All autumn we watched the upward swing of PEGIDA, “Patriotic Europeans against Islamization of the West”, most rapidly but not only in Saxony’s capital Dresden. Its main features were a fast-talking, shady leader with some eerie charisma, plus foggy dissatisfaction with just about everyone and everything: most politicians, the media, but especially poor job, rent and pension situations and fears for the future, plus, most dangerously, the channeling of such fears and worries into a dull hatred of anything and anyone “foreign”, especially the often arbitrary placement of newly-arrived Syrian and Iraqi refugees into their hitherto close communities. PEGIDA’s Monday “walks”, though ambling and non-violent, recalled disturbingly the murderous stamp of booted, brown-shirted marchers of a previous generation. And some gimlet-eyed neo-Nazis reinforced such recollections. But soon, all over Germany, the other end of the seesaw swung upward. More and more thousands demonstrated against the hatred crowd, welcoming asylum-seekers and reassuring peaceful Muslim families long resident in Germany. They greatly outnumbered and at times blocked the path of the PEGIDA people – everywhere but in Dresden. In Leipzig, Dresden’s rival in Saxony and with a very different heritage, never a royal court but open trade fairs since 1165 and book fairs since the 17th century, PEGIDA rallied 4800 marchers in early January – but its opponents 30,000.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 07:25:29 +0000
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