Posted on November 3, 2015

German Official Says Merkel’s Open Door Migrant Policy Will Lead to ‘Civil War’

Simon Tomlinson, Daily Mail, November 3, 2015

A German official has said that Angela Merkel’s open door migrant policy will lead to ‘civil war’ after thousands marched through one city’s streets holding crucifixes during an anti-Islam protest.

Hansjoerg Mueller, of the Alternative for Germany party, said the country was ‘sliding towards anarchy’ and risks becoming a ‘banana republic without any government’.

He made the claims after about 8,000 people joined the anti-Islam Pegida movement for a rally in Dresden over Angela Merkel’s decision to allow up to one million migrants into the country this year.

Some demonstrators held crucifixes and upside-down German flags while others shouted ‘Merkel out!’ alongside doctored images of the German Chancellor in a burqa and a Nazi outfit.

The group’s leaders, who have been described by German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere as ‘hard right-wing extremists’, are demanding an immediate end to the policy.

Mr Mueller was later asked for his views on remarks made by Bavarian official Peter Dreier. Mr Dreier had reportedly told Merkel that his town of Landshut would only take 1,800 refugees if a million were welcomed to the country–insisting that the rest would be put on buses to Berlin.

Mr Mueller told RT: ‘Usually he does not have the power, but we are not living in usual times.

He added: ‘Germany now is somewhere at the edge of anarchy and sliding towards civil war, or to become a banana republic without any government.’

Video of today’s protest emerged on YouTube as prosecutors have opened an investigation into the group’s founder for slander after he compared the justice minister to Hitler’s head of propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

Lutz Bachmann said Social Democrat (SPD) minister Heiko Maas was the ‘worst spiritual fire raiser’ since Goebbels and Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler.

Von Schnitzler was a television commentator in Communist East Germany who strongly criticised Western governments and media.

The comment is the latest in a series of provocative remarks made at the regular rallies of Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA).

Only two weeks ago, a speaker said that concentration camps were ‘unfortunately out of action’.

The refugee crisis in Europe has boosted the popularity of Pegida’s rallies in the eastern city of Dresden and raised fears about right-wing radicalism.

Many voters are worried about how Germany will cope with an influx of about one million migrants this year, many fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa.

Social Democrats, who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives, expressed outrage at Bachmann’s comment.

SPD General Secretary Yasmin Fahimi said it was deceitful and disgusting.

A spokeswoman for Dresden prosecutors said they had started an investigation into slander.

But Bachmann said on his Facebook page that he would not be silenced.

‘If the Sharia Party of Germany (SPD) and the whole press . . . demand hundreds of thousands of investigations, YOU WILL NOT GAG ME! I will still say openly say what I think.’

Bachmann has already been charged by Dresden prosecutors with incitement because of a post on social media last year in which he described refugees and asylum seekers as ‘animals’ and ‘scumbags’.

No trial date has yet been set.

He quit as leader of PEGIDA earlier this year after a photo was published of him posing as Hitler which led to internal squabbles and the grassroots movement all but fizzled out until the migrants crisis swept Europe.

Support for Merkel’s conservatives has dropped over her handling of the refugee crisis while the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) is up in opinion polls.