It's easy to forget, given how widespread the migrant crisis is in Europe, that it all began with Angele Merkel opening the borders of Germany and welcoming in millions of Islamists fleeing the wars in the Middle East.
Germany, it seemed, needed to be culturally enriched by Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, and other "South Asians."
In 2015, with hundreds of thousands of refugees from Syria and elsewhere marching toward Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "We can do it." Ten years have since passed. How much progress has been made? https://t.co/6fpnynXu0w
— SPIEGEL English (@SPIEGEL_English) August 26, 2025
Germany has, since Merkel declared enigmatically, "We can do it," (whatever, exactly, "it" is other than opening borders), 3 million refugees have flowed into the country, costing tens of billions of dollars a year and creating enormous social tensions.
There was a before and an after, wrote Angela Merkel in her memoirs. During the night of September 4, 2015, Merkel, who was chancellor at the time, decided that the German federal police officers would not block the refugees at the border. Germany would accept them. In the months that followed, more than a million asylum seekers arrived in the country – an unprecedented number. Never before since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 had the country seen such a huge wave of migration.
"We can do it,” Merkel had said during a Berlin press conference just a few days earlier. It was her attempt to prepare the Germans for this enormous humanitarian challenge. No sentence during her career in politics ever blew up like that one did, she writes in her autobiography. "No sentence was as polarizing.”
Many Germans were almost euphoric in their welcoming of the newcomers. Some were waiting with teddy bears at the Munich train station as the exhausted travelers showed up. The photo of the drowned Syrian boy Alan Kurdi, who washed up dead on the Turkey’s Aegean coast in early September, had triggered a global outcry – in Germany as well. At the congress halls in Hamburg, long lines of volunteers formed, made up of people eager to help sort clothing donations for the refugees. Many hoped they could be part of the effort to fill Merkel’s sentence with life.
...
Many found themselves confused by the sentence: "We can do it.” It meant nothing and everything. Who is "we”? Everyone? Just policymakers and public officials? And what, exactly, was Germany supposed to "do”? Put up emergency tents in record time so that nobody had to sleep on the street? Ensure that the refugees successfully integrated and stayed forever? Transform into a harmonious multi-cultural and multi-faith society? "Wherever there are obstacles in our way, they must be overcome. We must work to remove them,” Merkel added at the time. To this date, she has never been any more specific.
Ten years have since passed. The number of refugees in the country has climbed from 750,000 in 2014 to 3.3 million by the end of 2024. Almost 1.2 million of them submitted asylum applications in 2015 and 2016, most of them arriving from Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. In early 2016, Merkel and the EU negotiated a refugee deal with Turkey, which contributed to a significant drop in the numbers. But the trend reappeared following the coronavirus pandemic. Then, in early 2022, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. More than a million people fled to Germany to escape the violence. The country must now take care of them, too.
It is not an exaggeration to call this one of the greatest calamities to hit Europe in the 21st century, and--we will have to see--a calamity that might cause the downfall of Europe as we know it.
Muslim migrants in Germany: "When we become the majority, we will take over Germany by force. German laws will be replaced by Sharia law.
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) August 31, 2025
If anyone stands against us, we will attack them. Christians and Jews will have to convert or leave.”
They mean every word they say! pic.twitter.com/RkaoqIYQSd
Ordinary German citizens, who were initially enthusiastic about Merkel's move (with many exceptions), have grown sour on the experiment.
The establishment, though, has not.
🇩🇪 Mainstream parties in Germany have cleared the field for the far-Right by making a pact not to blame migrants for “negative social developments”
— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) August 31, 2025
Read more 👇https://t.co/30r34FkDxt
This can be seen through the lens of the AfD, Germany's largest opposition party. Its rise has been undeniable, and the establishment's horror at its rise has led them to ban AfD candidates, the security services to label it a hate group, and, most bizarrely, for all the establishment parties to make a pact to not mention migrants during the upcoming campaign.
Yes, that's right. The hottest political topic in Germany is the issue that cannot be named.
Mainstream parties in Germany have cleared the field for the far-Right by making a pact not to blame migrants for “negative social developments”.
Seven parties, from the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) to the Left Party, joined the so-called “Fairness Agreement” pledging not to criticise asylum seekers or migrants in local election campaigns.
The parties vowed “not to campaign at the expense of people with a migration background living among us” as well as to fight racism and anti-Semitism and treat each other respectfully before the Cologne municipal election on Sept 14.
Alternative for Germany (AfD), the far-Right party, was not invited to take part in the initiative and will therefore be the only party free to discuss the challenges of mass migration.
AfD is polling at 10 per cent in the city – double its previous result. The CDU and CSU, sister parties known as the “Union”, are leading in national polls.
The pact, which states that parties will not blame migrants “for negative social developments such as unemployment or threats to internal security”, was put forward by the Cologne Round Table for Integration.
The group said the AfD was not invited because they “want the opposite of what we stand for”.
As part of the initiative, citizens can report any negative campaigning against migrants to the Catholic or Protestant church.
The social pressure to not mention migrants--who commit the majority of sexual crimes in Germany and who are publicly agitating for Sharia law in the country--is immense. And Germans, who are rightly sensitive about excessive nationalism or even the whiff of racism, are reluctant to challenge the taboo.
**“Germany: Hundreds of Islamists are now openly demanding a caliphate and the implementation of Sharia law.
— TacticalEdge (@EdgeE50124) March 15, 2025
The group behind the protest? ‘Muslim Interaktiv.’
This isn’t happening in the Middle East—it’s happening in Europe.”**
pic.twitter.com/2C019CHck1
The irony is that the reluctance of the "mainstream" parties to confront reality is why AfD exists. Populist movements take off when the disconnect between elites and the people reaches a critical mass. At their best, populist movements can provide a reality check and a course correction; at worst, they can tear societies apart.
Democracy thrives on open debate, especially on polarising issues such as immigration. By effectively imposing a gag on critical voices, the agreement tampers with the democratic process itself, stifling dialogue with superficial silence. Citizens deserve a truthful negotiation of competing policies, not a hastily erected facade that ignores discomfort or disagreement.
This curtailment comes at a high cost, especially in Cologne. The city has not forgotten what happened on New Year’s Eve 2015, when hundreds of women reported sexual assaults by groups described as of Arab or North African appearance near Cologne Cathedral and the central train station. Police admitted later that around half the perpetrators had been in the country for less than a year, and that there was “a connection between the appearance of the phenomenon and large-scale migration, especially in 2015”.
A decade on and mainstream politicians are agreeing not to talk about this connection, not only alienating victims and witnesses of crimes committed by migrants, but also allowing the AfD a monopoly on the political representations of related concerns. Indeed, in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Cologne is located, AfD support is set to triple from just 5% in the last municipal election in 2020 to around 13-16 % now, according to polling.
The migrant crisis exists because the elites deny reality. They mouth vague moralistic sentiments while ignoring hard facts. Islamists don't share their ideals, and don't want to integrate into German culture. They want to take over and say so.
Welcome to the Islamic State of Germany
— Amy Mek (@AmyMek) January 1, 2023
German courts ruled that Sharia Police are not against the law & can patrol Germany's streets
Sharia Police provoke, intimidate and force their ideology upon others while harassing women, gays, Jews, etc. Meanwhile, Germany supports them! pic.twitter.com/iV9R97keRp
Refusing to acknowledge reality doesn't make it go away, and ignoring the people whose lives are made worse does not endear you to them.
The German government has been wrong on this issue, wrong on energy, wrong on Net Zero, and is destroying the country.
