Wrt to xenophobia - well that's not part of the official program as far as I know. However, Lafontaine has called for stripping citizenship of non-whites who are insufficiently assimilated. He has railed against 'immigrants' taking jobs from good Germans (as a result of the old, now reformed citizenship laws many 'foreigners' are people born and raised in the country, net immigration of Turks and Turkish Kurds has been negligible for a good decade now). He has called the immigration of the Turks a conspiracy of the capitalist elites against average Germans. He has pointed to the courting of minority voters and the ongoing shift to a non- white majority in America as exemplifying the dangers of immigration.
I'd probably agree with LaFontaine on both the substantive disagreements with Schroeder that you mention, but that immigration stuff is pretty scary!
He has pointed to the courting of minority voters and the ongoing shift to a non- white majority in America as exemplifying the dangers of immigration.
As an American living in Germany, I don't enjoy seeing politicians rise to power on anti-immigrant platforms, even if the immigrants they're talking about are a few shades darker than me. Who's next to be slammed when treating Turks badly doesn't solve the problem?
