DRESDEN, Germany, Jan 5 (Reuters) - Protesters marched in several German cities on Monday against higher levels of immigration and what they see as the growing influence of Islam, in defiance of an appeal from Chancellor Angela Merkel to spurn rallies she views as racist. The rallies, organized by a new grassroots movement known as PEGIDA, or Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, have become an almost weekly event in the east German city of Dresden in recent months. The PEGIDA protesters waved Germany’s black, red and gold flag and brandished posters bearing slogans such as “Against religious fanaticism and every kind of radicalism.”…. One poster in Cologne called for “potatoes rather than doner kebabs,” a swipe at ethnic Turks who at around three million represent Germany’s largest immigrant community.
I suppose Americans can take some small comfort in knowing that at least our racism and nativism is less virulent and openly ugly than what’s found in Europe these days. Open displays of hatred and discrimination based on ethnicity, nationality, or religion aren’t exactly new phenomena in Europe, and one need not go back far to find examples of how such hatred has been employed to deadly effect. Countries like Germany and France are home to large Muslim immigrant communities, and assimilation has on occasion been an issue responsible for no small amount of frustration among the Caucasian population.
Germany in particular has very liberal asylum rules, due in part to the country’s Nazi past. Last year, some 200,000 asylum seekers, many of them Muslim, entered Germany. There’s always been a strong Right-wing nativist element in Germany, and the increasing numbers seeking asylum in Germany (up by a factor of four from 2012) has struck a nerve, which the German government has been working to counter.
“We need to … say that right-wing extremism, hostility towards foreigners and anti-Semitism should not be allowed any place in our society,” Merkel said on Monday in the eastern town of Neustrelitz….
“Germany is a country where refugees are welcome and the silent majority must not remain silent but rather go out onto the streets and show itself,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas said at the Berlin counter-demonstration.
It should be pointed out that the nativists at the PEGIDA rallies constitute but a very small minority of Germans, but in a country with a history such as Germany’s, racism in any form is not taken lightly.
Cologne Cathedral, one of Germany’s most famous landmarks, switched its lights off to protest against the anti-Muslim rallies. Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate turned off its floodlights in a similar gesture of solidarity.
Georges Santayana once said that those who don’t know history are condemned to repeat it. Given Germany’s recent history, it appears there are those who’ve forgotten- if they ever really understood- the lessons of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s.
Who says history isn’t circular?
