Germany's eurosceptics back anti-immigration drive

Germany's nascent anti-immigration movement drew its biggest crowd yet at a 15,000 strong rally on Monday night as it attracted high-level support from the country's leading eurosceptic party and exposed a fissure in chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative alliance.

The Dresden rally was the latest, and largest, of a string of populist protests that has also seen smaller gatherings in other German cities.

Alexander Gauland, the deputy leader of the eurosceptic AfD, was among 15,000 protesters who took part in the Monday demonstration organised by "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the west" (Pegida) in its east German birthplace.

Mr Gauland, a former CDU official, did not give a speech at the rally. He told the FT on Tuesday that it was not appropriate for the AfD, as a political party, to co-operate with Pegida, which must chart its own course. But he said "their demands are our demands. There is an overlap between us [over concerns about immigration, for example]."

Many of Germany's mainstream politicians are struggling to frame a response to this winter's anti-immigration demonstrations.

Stephan Mayer, parliamentary interior affairs spokesman for the CSU, the Bavarian sister party to Ms Merkel's Christian Democrats, urged politicians to listen to the protesters, saying that while the west was "as far as ever" from Islamisation, the demonstrators deserved to be heard with "an open ear".

Wolfgang Bosbach, the CDU chairman of the parliamentary interior affairs committee, called for the protesters' "rightful concerns" to be taken seriously and warned against "the wholesale abuse" of the demonstrators.

Mr Mayer and Mr Bosbach spoke after Ms Merkel on Monday said that while Germans were free to demonstrate, "there is no place for agitation and the defamation of human beings who come to us from other countries."

There are fears of a possible overlap between the populist demonstrations and recent far-right racist protests. The social democrats, the CDU/CSU bloc's coalition partners, have been forthright in their criticism, with Justice Minister Heiko Maas on Monday condemning Pegida as a "disgrace for Germany".

But many in the CDU/CSU believe the crowds in Dresden, are too large to be ignored - and may be signalling widely held concerns about immigration in Germany, where around 12 per cent of the population are immigrants.

At Monday night's rally, speakers praised the crowds for turning out in record numbers, while a counter-demonstration drew less than 6,000, down from 9,000 the previous week, according to police estimates.

The crowds were overwhelmingly from Dresden and the surrounding Saxony region but with support from as far away as Berlin, Frankfurt and Vienna. Even though Saxony, in the former communist east Germany, has an immigrant population of just 2 per cent, many demonstrators expressed concerns about Muslim immigration.

Their rallying cry was: Wir sind das Volk" - "We are the people" - the politically unimpeachable rallying cry of the anti-Communist protests of 1989.

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A 36-year-old Dresden bus driver said: "We know what has happened in West Germany, where immigrants have been arriving for decades. We don't want Dresden to go the same way."

A 62-year-old history professor from Vienna, said: "I know Islam. It is still in the Middle Ages. I am surprised anybody thinks that Muslims can be integrated in Germany."

A young Berlin office worker criticised the "mass inflow" of unskilled asylum seekers. "It is a foreign policy question - we should support reception centres for refugees in the region of the country they are escaping."

In conversation, many protesters expressed support for the AfD, which has in the past 18 months established itself on the right of the CDU/CSU. The AfD is particularly strong in eastern Germany, because the region, where democracy returned only 25 years ago, has fluid voting patterns. In regional elections in Saxony this year, it won 10 per cent, compared with 7 per cent nationwide in May's European parliamentary polls.

However, even though local AfD representatives have helped organise Pegida meetings, AfD leader Bernd Lucke has yet to appear at a demonstration. While he says he understands the protesters' concerns, he is fearful of associating with a movement that might alienate more mainstream AfD supporters.

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