Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders rallied thousands of PEGIDA followers in eastern Germany Monday to counter society’s “Islamisation”.<\/p>\n
The “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, founded half a year ago in the city of Dresden, had aimed to top their previous record from January of 25,000 people joining a rally.<\/p>\n
Many were waving Germany’s red-black-gold national flag and yelling their standard chant of “we are the people”.<\/p>\n
“Dresden is showing how it’s done,” said the flamboyant Dutch politician with the trademark peroxide blond hair, who has called Islam a fascist religion and compared the Koran to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”.<\/p>\n
“We have had enough of the Islamisation of society,” he said, speaking in German to loud cheers from the crowd.<\/p>\n
“Immigrants have to adopt our values, not the other way around.”<\/p>\n
He also insisted that “we don’t hate Muslims, but they have to integrate” and demanded the reintroduction of border controls within the European Union.<\/p>\n
More than 2,000 anti-fascist counter-demonstrators had rallied in the afternoon, away from the PEGIDA protest site which was blocked off by police.<\/p>\n
PEGIDA marches, which have also targeted “criminal asylum seekers”, mainstream political parties and the media — began with several hundred supporters last October and peaked in January, just after the deadly Islamist attacks in Paris.<\/p>\n
Wilders, 51, who heads the Party for Freedom, was again accused of inciting racial hatred after pledging last year to ensure there will be “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
The German integration commissioner, Aydan Ozoguz, had warned citizens against attending the PEGIDA event, saying that by inviting Wilders the group had shown its true extremist colours.<\/p>\n
“Anyone who still marches behind their flag is joining an openly far-right movement,” Ozoguz told the Welt daily.<\/p>\n
Saxony state Interior Minister Markus Ulbig said: “This is not a good day for Saxony. With Geert Wilders they have invited a person who has hate inside him, who is divisive”.<\/p>\n
Dresden police declined to provide a crowd estimate for the PEGIDA event.<\/p>\n
Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders rallied thousands of PEGIDA followers in eastern Germany Monday to counter society’s “Islamisation”. The “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident”, founded half a year ago in the city of Dresden, had aimed to top their previous record from January of 25,000 people joining a rally. Many were waving Germany’s … Continue reading “Wilders rallies thousands of PEGIDA followers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,3],"tags":[10686,916,51,10685,336],"class_list":["post-18475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-news","tag-dresden","tag-geert-wilders","tag-germany","tag-pegida","tag-pvv"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18476,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18475\/revisions\/18476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}