There is something going on these days. "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident" walking in the streets of Dresden. It is a very heterogeneous movement and arouses a lot of necessary questions.
Here are the facts from a German perspective:
Who are those people?
Call them white trash if you want. But apart from those we call neo-naziâs, we see right-wing-conservatives and old senior citizens. Most of them are xenophobic. They are afraid of migrants. In general. I am not sure if they actually were more tolerant towards migrants from- let us say south-east-Asia- than from Muslim countries. But people here are especially afraid of ISIS and attacks in Germany and to loose their wealth. They totally overreacted and start mixing facts with fears, often even not related ones. It can get dangerous if nobody reacts to it but for now I think it is simply confused and frustrated people in the streets. It is sad to see it were (even) 17 500 last Monday in Dresden but in that case they do not represent the opinion of inhabitants all over Dresden (530 000), Germany (80 000 000) and neither Europe! Although we should not forget that we have rightwing-conservative parties represented in national parliaments all over Europe who cover those attitudes- (Fremskrittsparti in Norway, fidesz in Hungary, PVV in the Netherlands). In Germany NPD is not even represented in national parliament!
What is that movement about? Although they call themselves Europeans I can not image they identify themselves as "Europeans" in their daily live, most of them I suppose limit their perspectives to their own point of view in a regional range!
As we all are supposed to know that opposed to the arguments of their leader Lutz Bachmann
Living conditions of refugees in Germany are not as good as they are supposed to be. Refugees do not receive more state money than e.g. old German people or jobless!
The majority (75%) of criminal acts were conducted by Germans
Keeping German values and traditions is something each person can take care of, we do not need to blame others if we do not manage to remember fairy tales or prepare traditional meals instead of watching TV or eating mc Donaldâs
With all those facts we can not even make a conclusion that religion is a matter of fact!!!!
The movement is not against political refugees and not against liberal Muslims. They position themselves against radical Islam, degrading women and judgment by sharia. They support measures of integration (although I doubt the would take an active part in that)
Are all Germans nationalistic? Not at all! And I want you to know that there have been protests and Christian church Christmas speeches all over the country clarifies that taking care of threatened (also Muslim) refugees is our duty. Churches do position against that move, because as the new testament remind us we are suppose to love the person next to you as ourselves. Obviously that is not that easy.
Currently we have a lot of satire about it on national TV
sketch from "Heute show" about how the Christmas story might have looked like nowadays: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PhkMaB1QaI
"Pegida-Charts" re-written songs by newcomer-show "zdf neo magazine" by Jan Böhmermann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMz0ZbgMVBk
and an online-campaign against the movement: https://www.change.org/p/1-mio-unterschriften-gegen-pegida-nopegida
Why is the movement (still) popular?
For that we have take a brief look at history and current society. The city Dresden (as one of many) started struggling economically 20 years ago when the wall came down as it entered capitalism. Things improved over the time and people should know that incoming migrants do not "steal their work". The lack of jobs in Saxony is in a broader sense the consequence of globalism. So is the migration of people. It is no excuse but maybe helpful to get an idea what the background is: People in the GDR (former soviet influenced socialistic state) were isolated for more than 40 yrs and mostly only knew a few other nationalities from their vacations as the were only allowed to travel to socialistic countries as Poland, Hungary and Russia- most of them either catholic or non-religious. Vietnam, Mozambique and Cuba were some of the few partners outside Europe. In my opinion many of the people in Dresden simply do not know how to deal with other cultures and especially foreign languages.
Germany is turning old. We have too little kids in our country to generate enough tax income to pay the retirement pension for the growing older part of society. Older people fear they cannot make a living. A problem we know in all western societies.
Officially we do not have a culture of patriotism in Germany because of our past. This is positive on one side because we, as a award-winning democracy, do not want to be seen as a xenophobic country. But our people are not as perfect as we wish them to be. In my opinion there is too little education and explanation by the state, a lack of dialogue and a lack of knowledge amongst the crowd. Complexity of society and cultures unfortunately initially fosters drawing black-and-white-lines. I wish Germany and all other countries in the world to hold up discussions and keep growing a human-friendly atmosphere.
Do you want to stay updated? http://pegidawatch.blogspot.de/
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