German anti-immigrant groups have been quick to respond to the murderous attacks in Paris saying they were proof of the significant threat posed by Islamists and the extent to which mainstream parties had tried to downplay the dangers.
Pegida, or Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Western World, a right-wing populist group which has been gaining support in weekly demonstrations since October, said in a statement that the attacks confirmed their views.
“The Islamists, which Pegida has been warning about for 12 weeks, showed France that they are not capable of democracy, but instead look to violence and death as an answer,” it said in a statement on its Facebook page.
“Our politicians want us to believe the opposite. Must such a tragedy happen here in Germany first???”
The group added that it would make the issue of the Paris attacks a focal point of its demonstrations next Monday, when it would invite participants to pay their respects to the victims of Wednesday’s shootings.
The anti-Euro and anti-immigrant party Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) which currently has around 25% of support and has allied itself with Pegida, said that the attacks were proof that fears over Islamism were true.
“This bloodbath proves that those who laughed at or ignored the fears of so many people about a looming danger of Islamism were wrong,” said Alexander Gauland, a regional AfD leader. “This gives new weight to Pegida demands.”
But Volker Kauder, chair of Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, condemned the AfD’s comments as “filth” and accused the group of exploiting the attacks.
“It’s filth to instrumentalise the attacks for political gain,” he told Focus magazine.
Interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, meanwhile said that the attacks had nothing to do with Islam.
Merkel had used her New Year’s speech to attack Pegida, saying that their leaders had “hatred in their hearts”, and called on people to shun the demonstrations.
A survey published on Thursday but conducted in November, before widespread coverage of Pegida, showed that 61% of Germans believed Islam had no place in the West.
The figure had risen by 9% since 2012, according to the Bertelsmann Foundation think tank which commissioned the poll.
One in four (24%) called for Muslims to be barred from migrating to Germany, also a central demand of the Pegida movement.
In North Rhine-Westphalia, the state where most of Germany’s four million Muslims live, fear towards them was lowest, at 39%, whilst in Thuringia and Saxony – the state in which Pegida has had most success but where very few Muslims live, 70% said they felt threatened.
“Muslims now consider Germany home,” Yasemin El-Menouar, the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Islam expert said. “However they find themselves confronted with a negative image that apparently prevails because of a minority of radical Islamists.”
