Hardliners within the AfD — to say nothing of the anti-Islam PEGIDA or "Pro Chemnitz" movement, which were also part of the anti-immigrant protest in Chemnitz — frequently accuse state authorities, politicians from the "old parties" and the police of conspiring against them. A few of the most extreme even assert that Chancellor Angela Merkel is secretly scheming to replace the German population with migrants and refugees. It's hard to get more alienated than that.
The vast majority of the people who marched on Saturday are neither bug-eyed conspiracy theorists nor extremists. But they are convinced, official crime statistics to the contrary, that their lives are rapidly becoming more endangered and that the authorities are doing nothing to help. These concerned citizens, too, use the vocabulary of the far right, saying they feel "swamped" by a "flood" of foreigners. And the killing of Daniel H. seems to be further evidence of their dramatic loss of control over their own society. [...]
Instead, one leitmotif of right-wing populism in Germany is envy. Leftist counterdemonstrators are given preferential treatment, the marchers fumed. Refugees are showered with money, designer clothes and state-of-the-art mobile phones while working Germans struggle to get by. And political and media elite line their pockets and have no contact any more with "common people." This is actually one similarity between Marxist and right-wing populist dogma: If you don't like what you read in the papers, it's because the journalists are all bought and paid for. These arguments are repeated over and over by today's German right. [...]
The extreme hostility towards the media is a conspicuous facet of right-wing populism in Germany right now. Whatever the flaws of today's media, without consensus forums in which debates can be held there will be no loosening the loggerheads in places like Chemnitz.
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