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Please read the blog entry "Helping, Helpful and Help Messy" from Fri. May 18th, 2018 to prepare for participating in this discussion.

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For your convenience this is a copy of the blog entry "Helping, Helpful and Help Messy"



Recently the question of loving thy neighbour is hotly debated with literally millions of refugees flooding into western countries. And I think this ties in nicely with my last blog entry titled “The Road to Hell…” where I had postulated that in order to have good intentions turn into a good result, rather than another paving stone on the road to Hell, the person or persons intending to do good must also be ready to take responsibility for the “good” they do. And more importantly they must be ready to take responsibility and to take decisive action if the “good” they did slowly but remorselessly turns into yet another “evil” instead.

Since Tanya and I currently live in Germany, I would like to take what has become known as the “refugee crisis” to illustrate my thoughts. It all started with “good” intentions. There is a war in Syria. Millions of people are suffering and fearing for their lives. And we, as a nation, wanted to help. It is a noble goal and certainly there is nothing wrong with the intentions. These were “good” intentions. The only problem was in Germany no one was prepared to take responsibility for these good intentions. And while many of the would be do-gooders are now sticking their heads into the sand practicing the fine art of deep denial, the results, as could be expected, were disastrous.

But what went wrong? From the beginning there was an utter lack of taking responsibility. This meant the borders were opened before a plan was ready on how to take care of the influx of people. There was no plan on where to house these people. There was no plan on how to teach them German. There was no plan on how to integrate them into society. There was no plan on what jobs may be available for all of the new comers. There was no plan on how to handle the influx of children to daycare centres of which we anyway did and do not have enough of or into schools. There was no plan on how to finance healthcare for all of these people. There was no plan on how to combat potentially lethal pathogens brought in by this many newcomers. There was no plan on how to separate criminal elements from refugees. There was no plan on how to quickly and efficiently get rid of said criminal elements. There was no plan on how to budget integrating this many people. On the contrary the actual cost of the “refugee crisis” is a closely guarded secret of the German government and unavailable to the tax payers who pay for it all.

Instead of taking responsibility, politicians threw around phrases like, “We can do it!” and “Germany is a rich country”.

What effects did this lack of responsibility have for Germans and legal immigrants to Germany? Aside from unfortunate but very real side effects of having conflicting cultures living in the same cities now which leads to “honour killings” and molestation particularly of women and of other minorities as well as the equally very real threat of terrorist attacks, it lead to a substantial shift toward populist radical right wing ideas within the population. This shift too has led to killings of foreigners, or minorities within Germany, and a general much more racist attitude not only against legal residents but also German citizens who are of the “wrong” ethnos or of the “wrong” religion. And this shift led to a radical right wing party jumping from “no seat in the parliament” to becoming the third strongest party in the parliament literally overnight. Personally I find this very troublesome, especially since my own wife is not an ethnic German either. And anyone who knows about the rise of the Nazi party in the early thirties will be able to understand why I am worried. Part of this history is also retold in our new novel “The Art of Being Another” which is to be release soon.

But at least we are helping. Or are we? Like the crazy cat lady who wants to help every cat in the world, our own chancellor and numerous other politicians seem to have become addicted to “helping”. In fact they have become the refugee equivalent of the crazy cat lady. Tanya and I signify them as “Help Messy” or “Refugee Messy”. Helping has long since become secondary, what seems to be of the outmost importance is that we get more and more refugees to come here. Helping two or three abandoned cats is not enough; the whole living room has to be crawling with seventy or eighty of them!

So, the question is, are we in fact still “helping” the refugees? Or are we now solely helping the wanna-be do-gooders boost their egos because we in Germany are “helping” millions of people? Does anyone even care about that anymore? Is it considered helping to let them come here, but to not be prepared, or even able to actually improve their lives? There are reports of people getting murdered in the refugee dorms here in Germany, because they follow a “wrong” sort of Islam or because they do not adhere to it strictly enough. These murdered, often times young people, have we “helped” them? Was it “helping” that they were killed in Germany by the same elements they had originally fled from in their home country?

There are reports of women getting mistreated, raped, forced into marriages or murdered for falling in love with someone of the “wrong” faith. A woman who has fled her home country to escape such treatment is now mistreated in a dorm in Germany, by the very men she attempted to flee from. Have we “helped” her? Is it any comfort for her that she travelled 2,000 miles just to be mistreated in Germany rather than back home?

Or has Germany failed to take responsibility for their good intentions? Would it not have been better to more strictly control who comes into the country, help those who are allowed in to get integrated quickly and ensure that their lives actually improve after they got here?

Is help measured in quantity, regardless of the outcome? Or is real help measured in quality and ensuring that everyone we help actually receives help?

The effects of Germany’s reckless actions are not limited only to Germany either. Since Germany had “good” intentions but was utterly unwilling to take responsibility for these intentions, our actions as a nation affected not only us, but all of Europe!

As a direct result of the German “refugee crisis”, radical populist parties are gaining strength not only in Germany, but all across Europe. The fabric of the union is stretched and sometimes… it tears. The so called “Brexit” comes to mind. The vote was very close. And what was one of the main reasons for many pro-Brexit voters to vote as they did? They did not want to risk that thousands of illegal well-fare recipients could come into the UK. And where were thousands of illegal immigrants and well-fare recipients coming into Europe? They came as refugees to Germany! So while other factors certainly played a role in the Brexit vote, the refusal of German politicians to take responsibility for their own actions certainly played a role in splitting up the union, perhaps even a decisive role.

Once again good intentions helped pave the road to Hell.