"I see serious threats coming our way from outside Europe. I feel especially pessimistic about the overpopulation of Africa and Asia," says Menzel, looking serious. "And I believe that what is unfolding in Iraq and Syria at the moment is a clear harbinger of the first global civil war."...
Far-right groups like the xenophobic National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) see the protests as a chance to take their worldview directly to the middle class. Populist movements that have attracted little attention until now, like the so-called "identitarian movement," are suddenly in the spotlight, as is the aimlessly wandering Reichsbürgerbewegung, or Reich Citizens' Movement, which asserts that the German Reich still exists within its pre-World War II borders....
But the interior ministers failed to develop a convincing plan to effectively combat the problem. "We cannot label 10,000 people as right-wing extremists. That creates more problems than it solves," says Saxony Interior Minister Markus Ulbig, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). According to Ulbig, there were many "middle-class citizens" among the Dresden demonstrators, "and you can't toss them all into the same Neo-Nazi pot."...
In Dresden on Dec. 8, an anonymous Pegida speaker even began his speech by quoting the words of US black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, "I have a dream." He too had a dream, the demonstrator in Saxony said, a dream of the peaceful coexistence of all human beings and cultures. But then he arrived at what he called the hard reality: that we are in a state of war....
Was there an "objective reason," the speaker asked rhetorically, to invade Iraq, overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, intervene in Tunisia, depose Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and "provoke Russia with Ukraine?" "No!" the crowd shouted each time. "He who sows war will reap refugees," the Pegida speaker shouted to his audience of 10,000 Dresden citizens, and warned against the "perverse ideas" that are coming to Germany...
But many of those who take to the streets every week don't believe the official statistics. Instead, they are convinced that a cartel of politicians and "main-stream media" are audaciously misleading the public over the true state of affairs...
...Nazi-era terms like "Volk" (the people) and "Vaterland" (the fatherland) are back in vogue.
...Many citizens apparently believe that politicians and the media are treating an important issue -- the effects of immigration on society -- as a taboo.
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