Backlash Coming for German (and American) Liberals

The U.S. media churns out a feature story whenever someone trips a refugee or leaves a strip of bacon outside a mosque, but no one seems to have much interest in covering the New Years’ Eve sex attacks that have thrown Germany into turmoil. Perhaps that’s because this story shows that when it comes to Middle Eastern refugees, Islamic terrorism is only part of the problem.

As of January 11, police in Cologne, Germany have fielded more than 500 criminal complaints relating to that evening, including 200 allegations of sexual assault. According to victims and witnesses, nearly 1,000 men convened at the city’s train station on New Years’ Eve before breaking off into roving packs to harass, grope, and even rape German women celebrating in the streets. Police say they are focused on suspects of North African origin, and many of the suspects have described themselves as asylum-seekers.

Days after the free-for-all, a Cologne police officer pushed back against his department’s official statement, which characterized the attacks as primarily theft-driven. “For the mostly Arabic offenders,” the officer said, “sexual assault was the priority. Or, to express it from their point of view, their sexual amusement was the priority. A group of men would encircle a female victim, close the loop, and then start groping the woman.”

Germany’s government took swift action…against anyone who dared to speak out against the Syrian refugees. Prosecutors have been working overtime to charge citizens with “hate speech,” and authorities have made deals with social media sites like Facebook to remove offensive content in accordance with local laws. Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently believes that if she can make all anti-refugee speech illegal, she can win the debate by default.

Rather than reconsider the country’s open-door policy on Syrians, German politicians are telling women how to avoid being assaulted. Cologne Mayor Henriette Reker said that women should adopt a new “code of conduct” which includes keeping strangers “at arm’s length” when in public. Gee, if the victims only knew that beforehand, surely none of this would have happened. Where are the feminists?

Germany is paralyzed by its own dark history, but Merkel doesn’t realize that her over-correction is the surest way possible to bring the Nazis back to power. There will come a breaking point, and it will become harder and harder to dismiss protests as “right-wing.”

Guilt over the past is a bad policy ingredient, but it has become the left’s most powerful tool. What’s happening in Germany is also happening here. Because of slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment camps, etc., there are things we can’t say. Things we can’t do. In fact, we have to go running in the opposite direction, even if it takes us into the land of the illogical and the reckless. These liberals don’t seem to understand that when the backlash comes, it’s going to get ugly.