The Germany We Knew Is Gone
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
These complex problems and how society reacts are not new, if you know some history. They just look different today through the lens of info overload, and the engagement driven Attention capture economics.
There is this weird dynamic, attention economics produces, were the number of people talking about a complex problem, vastly outstrips the carrying capacity of society for number of people who can work on a complex problem.
I learn a bit Arabic myself (I'm polyglot). That doesn't mean I'm indifferent to how the culture around me evolves. It's good here _because we're not_ in the Middle East. I stopped counting how often my daughter has been told by male Syrian refugees she shouldn't play soccer, because she should learn to live in the kitchen. F* them!
Same for Ukrainian refugees. The Ukrainian kids in the elementary school of my son are utterly respectless, joking during lessons and climbing on the tables (and German schools aren't that strict anyway -- maybe that has become a problem). Most of them are very aggressive and showing violence towards their peacefully classmates. I wouldn't want them to grow up in a warzone, but that doesn't mean they're free to do whatever they want here.
Problem is: as soon as you make a point as a German you are labeled a racist, Nazi and intolerant.
More and more are fed up with that. Like the "solidarity" with Israel -- I'm capable to distinguish between a Jewish individual in Germany (don't care) and the _current_ Israeli government (don't like); I don't need unreflective yes-sayers as my government to claim solidarity with Israel, thank you!
This head-and-the-sand mentality is the main culprit from my POV. It doesn't solve problems. It _enables_ populism and right-wing hardliners. E.g. most people don't care about religion (life and let life), but if you notice Islamists openly recruiting esp. in big cities (Hamburg, Cologne!)... refugees giving a F* about local culture and language. (70% of Syrian refugees aren't working after 13y of conflict?) I mean WTF!... a democracy with a social security net cannot exist of you tolerate all that combined!
Who are there (and are emotionally traumatized) in no small part because your government chose to cozy up to Putin in the first place, and to look the other way while he started his rampage in 2014. Which doesn't excuse the behavior of those particular kids. But the situation needs to be understood in this context.
As a German I'm tired of going shopping and only hearing languages of the middle east.
For 5 minutes out the week. In that one particular aisle of the store.
Some of your complaints have validity, but I have to say this one sounds extremely petty. Not to mention naive. In large cities in Germany one has been hearing Middle Eastern voices for decades. Absolutely no one grumbled about it (or if they did, it's because they were, well, basically kind of an asshole).
If you're being suspected of intolerance, it's probably because (with respect to this particular complaint) you're making, auf deutsch gesagt -- aus einer Mücke einen Elefanten.