The politics of fakery on European immigration

Immigration makes some people crazy. And crazy, as a general rule, is a bad basis for policymaking. (Marc Brost et al, Tage des Irrsinns Die Zeit 04-05.07.2018)

With both Putin and Trump eager to weaken the European Union, the EU countries are floundering on the twin dilemma of a "the obscenity of a currency union which imposes a strict system of rules to the benefit of its strongest member states but does not in compensation provide the latitude for joint political action on the European level" (Jürgen Habermas, Die Zeit 06.07.2018) and the inability to set up an effective and fair system for handling refugees and asylum-seekers.

The EU continues to deal with the problems of the eurozone by what amounts to magic conjuring with the holy phrases of Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economics. And with the immigration crisis by staging bad theater. But since we're dealing with major government policies here, the fakery comes with real costs to real people.

In a recent lecture, Jürgen Habermas described how Angela Merkel's nationalistic posturing during the debt crisis fed nationalistic sentiments in the EU, a process that is backfiring on Germany in visible ways (Sind wir noch gute Europäer? Die Zeit 04.07.2018; English: Are We Still Good Europeans? 06.07.2018):

If you listen closely to the German chancellor, it is striking that she makes rather peculiar use of the words "loyalty" and "solidarity." During a recent appearance on a talk show hosted by Anne Will, Merkel demanded joint political action on asylum policy and in the tariff conflict with the United States, and in this context called for the "loyalty" of the EU partners. Generally, it is the boss who expects loyalty from her employees, while joint political action generally requires solidarity rather than loyalty. Depending on the constellation of interests, it is sometimes the one, sometimes the other, who must subordinate their own interests to those of the whole. When it comes to asylum policy, for example, not all countries – because of their geographical locations, for example – are equally affected by migration nor do they all have the same capacity to take people in. To take another example, tariffs on automobile imports threatened by the U.S. would hit some, Germany in this case, harder than others. In such cases, joint political action means that one party takes the interests of others into consideration and takes on its share of responsibility for the jointly approved political resolution. Germany's interest is obvious in these two examples, just as it is in the insistence on a joint European foreign policy.

The fact that the chancellor speaks of "loyalty" in such cases is likely a consequence of her having spent years using the world "solidarity" in a different, strictly economic context. "Solidarity in return for each country's own responsibility" is the euphemistic slogan that became familiar in the course of the [debt] crisis, a reference to the conditions imposed on credit recipients by those granting the credits. What I am getting at is the conditional redefinition of the term solidarity: that is the semantic breaking point where cracks are now showing in the certainty that we Germans are the best Europeans. Contrary to the raving clamor about transfer payments, which have never actually come to pass, what is slowly creeping into the public awareness is both the lack of legitimacy and the dubious effects of investment-hampering budgetary constraints, along with labor market reforms that result in entire generations being jobless. [my emphasis]

Habermas refers to the nationalistic demagogues and policies that are currently threatening the EU's existence as "the Trumpian dissolution of Europe."

There was a political confrontation the last few weeks between German Interior Minister Ernst Seehofer (CSU) over a narrow slice of the current set of immigration and asylum issue in which Austria's Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz intervened in a reckless way that was over an issue whose substance seems almost esoteric. (Wolfgang Münchau, German refugee compromise ignores underlying issues Financial Times 07/05/2018; Andrea Böhm, Europas Flucht vor der Realität Die Zeit 07.07.2018; Max Fisher and Katrin Bennhold, Germany’s Europe-Shaking Political Crisis Over Migrants, Explained New York Times 07/03/2018)

But too much of the immigration debate - far, far too much - depends on symbolic posturing that translates into headlines the xenophobes can exploit for their own demagoguery.

I saw a small example in a local insert for the state/province of Upper Austria from the Austrian Neues Volksblatt ", Hoamatland for July 2018, which is associated with the politics of the Chancellor's conservative People's Party (ÖVP). The second half of page 6 carries three headlines: "Christliche Werte zu OÖ!" ("Christian values appertain to Upper Austria!"), "Zwei Moscheen in OÖ geschlossen" ("Two mosques in Upper Austria closed"), and "Bevölkerung für strikten Kurs" ("Population for a strict course"). Christian values, closing mosques, a strict course against "migration" - all are favorite framing constructs for Austrian xenophobes.

But if the reader bothers to look closely, something odd is happening. The first is a report about a new "integration" policy statement for immigrants by the Upper Austrian state government, featuring the leading government officials of the government coalition, Landeshauptmann (Governor) Thomas Stelzer (ÖVP) and deputy governor Manfred Haimbuchner, together with representatives of the opposition SPÖ and Greens, the same photo featured in this story at Volksblatt.at, „Kompass für das Zusammenleben“ 04.07.2018. It's about the release of a general policy statement called Integration Verbindlich Gestalten - Zusammenhalt Stärken. The "Christliche Werte" article certainly leaves the impression that all parties in the state Landtag were endorsing a policy that specified "Christian values" as government policy, which is understood in the present context as a anti-Islamic framing.

But the Hoamatland article doesn't include the quote cited in the headline. Nor does the longer Volksblatt are includes a statement supporting "Christian values and traditions," in a context which quotes the title of the Integration Verbindlich document and leaves a clear impression that it includes a Bekenntnis ("profession" or "allegiance to") "our Christian values and traditions." Here's the paragraph in German:

Unter dem Titel „Integration verbindlich gestalten — Zusammenhalt stärken“ bringe das neue Leitbild Ziel und Aufgabe der Integrationspolitik zum Ausdruck und stelle einen Handlungsrahmen für die zukünftige Integrationspolitik und Integrationsarbeit einschließlich des Förderwesens im Land auf, heißt es in einer Stellungnahme der Landesregierung. Und, so wird betont: „Wesentliche Grundlagen und Schlüsselfaktoren für ein gelungenes Zusammenleben sind unter anderem das Bekenntnis zur gemeinsamen Sprache Deutsch, das Bemühen um Selbsterhaltung und die Teilhabe am Arbeitsmarkt sowie das Bekenntnis zu unseren christlichen Werten und Traditionen.“

But the thing is, the Integration Verbindlich statement on the Upper Austria official website does not say that. A simple Cntl-F search shows 25 instances of "Werte" (values) in the 20-page document, none of which are identified as "Christian". Or "Islamic" or "Muslim" or "religious". The same combination of Windows keyboard, Adobe Acrobat, and my own eyeballs search combination finds only one reference to "Christian": "Österreich ist ein offenes, christlich geprägtes Land,
das dem Humanismus und der Aufklärung verpflichtet ist." ("Austria is an open country shaped by Christianity and which is committed to humanism and the Enlightenment.") And the document is explicit about what it assumes to be Austrian values in a section called "Central Basic Values":

• Democracy and the rule of law ("Demokratie und Rechtsstaatlichkeit")
• Separation of church and state/religious freedom ("Trennung von Staat und Religion/Glaubensfreiheit")
• Integrity of body and spirit ("Körperliche und geistige Unversehrtheit")
• The individual right to shape one's life and freedom of opinion ("Recht auf individuelle Lebensgestaltung und Meinungsfreiheit")
• Equality of the sexes ("Gleichstellung der Geschlechter")
• Educational opportunities and educational responsibilities ("Bildungschancen und Bildungspflicht")

In other words, like any official document passed through endless committees and designed to be acceptable to the entire ideological spectrum of the parties in a state legislature, it's a safely bland statement of general liberal democratic values of tolerance and mutual respect.

So why present the story with a headline that makes the whole thing sound like a defiant declaration of the primacy of Christianity as such in Austrian identity? Even allowing for Austrian journalistic practice of putting quotation marks in headlines around summary statements that aren't exact quotes, it's an odd presentation. I was unable to locate the quote from the Hoamatland headline in a Google search.

Briefly, the other two headlines have similar issues. Two mosques in Upper Austria were closed, it reports, a move announced in a June 8 press conference statement Chancellor Babyface, Vice Chancellor HC Strache, and Interior Minister Herbert Kickl. The article leads with a quote from Landeshauptmann Stelzer to crow about fighting "political Islam," hostile subcultures ("Gegengesellschaften"), radicalization, and violence. All associated with the closed mosques.

In reality, there was much less to the June 8 announcements that the PR hype suggested. The announcement was about withdrawing official recognition from some small Islamic associations. As Austrian specialist on rightwing extremism, Thomas Rammerstorfer, explains in Der große Schmäh mit der bösen Moschee Falter 13.06.2018, not only were the grounds for the closures practically and legally questionable. But also their practical effect on Islamic affairs and "political Islam" in Austria is to strengten the relative prestige and influence of groups friendly to Turkey's authoritarian President Tayyip Erdoğan, which were not touched by the actions. Erdoğan is a favorite bogeyman for the Austrian far right despite the similarities between his autoritarian leanings and theirs. Turks form the largest group of Austrian Muslims, all of whom are regularly trashed by rightwingers. None of that would be conveyed by the Hoamatland piece.

The third article is an uncritical paragraph saying that 83% approve of German classes for children who haven't managed German sufficiently for their grade level in school. This sounds perfectly harmless, a liberal and generous measure. But the current national government has been pushing for a particular kind of German classes in publisc schools for foreign children that would tend to segregate them in schools from their native German-speaking peers, a position means to promote stigmatization of immigrant children and make it even harder for them to integrate successfully into Austrian society. That really is just a filler article. But it fits with the other two in promoting a very superficial picture of current policies on immigration and their practical effects.

There's quite a bit of discussion in American politics right now about whether countering far-right Trumpist with facts is effective, or even counter-productive. But as these Austrian examples illustrate, the left and pro-democracy centrists have to counter these propaganda claims with facts. But they also have to be very mindful of countering the framing of the issues as well. When the right peddles with deceptive framing and appeals to fear and hatred, their opponents also have provide attractive framing and persuasive emotional appeals at the same time as countering false claims with facts. A big part of the advantage of advocates for "reality-based" understandings and advocacy for realistic policies based on facts is that reality has a persistent ability to impose itself on crackpot theories and policies.