“Wir sind das Volk” – “We are the people”

Fifteen thousand people marched in the eastern German city of Dresden on Monday (15 December) in protest against "asylum cheaters" and the rising "Islamisation" of the West.

Marking a 50% rise in attendance since the demonstration last Monday, the founder of the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA), Lutz Bachmann, addressed the protestors saying: "The people are with us! Everywhere now, in every news rag, on every senseless talk show, they are debating, and the most important thing is: the politicians can no longer ignore us!"We have shown by taking another 'little stroll', and by growing in numbers, that we're on the right path, and that slowly, very slowly, something is beginning to change in this country."

As an American who has lived around Germany for twenty-odd years...I can make these three observations.

First, Germans are prone toward mass movements. You can see it in the late 1950s as the anti-US groups churned up and really became a major force in the 1970s. The anti-US crowd rediscovered itself with the invasion of Iraq and re-elected one of the most negative chancellors in German history (to wake up a month later and agreeing they’d really elected the wrong guy). Mass movements have been going on for a thousand years in Germany....it’s part of their history and culture.

Second, through the late 1950s and onto the mid-1980s...there was version one of the Turks and Islam in Germany. No one said much....no open ‘theater’...there were just part of the crowd. Only when you get into the 1980s and Saudi Arabia shows up with cash funds to build ‘their’ mosque operations, with their clerics in charge...do you see a totally different atmosphere developing. The Turks who’ve been around for thirty years are shaking their heads because you see on the streets in Germany is way beyond their core belief. It’s a trend developed by the Saudis, for some type of strategy of Islam growth.

Third and final, the Thirty Years War was a war mostly about religion (Catholics versus Protestants). When it was over, roughly half the population were gone. The Germans were pretty finished up on religious feelings. Over half the population of today have no ties to any religion. The Islamic folks are dragging up the topic once again, and one can predict how the bulk of German society will react.

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