“Fortress Europe”, “Pegida” and its laughing stocks

This article was exclusively written for the Sting by a Brussels-based passionate reader of German origin with significant experience in EU affairs. The fact that the refugee crisis is dividing Germany is no news. Just a few days ago, CDU[1] – member of the Bundestag[2] Bettina Kudla criticized Merkel’s asylum policy on Twitter, labelling it as “Umvolkung”, a Nazi vocabulary referring to the Germanisation of pro-German communities in conquered territories of Eastern Europe under the Nazis, which is used by right-wing extremists to criticize the migration policy. Time and again, the AfD[3], which gained recently significant amounts of seats in several state parliaments, gets involved in such xenophobic statements. So done in May 2016, when Deputy Chairman of the AfD Alexander Gauland said about national soccer player Jérôme Boateng: “People see in him a great football player, but they wouldn’t want a Boateng as their neighbour”, in July 2016 AfD-Deputy Chairman Beatrix von Storch wrote on Twitter about Germany’s loss against France in the European Championship after the game: “Maybe next time the German NATIONAL team should play again?”. But this seems to be topped now by “Fortress Europe”, a pan-European citizens’ movement, with predecessors in France, officially founded on January 23rd, 2016 in Prague. Originally, „Fortress Europe” was a military propaganda term used to refer in World War II to the areas of Continental Europe occupied by Nazi Germany. Nowadays, it refers to the closing of the common external border against migrants from outside the European continent. The group had been mostly active on the internet over Facebook, but recently it is being called by German media as “the most active right-winged extremist (youth) movement in Germany” which seems to be getting more and more active all around Europe. According to its social media presentation, which appears to be created with help of Google-translate, according to its bad English, the movement stands for “(…) the right [of the citizens of every European country] to decide which immigrants to accept and which not to accept into their country”, stating: „[w]e will not surrender Europe to our enemies. We are prepared to stand up and oppose political Islam, extreme Islamic regimes, and their European collaborators. We are prepared to risk our freedoms, properties, jobs and careers and maybe even to put our lives at stakes, as it was done by the generations before us.” Having a closer look into the group, racist slogans as “To remind you again: Europe is neither black nor Arabic!” are quite common, also the profiles of its spokesperson Tatjana Festerling, a former co-founder of the AfD and part of Pegida’s[4] “organisational team”, and Edwin Wagenveld, leader of Pegida Netherlands since its inauguration in October 2015, are quite shocking for any open-minded person with a functioning brain. Festerling who praised publicly Hooligans, facing imminent expulsion, pulled out of the AfD and ran for mayor in 2015 in Dresden. In November 2015, the department of public prosecution of Dresden initiated criminal investigations on account of defamation, sedition and public provocation to commit offences. In October 2015, she caught attention with her absurd demand for a „Säxit“, demanding the exit of the state Saxony of the Federal Republic of Germany, after having called in March 2016 for a reconstruction of the inner-German border. Regarding Merkel’s migration policy she claims at a manifestation in Antwerp a „(…)forced and vigorous guilt complex is being used for the modern sale of indulgences: One refugee for every gassed Jew.“ About Merkel, which she names as „Queen of tugs“, she says: „Moslem-Merkel attracts millions of brown men“. With Wagenveld, she literally hunts in military outfit for refugees to hand them over to border patrol. How seriously mentally troubled also Wagenveld is, can be read on Facebook. Here he writes: „Amazing such an evening among friends, and for 3 days no headscarf, burqa, long beards, mosques, and other Islamic shit“ and „ it is time to free Europe from Islam“. He refers to refugees in the refugee camp Calais as „ population of the jungle“ and posts a photo in front of the embassy of Saudi Arabia in The Hague with the subtitle “f*** the country that finances Muslim assassins  all over the world”, showing the middle finger. Ridiculously, at the same time, is that Pegida’s rivalry in its own „organisational team“, around EW, TF and Lutz Bachmann, are reaching a new high with a call for demonstration (on Sept. 26^th) for Pegida, but against its founder Bachmann. Bachmann himself has a long criminal record and catches attention with his right-winged manifestation on Facebook, for which he is being frequently banned from Facebook, e.g. referring to the new Star Wars movie with the words “(…) it gives hope that in the movie there are no burqa or mosques to be seen” and a posting with the title “What to do about children from far left in daycare “. To Merkel he refers as “chancellor of shame”, Germany as “Merklistan” and sympathizes with supporters of Trump. He speaks of asylum seekers as “mud pack”, „cattle“ and “tourists to European nations without employment” , but himself, according to recent German newspaper reports and Festerling, he emigrated to and works at the Canary Islands and, in the past, had been deported out of South Africa as illegal immigrant after fleeing Germany for several criminal charges. Pegida seems to be successfully destroying itself from the inside with its power-obsessed twaddlers.  The number of Pegida’s followers had been dropping constantly with every rally, whereas the number of opponents is increasing[5], which might lead to an imminent and sudden end of Pegida. Only one can hope that we will be able to say the same about “Fortress Europe“,  because as Germany‘ s President Joachim Gauck  has referred already to Pegida in December 2014, are such „slops and political tendencies not (very) useful” and, as Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier already stated, only harm Germany and its reputation abroad. [1] Christian Democratic Union [2] German Parliament [3] “Alternative for Germany” which is considered a conservative, Eurosceptic political party with right-wing populist tendencies [4] Pegida, the „Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident“ is a non-parliamentary movement and organisation which refers itself as “bourgeois middle-class”. Officially it describes  itself as the opposition to ” a misogynistic, violent political ideology” which is per se not against integrated Muslims [5] With up to 100,000 counter-demonstrator