Unassimilated minorities in EU: a poisoned well

One of several major challenges that faces the Western nations, especially those within the EU, is the changing demographic. Western nations everywhere are aging, this combines adversely with the increasing number of foreigners, who are much less assimilated than those who come to the US. The tention results from fundemental cultural differences, but I see economics being the spark, as dwingling money is divided among the retired and those leaving off wealfare, including a disproportiane number of immigrats, or their unassimilated descendants.

According to this logic, as EU runs into financial trouble due to disparaties between consumption and exports of individual countries, we should expect to see less tolerance, including towards culturally segregated communities, such as the Banlieues in France, where neither the police nor ambulances dare to go.

Angela Mekel has said earlier this year that 'Multi-culti' (multiculturalism) has failed. Nicolas Sarcozy made a similar statement even earlier. Both of these leaders are (belatedly) stating the obvious.

The timing of this piece was motivated by the release of a 10-year long study study of prevaling attitudes in Germany and a recent shooting in Florence that both support my regrettable conclusion above.

Social scientist Wilhelm Heitmeyer has been publishing studies on German attitudes for a decade. In a SPIEGEL interview, he discusses his latest results, which show that says 'German society is poisioned''German society is poisioned': relationship of natives has become increasingly hostile to immigrants.

Heitmeyer says that status-based thinking is particularly widespread in utilitarian Germany.

An Italian gunman with fascist sympathies went on a Rampage in Florence on Tuesday, killing two African street vendors and wounding three others in broad day light before shooting himself dead. To make the racist, anti-immigrant nature of his hatred clear the gunman shot several Senegalese vendors in one town in an open-air market, got in his car drove to another town in Florence and shot several more Senegalese, before taking his own life.