German anti-Islam movement hopes for big showing at Leipzig rally. [View all]
Source: Al Jazeera America
On Monday night, anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand people will gather in a parking lot outside Leipzig’s Red Bull soccer arena and set out on what organizers are calling an “evening stroll” through the city’s Waldstrasse Quarter. Calling themselves LEGIDA, in German short for Leipzig Against the Islamicization of the West, they are hoping to bring to Leipzig the success of the anti-immigrant protests that began in Dresden in October and have roiled German politics in recent weeks.
The march — and its reception in Leipzig, an hour’s drive from Dresden in eastern Germany — marks a potential pivot point for the anti-immigrant protests. In Dresden, the weekly PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes) rallies have grown to an estimated 18,000 people, far outnumbering the 4,000 or 5,000 counterprotesters who gather to shout them down each week.
The movement’s resonance and longevity has taken Germany’s political establishment by surprise and catapulted issues like asylum policy to the forefront of national debate. But it has remained a local phenomenon, with PEGIDA-inspired rallies outside Dresden drawing a few hundred people at most. “They have to grow in other cities to get political credibility,” said Oliver Decker, head of the Center for the Study of Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Democracy at the University of Leipzig.
The Wednesday attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has only added fuel to the fire. “Today Paris, tomorrow Berlin?” LEGIDA organizer Joerg Hoyer asked in a post on the organization’s website Wednesday. “How long will it take politicians to notice that we’re demonstrating for a reason?”
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Read more: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/11/legida-islam-germany.html
Le Pen is gaining popularity and support in France, the Golden Dawn is still strong in Greece, UKIP has gained seats in the British Parliament, Right Sector and Svoboda are being armed by the Ukrainian government and this is happening in Germany. What in the wildest of nightmares is happening to Europe?
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