Like Mike, the Germans I 'knew' were not
xenophobic, either, and tended to worry about such issues in the sense of the overall German experience with Nazism. Their general sense of worry increased some during GW1 when it was discovered that a substantial number of the so-called Turks living in many of the industrial areas of Germany were actually more militant groups of Kurdish nationalists with Turkish passports.
However, I spent a lot of time in the East and the general conversational tone there (especially in the old industrial/mining regions where unemployment was much higher) was one of overtly anti-foreigner feelings and a sense of fear of the foreign (even Western) changes taking place so rapidly in their lives. It was always interesting for my traveling partner and I (who wore good quality European style clothing and drove a car with German license plates) when we'd go somewhere and the initial responses were generally of cold indifference - until they realized we were German speaking Americans and not Russians or another group of
Wessie businessmen or politicians come to take advantage of them yet again. The initial euphoria of unification faded pretty quickly as the reality of the situation faced by both sides of the old IGB became reality.
As far as xenophobia:
Definition -
fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything foreign or strange
From the article -
Quote:
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Germany is now a bastion of democracy in the heart of Europe.
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True.
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But the far right is on the rise across the Continent,...
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A rising European-wide issue.
Quote:
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...and [U]xenophobia is gaining in this country, not least among youth and not least singling out Muslims. A recent two-year government survey of 20,000 German teenagers classified one in seven as “highly xenophobic” and another 26.2 percent as “fairly xenophobic.”
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And in Germany, specifically.
I'm certainly not worried about some kind of resurgent idea of yet another
'Germany for Germans' empire or the like - but must not there be regional concerns if the German govt is classifying such behavior as being xenophobic?
Richard's $.02
