(Bloomberg) — A German movement against the influence of Islam in Europe drew its biggest crowd yet for a rally, just five days after terror attacks in Paris stunned the world and gave anti-foreigner groups fuel to boost their support.
Despite calls by Chancellor Angela Merkel and others not to attend the marches, 25,000 people turned out for the event last night in the eastern German city of Dresden, according to the city’s police department. Last week 18,000 attended.
“My worst fears have been confirmed by what happened in Paris,” said Juergen Uhlemann, 73, a retired electrical engineer dressed in a fur-fringed parka against temperatures just over freezing and gusting winds. “This kind of attack could happen here. I want lots of money for a program to pay Muslims to go home.”
The German group is one of a number of anti-immigrant organizations in countries from France to the U.K. and Netherlands that have sought to capitalize on the killings last week of 17 people in Paris by Islamists. The shootings “ram home our point,” the march organizers wrote on Facebook.
The movement, which calls itself Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, or Pegida, demands tighter immigration laws, measures to fight “religious preachers of hatred” and a zero-tolerance policy for immigrants who commit crimes. The group has seen growing support for its almost weekly demonstrations in Dresden that began in October with just a few hundred people.
Counter Rallies
Germans also came out in large numbers last night to protest against the anti-Islam demonstrators, with more than 100,000 joining counter rallies across the country in cities that included Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Dusseldorf, according to figures from German news agency DPA.
Pegida backers in Dresden held aloft German, Saxon and other regional flags. There were several large French flags with a diagonal black strip across them to mark the Paris killings.
“Today Paris, tomorrow Dresden,” read one sign. Another’s message was: “Better to stand tall for Pegida today than to be on your knees for Mecca tomorrow.”
The large turnout despite Merkel urging Germans not to attend in a New Year’s address where she said some of the organizers have “hatred in their hearts” is indicative of the difficult task the region’s leaders face in combating the rise of groups that use immigrants and foreigners as scapegoats. Their rhetoric intensified after the attacks.
Intensified Rhetoric
Nigel Farage, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, spoke last week on LBC radio of a “Fifth Column” gnawing away at Britain and “a really rather gross policy of multi- culturalism.” Geert Wilders, head of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, said it is time to “de-Islamize our country.” Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, posted a video denouncing “radical Islam” and saying that “time’s up for denial and hypocrisy.”
In Germany, citizens are increasingly worried about Islam, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation poll published Jan. 8. Islam is seen as a threat by 57 percent of the nation’s non- Muslims, up from 53 percent in 2012. Overall, 61 percent of Germans say Islam isn’t compatible with life in the West, up from 52 percent three years ago. The country has 4 million Muslims out of a population of 81 million.
Deep Frustration
“There’s deep frustration over the silent Islamization taking place in Germany,” said Gerd Medger, 67, who advises companies seeking business contacts in Brazil and attended the Dresden rally waving a German flag. “If our governments let such violent people into Europe then we shouldn’t be surprised at these acts of violence.”
Pegida demonstrations which took place in other German cities yesterday drew far small numbers. In Berlin, several hundred showed up for a rally at the Brandenburg Gate, located next to the French Embassy which has been the scene of an outpouring of support from Germans since the attacks.
“We all mourn the victims from Paris,” said Andreas Froehlich, a 46-year-old who attended the Berlin event. “We will not use them for our political purposes.” But many Germans are concerned that “the country’s tolerance for other cultures could lead to a corruption of German values,” he said.
Merkel, who will attend a Berlin event today promoting tolerance organized by the Muslim community, borrowed a phrase yesterday from former German President Christian Wulff in saying Islam is an integral part of the country.
AfD Backing
“I’m also of this opinion,” she said after meeting the Turkish prime minister. “I’m the chancellor of all Germans and that includes everybody who lives here permanently, whatever their origin.”
The rise of Pegida, which isn’t a party, follows election successes last year of the anti-Euro Alternative for Germany, or AfD, that’s critical of migrants and is taking voters from Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and other parties. Bernd Lucke, the AfD’s leader, said in an interview published yesterday in newspaper Die Welt that Pegida supporters would be welcome in his party.
An Infratest-Dimap poll showed 21 percent of Germans have “sympathy” for Pegida. The backing was higher, 31 percent, in formerly communist eastern Germany, which has far fewer foreigners, and 19 percent in the western part of the country.
The support for the anti-immigrant movement comes as the number of refugees arriving in Germany, mainly from the Middle East and Africa, surged by almost 60 percent last year, with the government estimating that 200,000 entered the country.
“For the radical part of Pegida, the killings are the proof that they’ve been expecting,” Jan Techau, head of the Carnegie Endowment’s Brussels office, said by phone. “It feeds into their narrative but it may ultimately weaken Pegida by strengthening the far-right wing of the movement at the cost of the national conservatives.” – BLOOMBERG
