Alternative For Germany Alternativ fuer Deutschland

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The Alternative For Germany (Alternativ fuer Deutschland) is a newer political party on the extreme far-right spectrum of politics.  They've slightly changed the formula of the flailing NPD by appearing to be more moderate, even using less-threatening coloring that doesn't invoke imagery of 1941 Germany, and friendlier-looking representatives.  While their speeches and rallies are still infused hatred, general xenophobia, and fear-mongering designed to scare their geriatric followers, they do it with slightly less spittle and anger and offer controlled-releases of the hatred, racism, and xenophobia.  They've made headway in such areas as Hamburg, bizarrely.

In Munich, they are still rather small, but they added themselves to the far/radical right sewer that's been polluting the city's streets for several months now, which prominently features Bagida and neonazi groups such as III. Weg (The Third Way), among others, at their core.  AfD's messages varied little from those we've all heard from populist, nationalistic, racist, and xenophobic groups throughout Europe and Germany, including those of Bagida. They can essentially be interchanged at this point.

This rally was also less than genuine, bolstering their counts by timing the beginning with the end of City Hall's bell display, which draws hundreds of tourists every round.  Their geriatric audience also displayed a propensity towards intolerance regarding how they treated journalists (as evidenced in a picture series below when a Bagida regular accosted a local journalist/documentarian), as well as how they treated a miniscule, youth activist group at the back of the audience.  The youths were welcomed with insults, aggression- both physical and verbal, yet they remained vocally peaceful.  Some geriatrics were so enraged with anything resembling a camera, that they didn't bother to see that the people whose cameras they were blocking with flags and whom they were pushing were police officers in uniform on assignment to also document the rally.

Pathetically and bizarrely, the rally lasted roughly only 1/4 hour.

Just a short distance away at Sendlinger Tor, a demonstration against the hate group Besorgte Eltern (Concerned Parents) was underway.  The Besorgte Eltern is yet another variation on radical right populism, racism, neonazism, homophobia.  Surprisingly, a Bagida member, who was with a woman the week before who committed a violent attack on a local journalist with the mast of a flag, made a conspicuous appearance and began photographing the event and went to the info stand to ask questions and read the flowcharts of how various hate groups, movements, and parties, including Pegida, interact with others.  He repeatedly approached local journalists to photograph them. 

Related*:
Montags (the last Bagida rally before an extended pause) here
Further Escalation here
Conflict in the Old Botanical Garden (neonazi attack) here
Die Rechte II (same neonazi group as the Keup Street entry) here
Provocation here 
Keup Street Is Everywhere Keupstraße ist überall (neonazi rally) here
More Bagida here
Bagida VII here
Bagida VI here
Bagida V here
Point/Counterpoint (separately posted picture from this rally) here
Pegida Bagida (rally 4) here
Pegida Muegida here
NoPegida (record-breaking counter demonstration in Munich) here
Muenchen ist Bunt here
Kein Mensch (Dresden) Here
Muenster Keinen Meter here
July 26th, Munich here
*omitted was demonstration #3 

Andre Wächter, Munich City Council (Stadtrat)

Prominent member of Muegida, the now-dissolved competitor of Bagida, who sometimes makes appearances at the latter.

Bagida/die Freiheit organizer/security/member of the German Defence League

Bagida member accosting journalist:

Had resorted to sorcery to try and get a rise out of the journalist.

 

Controversial flag in the center, also seen at Bagida, Pegida, and Neonazi rallies throughout Germany.  Discussed in a previous post.

 

Fritz Schmude, Munich City Council (Stadtrat)

Counter-demonstrators mocking the Alternative for Germany's logo:

Demonstration against the Besorgte Eltern:

Bagida participant, previously spotted at a Bagida march with a woman who physically attacked a local journalist with a flagpole, directly after (as documented) having been told something by Bagida organizer Rolf H.

 

NoPegida

No reproduction/reprinting without explicit permission and license agreement. Please share original link.  

Munich Demo #2 photos and commentary here 
Munich Demo #4 photos and commentary here

Author note 12/26/14: several sites are misrepresenting these photos to a non-German-speaking audience as the anti-Islam/anti-immigration rally.  This is the COUNTER demonstration against Pegida. 

Updated 12/29: A change.org petition calling for 1,000,000 signatures against Pegida has been started.  While it can't hurt to sign (and you, indeed, should), the issue is that the governments of Dresden (Orosz administration, though early on has said they will not have dialogue) and Saxony have already said they are opening dialogue with Pegida, cementing its already-strong political influence, cowardice of Saxony's politicians, and confirming the farce that gave rise to this radical Christian movement that now the rest of Germany and Europe has to deal with.   Since these governments have validated Pegida, and the rest of Germany is unwilling to do the unthinkable and hold the politicians there accountable for having played dangerous politics for years, the petition will do little, aside from giving some positive PR spin material for the German media to disseminate to cover up inability and lack of will to control such movements.

Pegida:  What happens when something is dissonant and an entire society prefers to pretend (alternately, vilify those that speak out against it) it's not there until it grows out of control and threatens the stability of said society.

On December 22, Munich held a rally against the planned expansion of the so-called "Pegida" movement (author note: it should be noted that many points in the Wiki entry designed to make Pegida look more moderate are disputable) into Munich.  An alleged populist and nationalist Bavarian party planned to bring the movement here after attending those held in Dresden (to, unsurprisingly, overwhelming success in such a short time).  It is alleged that this party has distorted, as evidenced on youtube and other places, the history of the National Socialists, the White Rose movement, and the extreme right.  They fluidly morph their platform and agenda into the current path of least resistance and have now tried tagging along on the Pegida platform.  The leader of this party has even recruited Kurds to incite hatred against Muslims in Munich at Karlsplatz Stachus, while using a "Christian" and anti-ISIS platform (and, indeed, his speeches at these events are less spittle-infused when compared to his party's events).  It is claimed by several media outlets that this party is under investigation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), which, in the wake of the NSU scandal, is no longer considered by many in Germany to be trustworthy.  Pegida also uses a distortion of "patriotism" in their platform.  For international audiences: it should be noted that in Germanic cultures, there's a blurred line between "patriotism" and "nationalism"/"national socialism" in their understandings of the differences of the two concepts. This is a rather significant point in understanding their tactics and only one example and aspect of how Pegida creates distortions.

There are varying numbers I'm reading regarding the turnout of the counter demonstraion- between 13,000-25,000.  The planned Pegida rally was cancelled due to lack of turnout. 

With specificity towards Dresden, this was beyond inevitable.  The incompetent governments of Saxony and Dresden (the Orosz administration, mayor of Dresden) chose to ignore and suppress the warning signs for years, while the residents were in denial or too focused on keeping it quiet and vilifying those who let others know the reality.  There's almost the appearance that Dresden's government tried to balance pandering to these elements and became arrogant in thinking they wouldn't escalate their radicalism in response to being disenfranchised. The federal government of Germany is also responsible, as they were more focused on covering up the disasterous social state of the former East Germany.  Particularly interesting is an additional level of vilification when one writes about these events in English, for a worldwide audience.

Dresden holds Europe's largest neo-nazi march with a farcical show of resistance by the city.  The reality is that Dresden is rather economically depressed and has social development still decades behind much of Germany and Europe. Such an event like the yearly Nazi march (which has expanded in recent years) brings much-needed money into the city. Rather than dealing with its social problems and the rise of the ultra-right, the city and federal government chose to play the numbers and statistics games, regarding the representation of the NPD in the Landtag, while pretending the people out on the streets with this sentiment didn't exist.  The media freely repeated these complete distortions, so it's no wonder why many Germans feel this popped up out of nowhere.  Study after study by the interior ministry (all available on pdf) regarding youths and far-right involvement went ignored or were claimed to be untrue. I lived in Dresden for nearly five years and observed all of this personally, as well as the personal attitudes of the people of Dresden, the lies used to cover up their far-right leanings, and the rise of the ultra-nationalists. These people didn't come out of nowhere. The far-right/anti-immigrant attitudes were also apparent among the educated classes, such as among instructors in the medical faculty of TU Dresden, and these behaviors were even tolerated by my classmates.  Those who tried to discuss this and predicted exactly this rise of Pegida were labeled as "troublemakers", "leftists", or "crazy".  Also ignored are the several holidays in Dresden where foreigners are advised (sometimes in writing via their employers, such as Max Planck) to not venture out of their homes due to violence against non-whites.  How many more signs were needed to have prevented this? 

What should be expected, as it pertains to Dresden and Saxony, is that Pegida will continue to grow there, if we go by the undeniable record of the Orosz administration.  Such movements are simply too good for the economy and her administration is too weak to counter them because this displays the will of the voters- it would be political suicide for her to show any type of courage to stop this, rather than continue to play on both sides behind the scenes.  For example, under her watch, the Dresden Nazi march has done quite well and even expanded to multiple events.  Orosz is also one of the organizers of the farcical human chain against the nazis, which is much closer to a ceremonial exhibition than a sincere show of resistance.  On one side, she allows the nazis to march and take over the city every year and terrorize foreigners and tourists, while on the other, she panders to the people resisting them- effectively playing both sides. In short, Dresden is only against the far and radical right when the world's media is watching, but what do they do the other 364 days of the year?  Absolutely nothing.  The Semperoper also had a farcical presentation during the last Pegida rally, but where were they to teach openness and tolerance for decades?

Furthermore, under the Orosz administration, a pregnant woman was murdered in a Dresden courthouse, in front of the judge, by a neo-nazi, which was criticized as another case where Dresden and Germany attempted to cover up its social problems regarding radicals in the far-right scene.  Simply put, Orosz failed Germany over and over and now has "gifted" Germany another radical movement.  Yet she, once again, slithers away with her reputation unharmed.  Why is she so untouchable?

Also to be expected is that once Pegida gains a foothold using its Christian values/anti-Islam platform to unify many different people under it, it will then expand its agenda to a wider one based on race.  It can't be overstated how disasterous this could end up being for Europe, factoring in Germany's considerable sway in the European Parliament and sovereignty transfers made in the wake of the Eurocrisis.  Due to this, Germany has considerable cultural and legislative influence over EU and EEA nations.

Unfortunately, the Pegida issue is yet another example of the failings of local governments and the federal government of Germany to deal with its social problems and its past and it's now the problem of everyone else to deal with.  Whether the will exists to counter this in the long-term or not remains to be seen. Certainly, the will to hold politicians accountable, such as Helma Orosz, who allowed the radical right to rise up on her watch, is 100% absent.

Germany still has a chance to deal with it, provided it has the will to follow through. Munich has a chance to not become another Dresden, provided this rather inspiring rally wasn't a one-time deal and they don't revert to the path of least resistance- that of covering up and/or ignoring the issues.

Related:
Muenchen ist Bunt here
Kein Mensch (Dresden) Here
Muenster Keinen Meter here
July 26th, Munich here
 

 

Interdasting...

 

"Patriotische Europaeer fuer die Blutaffrischung" (Patriotic Europeans For New Blood)

at 1:14,the man speaking states clearly what Pegida's Endloesung is.