Adar 27, 5769 / 23 March 09
Note: This may not seem like a big deal but think about it. It's a HUGE deal!
Ugly German Youth?
by Herbert Eiteneier
Searching for anti-Semitism in the wrong places.
Last week, a study shocked Germany: five percent of German ninth graders - at about age 15 - supposedly harbor extreme right-wing feelings and behave accordingly. Additionally, there are xenophobic and anti-Semitic feelings blossoming among a larger percentage of those youth.
The report - issued by Kriminologisches Forschungsinstitut Niedersachsen (KFN; Institute for CriminologicalResearch-Lower Saxony) - had 132 pages detailing findings on the experience of violence, as victims and as perpetrators, among German youth. Nevertheless, the last 15 pages made headlines and caused a separate five-page paper on "membership in rightist groups and comradeships". The main part of the report is, it seems, of negligible interest. That's a pity, since it contradicts police records that say criminal violence is on the rise.
Some real questions arise as a result of the way the KFN conducted its study of the problem of right-wing extremism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism. While almost every media outlet parroted the official findings, some started to look at the data and came up with doubts about the credibility of the study.
The far-left taz, for example, asked whether it was possible that more than 100 percent of the extreme-right-wingers are 15-year-olds. Bloggers point out that the statements the interviewees were asked to agree or disagree with might not only measure right-wing views. And the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung hints that the KFN's efforts to obtain external funding might have been a motivation to "add" the module on the extremist Right. Furthermore, there's no explanation of how the researchers asked the interviewees about their membership in extremist groups.
With all those issues of dubiousness in mind, there's one aspect that looks not only serious enough, but also sound: the participants were asked to note their attitudes regarding several anti-Semitic statements. Three statements seem to be very few to get an impression of anti-Semitic tendencies; nevertheless, the three statements presented are quite strong: 1) I think it's terrible that Germans perpetrated so many crimes against Jews; 2) Jews have too much influence in the world; 3) By their conduct the Jews are not entirely innocent in being persecuted.
Those statements are heavy stuff. The first one is on empathy, though it can give a wrong impression: Might it be that the youngster grading his or her view on this one just thinks it's a pity the Germans were the perpetrators, but it would have been okay if others had done those things? Would anybody think that way and regret horrible German actions, but support, say, Iran doing the same? Probably not, but who knows?
The other two statements clearly fall into the anti-Semitic sphere. They find approval among 11.6 and 14.7 percent of the interviewees, respectively. That's a significantly lower percentage than the xenophobic tendencies the study itself noted (those numbers ranged from 21.6 to 57.2 percent). Therefore, the KFN didn't write much about these results in their report, just that the numbers are significantly lower. But since the questions on anti-Semitism are part of the overall study, and part of the same section as the review of xenophobic attitudes, these results got attention as well.
One might be tempted to ask: How come those 15-year-olds harbor those sentiments? Are those signs of right-wing anti-Semitism? Or could it be that other causes are behind these views?
As far as I remember, the average anti-Semitic sentiment of this kind can be found in a higher percentage of the overall German population. Furthermore, mainstream media in Germany inherently conveys such sentiments; not openly, of course, but regular "critique" of Jewish organizations and their warnings convey just that, or at least similar impressions. Might it be that the youngsters' attitudes are just a mirror of what they learn from the average German media outlet?
There's a real problem, but probably not with the youth. Can they be blamed for this after they are taught by school and the public to think this way? What does it really say about German society? How much substance does the mantra have that more and better education will help reduce the phenomenon of xenophobia?
Late in December, I had a conversation with very intelligent man - well educated, a trained professional - who declared that the moment the Arabs put down their weapons Israel will steal more land. Asked for evidence, he said, "History." When I told him that history proves him wrong, he balked. After telling him that Israel withdrew from Sinai (twice), from Lebanon, from Gaza, he just glared at me. There was no sign that facts would penetrate the castle of his mind.I support more education, but I don't think that "education" goes further than the Shoah. We Germans love to grieve for dead Jews from 60 years ago - and dismiss anti-Semitism today as soon as it doesn't manifest itself in neo-Nazism.
Which leads to another problem with the KFN study. There's a big ideological flaw in the fact that the anti-Semitism questions were only given to indigenous European Germans. What about all those immigrant youths, mainly Muslim Turks and Arabs? They were only asked about their integration problems (that might be part of another report to be issued later this year). What's the matter with Germany (or the whole of Europe) that a known problem just isn't addressed? That "modern" anti-Semitism is more or less ignored, and those blowing the whistle are maligned and attacked?
This is the real problem of anti-Semitism in Germany (and in Europe generally). It is not ninth graders echoing what they hear in real life - and doing so less than all those grown-ups in other surveys.