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rehe demonstration of the “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West” (Pegida) this Monday night in Dresden begins with what most of the participants consider an imposition: with the requirement of a mask. Due to the crown pandemic, the Dresden assembly authority ordered the use of oral and nasal protection at short notice, both for the Pegida rally on the Altmarkt and for the counter rally, which takes place at a sight and hearing distance separated by police bars.
The protesters are not too strict about the mask requirement and especially about the safety distance on both sides. The difference: the counter-protesters do not reject these measures. “Where, where, where are your masks?” They sing in the direction of the Pegida rally. There, in turn, the speakers draw attention to these requirements several times at the beginning. “In an emergency, the police would break up the demonstration,” says a spokesman. There are boos for that. But with the official start of the event, most donned the mask or left it hanging from their chin.
Now they are not only protesting, as they have for almost six years, against “Islamization” and foreigners, against the media and Merkel, but also against the “pseudo-pandemic.”
Most of the participants, including a notable number of people over the age of 60, seem to know each other. Hello here, a chat there. Around 1000 people will meet at the end. A brand where the marches have leveled off and a little more than the other side stands up that night.
“You have to hook it down”
“That’s frighteningly small,” says a woman in her 30s in Deep Saxon when greeting an acquaintance. Organizers are likely to expect more participants tonight as well, as, as the scenario says, “two top-tier players” have been announced: the assassinated ex-Brandenburg AfD director Andreas Kalbitz and his possible successor as president of the parliamentary group. Christoph Berndt.
In addition to the speaker’s platform, which is installed in a small truck, the far-right group “One Percent” has installed an information booth. There are AfD flyers, magazines, badges and, the hit of the day, stickers in Arabic script. “Go back to your country of origin, your country of origin needs you,” translated a young man at the information booth, who with his mask and dark sunglasses seems that the protection measures of the crown were very useful. “You have to hook it down,” he explains, visibly proud of this knowledge. “Oh well, I’ll take some,” says a man in his fifties. A person of the same age from the Dresden area, who also has access, adds: “There are no knacks here. But you never know. “
It is the only stand with informational material. Anyone who comes to Pegida knows it anyway. Only a plump man in his 60s sells a magazine for the homeless. Will it also be sold on the other side? “It is only for our German citizens,” he replies. Before I can ask him if there are no German citizens behind police bars, he adds: “But we also let foreigners sell the newspaper. Our German madams are too good for that. “
After a brief greeting, during which the announcer expressed his hope for the re-election of Donald Trump, the march began to move. Not a long way, just around the block.
From time to time, participants shout the well-known Pegida slogans (“resistance”, “lying press”). But overall it is quiet. But not in the middle of the procession, where a small band – bass drum, marching drum, accordion – plays popular songs (“I loved keeping the linden, but the car that rolls”). His companions, including a woman in her 30s who, with her hip-length hair, precise braid of hair and brown blouse, looks like one of Dr. Goebbels’s personally accepted Heimatfilm, sings, but carries textbooks with them to be sure.
Kalbitz as star guest
After a good quarter of an hour, the demo train is back at the old market. In crowded cafes, Dresden residents and tourists briefly look up from their late-night beer. People seem to have gotten used to Pegida. At the demonstration, on the other hand, a woman in her 60s in an elegant black and white dress and black heels not very suitable for demonstrations shoots a punishing look at the guests of the cafe. “These people have no idea what is happening here,” she later tells her partner. “If you don’t do research on the Internet, you’re stupid.”
Back at the Altmarkt, the star guest enters the speaker’s platform. For Kalbitz, along with Björn Höcke, the best-known figure in the formally disbanded völkisch “wing” of the AfD, it is the first public appearance since mid-August. At that time, he had resigned as chairman of the group in the course of the “ruptured spleen affair”, a blow against his fellow parliamentary group Dennis Hohloch. Shortly thereafter, he ruled before the Berlin Regional Court with his urgent request against the Federal Arbitration Court’s decision to annul his party affiliation.
The coup, according to information from the state-run AfD faction, a friendly but “unsuccessful” greeting, not only concerns the Potsdam prosecutor, who has launched a preliminary investigation for negligent bodily harm, but has also weakened Kalbitz’s position within the AfD. Friends of the party who supported him in the conflict with federal spokesman Jörg Meuthen, who played a key role in pushing for his expulsion, are said to have turned their backs on him.
There is no trace of this among the protesters in Pegida. The crowd greeted him with cheers. Kalbitz receives the first applause of the scene when he removes the mask in black, red and gold – the “muzzle”, as he puts it – from the microphone.
The name Meuthen comes at the end
It is not the first time that the extreme right AfD has spoken in Pegida; knows what names and keywords to boo pause (Angela Merkel, Greta Thunberg, press). She describes Corona as a “pseudo-pandemic” and speaks out against the admission of refugees from the burned Moria camp.
In the internal dispute of the party, the real theme of the night, he is combative without mentioning his adversary Jörg Meuthen by name. Instead, he praised the election of “wing” Jens Kestner as the new state president in Lower Saxony, who won a vote against former head of state Dana Guth over the weekend, as a “clear signal against a small clique of careerists.” , the AfD. wants to take over.
Instead of more declarations of war, the AfD, of which it is no longer a member for the time being, is followed by calls for unity: “Define yourself by what connects you, not what can separate you,” he says. And: “Our disagreement is her strength, our fear is her power.” Democracy is the least bad form of government, the AfD the “least bad party.” Her appearance in Pegida is only a political advertisement.
But that’s not the big deal with Jörg Meuthen that some participants were hoping for. Rather, Kalbitz sounds like he’s fighting for the favor of the party rank and file and doesn’t want to alienate would-be undecided. He promises to loud applause: “And you won’t get rid of me as fast as you imagined.”
The same goes for Christoph Berndt, former chairman of the Charité staff council and founder of the far-right association “Zukunft Heimat”, who wants to succeed Kalbitz as leader of the parliamentary group in Brandenburg. In his lengthy speech, he mainly opposes the Corona measures and explains what the left-wing CSU “coalition of all parties” is fighting and what only the AfD (cars, cash, Internet) defends. Regarding the power struggle within the party, which currently revolves around Kalbitz staff, he simply says: “If the AfD wants to rise again, it needs strong wings.”
Then Ralf Özkara briefly takes the microphone, the former head of state in Baden-Württemberg, who has since left the party, is also a “grand piano” man. He announces that he has moved to Zwickau with his family because people like Kalbitz or himself are not welcome in Baden-Württemberg. “I don’t want to mention any Meuthen names,” he says. A tired joke with which the name of the party leader comes out shortly before the end. That’s enough for Pegida.
