>>>Even disregarding his notorious statement that
> Germans should be defended against “Foreign workers
> [“Fremdarbeiter,†an infamous use of Nazi jargon
> – translator] who take their jobs away,â€
Lafontaine was always something of a hothead, prone to mouth off at the drop of a hat, but apparently he was talking about how the Sozialstaat (welfare state) has a responsibility to protect its citizens from employers who use immigrant labor to drive down wages.
> Lafontaine’s open racism is easily proved on the
> basis of his numerous published works. Lafontaine
> whispers in his books about “forced immigration,â€
> which is “promoted solely by the upper 10,000
> members of society.â€
Wasn't he talking about past immigration policies, which gave those with German descent automatic citizenship, while shutting out everyone else?
> Lafontaine's "Fremdarbeiter" talk was a huge scandal
> on the Left here, and many of the more reasonable PDS
> functionaries (such as Petra Pau) saw themselves
> forced to distance themselves from Lafontaine for this
> kind of racist bile.
Petra Pau's site (http://www.petrapau.de/pds/dok/050705_an_lafontaine.htm) doesn't write Lafontaine off as a hopeless racist, but just says, he's uninformed and a bit dim on multicultural issues.
> Even without knowing the complicated history of
> discussion within the German extra-parliamentary left
> concerning Israel: the notion of supporting a German
> military intervention anywhere, let alone against a
> state which basically owes its existence to the Shoa,
> should give pause.
And again, I have to ask, where are you getting these dire visions of a Wehrmacht running amok? What's wrong with sending German peacekeepers in the year 2005 as part of a UN mission to help Palestine rebuild? I'm deeply suspicious of this tendency to dump all of capitalism's myriad sins onto Germany. It isn't true, and it ends up concealing the horrific, 500-year body county of British, French, Spanish, Portuguese and US colonialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
-- DRR