Post
by NineBerry » Wed Dec 31, 2014 11:17 am
Dresden is one of the places in Germany where you find the lowest number of immigrants, Muslims or Jews. Oh. And the lowest number of Christians, too. A city full of mainly atheist, white Teutonics. (80% of inhabitants not member of any religious organisation) During the time of he GDR (Socialist East Germany) Dresden and the area around it was called "Tal der Ahnungslosen" (Valley of the Know-nothings) because it was because of its geological position one of the few areas in the GDR where people couldn't watch Western German television.
One television station has put up 1 1/2 hours raw interviews (uncut) with participants. They show a wide variety of reasons for participation but a lot of misinformation and clearly no ability to form any reasonable argument.
Some seem to be generally motivated by discontent with the political state of affairs. Some mentioning issues completely unrelated to the topic of the demonstration like low wages for workers in the east, low child allowances or that Bayern München president Uli Hoeneß got such a low prison sentence for tax evasion. Some man when questioned about his opinion on islamization insisted the demonstration was not about islamization. "It does not say islamization anywhere" despite the actual name of the demonstration and speakers at the demonstration clearly discussing the issue.
Other clearly have classical stereotypes about foreigners (despite there actually being so few migrants in the area) like that they all live on allowances and get more money from the state than Germans or about rise of crime etc.
Others have anti-islamic stereotypes and irrational fears like "I don't want my children to have to go to the mosque for Christmas mass" ( sic!) or "I don't want to have my throat cut" etc.
A tabloid (BILD-Zeitung, German equivalent of the Daily Mail) has fanned the flames by reporting made-up stories about the "islamization". it reported that Berlin had banned traditional Christmas markets from being called Christmas markets. Which is a completely invented story. There is no regulation on the name of Christmas markets in Berlin and there are literally hundreds of Christmas markets in the city. The fact is that Berlin had in the summer restricted public places being used for religious festivals in order to ban a month long Ramadan (!) festival on a public place. This regulation does not apply to Christmas markets though, because they are not considered religious but commercial festivals. One newly opened market in the Kreuzberg area decided to call itself "Light Market" instead of "Christmas Market" but not because of any regulation but because it was targeting the alternative Hipster scene in Kreuzberg.
A few days later the same tabloid reported that prominent German Muslims had demanded Muslim songs should be played at Christmas Masses. Turned out, BILD itself thought up the idea and had phoned around prominent Muslims only finding a few who when presented with the idea as if this was already planned by churches commented it "was a nice idea", one suggesting it should only happen when Mosques in exchange also play Christian songs at Friday Prayer.
Interesting Fun-Fact: The main organizer of Pegida, Lutz Bachmann, is a convicted criminal (assault and battery and drug trafficking) and had fled to South Africa some years ago to evade a prison sentence...
