those German values, so such people, paradoxically, are perhaps not German. 

On the other hand, Dr. Mounk conceded that if the voters do not go that far, but merely oppose further immigration, that is a position that is permissible in a liberal democracy, although he thinks they are making a mistake. Such voters are still Germans.

Which is a fair enough point of view, I suppose, except for one thing, the elephant in the drawing room. 

Surely in a liberal democracy, where the people rule, the people should be encouraged to debate exhaustively and vote on the 'huge experiment to transform a democracy founded on mono-ethnicity into a liberal multi-ethnic democracy'. 

Instead no-one in politics has mentioned it to the Germans, and no party offers an alternative to the policy of letting in lots of immigrants and refugees, except the AfD of whom Dr. Mounk very strongly disapproves. They, who are offering the demos a democratic choice, he calls a threat to democracy. 

He says that the internet helps populists and "extreme politicians" (defined as such by their desire to limit or stop immigration, even though he says that this position is compatible with Germany's values) to reach a wide audience. 

He should welcome this increased freedom of expression, because this surely is a liberal democratic value. 

But he does not. I don't think for him rule by the people is the central democratic value. I think it frightens him, in fact.

Lack of discussion on the matter is a basic contravention of the values of democracy. Nothing, after all, is more fundamental to a democracy than deciding how the demos itself will be constituted. 

But people who try to discuss the principle of continuing to let non Europeans settle in Germany are sternly discouraged, lose friends and are even sometimes prosecuted.

Actually this is not completely true. An obscure German Green Party politician called Dr. Stefanie von Berg discussed it for a moment when she told the Hamburg parliament in 2015:

"Our society will change. Our society will change radically. In 20-30 years there will no longer be a German majority. We will live in a supercultural society. This is what we will have in the future. And I want to make it very clear, especially to right-wingers: This is a good thing!" 

Regrettably, she did not go on to explain why it was a good thing.. 

Five years earlier, in October 2010, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said something very different. She did not mention the huge experiment but told a meeting of her party's youth wing that the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily side by side did not work. She said the onus was on immigrants to do more to integrate into German society. 

"This [multicultural] approach has failed, utterly failed.'

Presumably she didn't mean it or perhaps she meant that German culture should be wide enough to embrace all cultures so long as people adhere to liberal democratic values. 

What else does being German mean?

I wonder what the future holds for Germany or for Europe. The future, as we know, belongs to those who show up. 

Dr. Mounk talked about an historically unique experiment. Something which is also historically unique, and part of the reason for the experiment, is the widespread Western phenomenon of rich nations with sharply declining birth rates. 

I suppose someone has to replace the ethnic Germans, since they aren't making enough of them any more. Let's hope the people who do so share liberal democratic values.