A PEGIDA Roundup

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Every Monday night the German anti-Islamization group PEGIDA (Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) stages a rally in Dresden city center. Similar rallies occur in other German cities (e.g. BOGIDA in Bonn and DÜGIDA in Düsseldorf), also on Monday nights.

Tonight’s rally in Dresden reportedly drew 17,500 grassroots protesters. I don’t have any extensive reports yet in English, but here are some links:

Concerning this German TV news report on the PEGIDA demonstration in Dresden (and the counter-demonstrators), Rembrandt Clancy has kindly provided this summary:

The anchor, Judith Rakers, announces that again thousands of PEGIDA demonstrators gathered to demonstrate against an “alleged Islamisation of the West”. Parallel to that, thousands of counter-demonstrations have taken place in several cities “against racism and exclusion”. The President of the Council of the Evangelical Churches in Germany, Bedford-Strohm, warned against demonising PEGIDA and “urged a discussion which deals with substantive content”.

At that point we hear the Christmas Carols, which the reporter on location says are being sung before the Semperoper [opera house] in Dresden. The first woman interviewed says she is there because of the ignorance and mendacity of their politicians. The reporter then says that thousands of counter-demonstrators are separated from the PEGIDA demonstrators only by a police cordon.

The first (female) counter-demonstrator refers to PEGIDA’s action as inhuman. They remind her of the Nazis. The second counter-demonstrator refers to the majority of Dresdeners as having a cosmopolitan tolerance. She says they welcome refugees.

The scene switches to the Dresden Kreutzkirche [which is Lutheran]. The reporter describes the gathering as a protest against PEGIDA and their singing of Christmas carols.

Then Jochen Bohl is interviewed. He is a state bishop for the Evangelical Lutheran State Church of Saxony. He finds it unaesthetic when people use Christmas carols to put across a political message. He says it is not the meaning of Christmas nor of the carols, and for that reason he takes a very critical stance against it.

The reporter closes by saying that PEGIDA polarises, also on this Monday when Dresden is far removed from Christmas peace.

9 thoughts on “A PEGIDA Roundup”

  1. So the reporter says that “PEGIDA polarises,” well everything that unites also divides. If you put all the females on one group and the males in another you have divided, but you have also united people by gender. I hope this was just a bad translation.

    It is SO refreshing to see Europeans finally standing up to the threats of Islam.

  2. I would like to congratulate PEGIDA on gathering such an impressive demonstration. It seems that Germans begin to understand the threat of Islamisation.

    I do agree with the Lutheran bishop that to “use Christmas carols to put across a political message” is not a very happy idea. But the message here is not about politics. It is about survival of the European civilisation and of Christian faith on which it is based. I think the good bishop should be more concerned with Islamic extremists who behead, torture, rape and persecute Christians in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and in many other parts of the Western world and try to impose their religion on Christian and post-Christian countries by terror and intimidation.

    That is a bigger problem for Germany than PEGIDA’s alleged misuse of Christmas carols.

    • I really meant “persecute Christians in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and in many other parts of the world”, not of the “Western” world. It’s a misprint, sorry.

  3. I agree. It is wonderful. This slow trickle of changing minds will finally weigh more than the old subset and the teeter-totter will quickly shift to the opposite position. Politicians are thus forced to dance if they want to stay on the board.

  4. One thing I don’t get – why are the demos in the West much smaller? Dresden has far fewer Muslims than the Western cities (officially, anyway)… why then do West Germans not demonstrate against what’s happening?

    • Others have made the point before me, GI: citizens of the former DDR have experienced 45 years of Communist totalitarianism on top of the Nazi era, so are likely more sensitive to the threat of another variety.

    • East Germans were never brainwashed by the multiracial cult, their lands were never flooded with immigrants, they don’t really carry the WWII guilt burden and they know political bs when they see it. They are, in short, normal, like most Europeans were forty years ago. That is why they are demonstrating, for their homeland and culture, as normal citizens. They don’t have the psychological burden that cripples western Germans.

  6. The is a very interesting new book published by Amazon.com in the U.S. . A very funny but based, on fact satire called, “How Murder, Child Molestation, & Terror Started Islam”. This may come down but Amazon.com is still publishing this book.

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