cancel2 2022
Canceled
- Half of Germans sceptical that Merkel will cope with the influx of migrants
- In contrast, Eurosceptic party AfD hit an all-time high in an opinion poll
- In Leipzig on Monday 500 thugs set cars ablaze and attacked shops and fast food restaurants, some of them belonging to migrants
- Came after the mass sex attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve
‘She tells people from all over the Islamic world to come here to paradise. The numbers are mind-boggling and could reach ten million [when the migrants bring members of their families over to join them]. ‘So many young men arriving every day with high testosterone and little respect for women mean the New Year sex attacks in Cologne will be repeated. ‘I am not alone in thinking this. The penny is dropping among ordinary Germans.’ What Herr Droese — president of the populist Eurosceptic party, Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) in the eastern city of Leipzig — says about German views on migrants is all too true.
According to a recent survey, half of the population is now sceptical that Mrs Merkel will cope with the huge influx. This is despite her recent TV address to the nation — complete with Arabic sub-titles aimed at the 1.1 million migrants who arrived in 2015 and now live at the Government’s expense in 2000 camps, hotels and rented accommodation across the country — when she repeated her insistence that ‘we can do this’.
The tide is inexorably turning against her, and polls show her popularity is declining. In contrast, the AfD, with an increasingly middle-class following of intellectuals and business people, hit an all-time high in an opinion poll released by best-selling newspaper Bild this week. From a standing start when it was founded in 2013, it is now supported by 11.5 per cent of voters, making it the third largest political party in the country. Nowhere in Germany do AfD’s demands for border controls and fewer migrants chime more easily with the mood than in the former Communist bloc in the east of the country.
Here in Leipzig, on Monday night, a local grassroots organisation called Pegida — Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West — held an anti-migrant march and protest. It was followed by a terrifying rampage through the city centre by a breakaway group of 500 thugs who set cars ablaze and attacked shops and fast food restaurants, some of them belonging to migrants. Whether the vandals were attached to Pegida or simply anarchists intent on destruction is not clear. But some likened the damage to migrant-owned shops to the Kristallnacht attacks against Jews across Nazi Germany in November 1938 — one of the most emotive subjects in this country’s calendar. The mayor of Leipzig, Burkhard Jung spoke of ‘terror on the streets’ as he condemned the ‘naked violence’. But given the febrile mood over migrants that now pervades all of Germany, there will almost certainly be more reprisals from the Far Right in the future.
The scenes in Leipzig — which has taken in 10,000 Merkel migrants — came after the mass sex attacks in Cologne, western Germany, on New Year’s Eve. During a barbaric night in that city’s main square, a substantial group of Arabic-speaking men among 1,000 male migrants there deliberately targeted and assaulted hundreds of women. A staggering 652 complaints were received by the police.
The march was followed by a terrifying rampage through the city centre by a breakaway group of 500 thugs