Germany is not Pegida

Germany has been getting a lot of bad press recently thanks to the Pegida and "Pegada" marches.  International observers have been wringing their hands, worried that the country is sliding back into a permanent xenophobia.  This is unfair.  The Pegida "movement" is just a German variation of the American Tea Party, complete with its own Sara Palin - but without the eyebrows (Kathrin Oertel).  Like the Tea Party, Pegida is comprised primarily of frustrated middle-aged white men who feel marginalized in a globalized world they no longer recognize.  Unfortunately, this group is easily manipulated by right-wing, even neo-Nazi, elements (especially pronounced in the Leipzig "Legida" copycat marches).  For the most part, the Pegida (and Legida) protesters have been vastly outnumbered by "anti-Pegida" demonstrators - although this is not often reported in the international press:

The other day, Anna Sauerbrey, editor of the Tagesspiegel, had a nice op/ed piece in the New York Times -  Germany Isn't Turning Backwards:

"There are two ways to look at the situation. The optimistic take is to note that, for all the attention Pegida gets inside of Germany and abroad, Germany has never been as liberal, culturally diverse and open toward minorities as it is today.

Last year a biennial poll conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a foundation associated with the left-wing Social Democrats (and thus unlikely to underestimate the problem), found that anti-foreigner attitudes were at a historic low. While its 2012 poll found that about a quarter of Germans reported hostile views toward foreigners, only 7.5 percent did in 2014. And anti-Semitism, which is on the rise elsewhere in Europe, has dropped significantly, to 4.1 percent from 8.6.

Apart from the polls, there is quite a bit of evidence for a new openness. On Jan. 12, 100,000 people went to the streets nationwide in counterdemonstrations against Pegida, showing their solidarity with German Muslims. In Leipzig, 4,800 pro-Pegida protesters were met by 30,000 counterprotesters."

I expect that the Pegida movement will play itself out in the near future - just like the Tea Party in the US.  Already there are signs that it is self-destructing.  Hate requires quite a bit of energy and is unsustainable over the long run.  Think of Brecht's poem Maske des Bösen:

An meiner Wand hängt eine japanische Holzmaske
Maske eines bösen Dämons, bemalt mit Goldlack
Mitfühlend sehe ich die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend
wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein.

 

Comments

[koogleschreiber]

One big terrorist attack in Germany could change everything. Germany extends its role in Iraq now by training the Peshmerga and supplying them with weapons. Will ISIS really ignore that? Did you know that the Association of German Detectives has bitterly complained how easy it is, ironically in Berlin, to register with false documents and passports, because the authorities practically do not check them for authenticity? Excellent preconditions for any sort of crime - and for sleeper cells. Usually, before the police take notice, criminals have long taken advantage of it and we have an islamic parallel society in Berlin anyway. So how are the odds really for Pegida over the long run? What has to happen before tabloids like BILD start bashing politicians when they say that islam is a part of Germany?

[Zyme]

BILD is in fact part of the problem. Those behind our mass press seem to be closely associated with the way our political class operates.
Together they try to put a halt to any popular movement which threatens their way.

Like you mentioned, a terrorist attack could change everything though.

One can only hope the Muslims know better, keeping the Jews' history in mind.

[David]

@zyme, please explain your last sentence:

"One can only hope the Muslims know better, keeping the Jews' history in mind."

[Zyme]

While I suspect you fully got the meaning here we go:

The radical Muslims should better not temper with their current area of refuge in Europe where they can peacefully retreat, be treated and plot new terrorist attacks.

If instead they do everything to make Muslims the target of a European public opinion (being a sleepwalker in global security affairs today), they might find out the hard way what it means to antagonize Europeans.

In what I see as a stark contrast to Americans, once Europeans sufficiently feel being on a mission to save the planet, just like in the past the results might make Abu Ghraib and Guantanomo look like child's play.