Germany has a Tea Party-movement now. (You will find this eerily familiar.)
They are called "Pegida" - "Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes" ("Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGIDA
They are against immigration (though claiming to just want tighter regulations) and anti-Islam. They are afraid that big bad Islam will destroy the judeo-christian culture of Europe.
Sound familiar yet?
There's a smooth transition between Pegida and Hooligans and Neonazis.
Quote from a Pegida-demonstration-marshal at a Pegida-demonstration: „Verpiss dich, du Judenschwein, sonst machen wir dich platt.“ ("Fuck off, you jewish pig, or we will beat you up."
Sound familiar yet?
They believe that they have broad support in society but get ridiculed and their arguments get picked apart by journalists and politicians.
Sound familiar yet?
They believe that the mainstream-media is waging a war against them and you can't trust what they write. (Or the unedited recordings of Pegida-demonstrations.)
They attacked the house of a newspaper-editor with paint-filled bags because his reporting wasn't "objective".
Or how about this nice gem a journalist got to hear when he was near a Pegida-demonstration: „Wenn sich die Sache hier dreht, seid ihr die ersten, die dran glauben müssen.“ ("Once things turn, you journalists will be among the first to get killed."
Or how about hate-mail with death-threats?
Sound familiar yet?
They live in an echo-chamber, a parallel world carried in social media, with all the same conversations going back and forth between all the same people and reaching all the same conclusions. And they actively avoid getting into discussions with critics. Several german politicians have proposed a dialogue with Pegida to ease their fears, but Pegida refuses interviews with critical journalists or meetings with politicians outside of the right-wing spectrum.
Sound familiar yet?
They co-opt and re-interpret patriotic symbols for their own political interests.
"Wir sind das Volk." ("We are the people." was the main chant during the non-violent protests for more democracy in Eastern Germany at the end of the Cold War. Pegida uses this slogan with a nationalist twist.
Sound familiar yet?
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/pegida-demonstranten-machen-front-gegen-etablierte-medien-13345656.html
And what do the german people really think about Pegida? They think that they are a bunch of ridiculous Neonazi-assholes.
Germany got a very sudden and heavy snow-fall, combined with a steep drop in temperatures, right after Christmas, so a new Twitter-hashtag was created: #schneegida ("snow-gida"
* "It's incredible how thousands of snowflakes just come here and occupy our homes!"
* "Snow destroys jobs in german water-parks!"
* "The pond in my yard is frozen. The terror-ice doesn't care that the ducks want to swim."
* "It starts with a few snowflakes and all of a sudden you don't recognize your country any more."
* "I am friends with some snowflakes, but there are just too many of them."
https://twitter.com/hashtag/schneegida
EDIT:
Aaaand this:
"Hogida" - "Hobbits gegen die isengardisierung des Auenlandes" - "Hobbits against the isengardization of the Shire"
= new reply since forum marked as read
The German people are a lot smarter than us at least they have figured out how to vote and there campaign finance for elections.
Look at what we have:
King, Gohmert, Alderholt, McClintock, Coffman, Lamborn, Royce, Miller, Burton, Franks, Bilirakis, Crenshaw, Nugent, Ross, Broun, Gingery, Price, Westmoreland, Huelskamp, Jenkins, Moran, Paul, Massie, Alexander, Cassidy, Fleming, Landry, Scalise, Vitter, Amash, Hoekstra, Walberg, Palazzo, McDaniel, Hartzler, Luetkemeyer, Smith, Coble, Myrick, Ducan, Mulvaney, Sanford, Scott, Black, Carr, Fincher, Roe, Barton, Burgess, Carter, Culberson, Cruz, Farenthold, Hall, Marchant, Neugebauer, Poe, Sessions, Smith, Bishop, Lee, McKinley, Lummis.
Please note the above names on the list is not current since the new DO NOTHING Congress has not been seated, bribed, bought and completely sold out, (or been convicted of any crimes such as tax evasion, or having been to a KKK meeting in 2009) , to the following organization by
Freedom Works, Koch Enterprises, Madison Project, Tea Party Express, Senate Conservative Foundation, Citi Bank and other banks and Wall Street and any other oligarchy organization
