About Pegida [ENG]

Pegida  is an open platform for neo-nazi’s to extend their network.

Pegida will be demonstrating in Utrecht, against and for various things… but who is Pegida? Why is it important to stop them?

They say they want solutions for current problems. This sounds good, because that’s what we all want… but they have a skewed image of what the problems are.

In this link you will find a list of their standpoints (be warned, the Pegida Nederland page contains a lot of homophobia, islamophobia, xenophobia and a lot of other nonsense: https://www.facebook.com/pegidanederland/info?tab=page_info

Their “facts” don’t stand up to scrutiny (for example, criminality has been in steady decline: http://tinyurl.com/crnc5r6)

There has never been a situation of mass immigration to the Netherlands, which makes their ‘standpoints’ even more disputable.

Many of their standpoints have been official government policy for years. The current Aliens Act caters to the wishes of Pegida. Pegida wants non Dutch people with a criminal record to be deported, and a ban on re-entering the country. But this has been happening to non-Dutch people in general, not only the ones with criminal records for that matter (http://deportatieverzet.nl/ga-maar-terug-naar-je-eigen-land/).

Another of Pegida’s demands is that asylum seekers are received in the area’s where they originated. The vast majority of asylum seekers are already received and resident in a neighbouring land, for example 3.5  million of the 4 million Syrian asylum seekers fleeing the war can be found in neighbouring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon (http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php).

 

Pegida also want to criminalise being an undocumented asylum seeker.

Although being an undocumented asylum seeker is technically not a criminal act, in practice an undocumented person can be arrested at any moment and detained for periods up to 18 months without the intervention of a judge. This happens in the Netherlands on a grand scale. There is even a children’s prison going to be built in the near future to house undocumented children in Kamp Zeist  (http://aagu.nl/2015/bouwvergunning-verleend.html)!

The Pegida standpoints are peculiarly in contradiction to each other.

On the one hand they want to stop mass immigration: an immigration that is not in existence. Since 2003 between 9000 en 16,000 people requested asylum. Last year there were 21,000 asylum requests – half of them were denied. That is less than 1 percent of the population, and hardly what  could be referred to as mass immigration (http://www.oneworld.nl/vangt-nederland-echt-veel-asielzoekers-op and http://www.republiekallochtonie.nl/harde-cijfers-over-vluchtelingen-en-asielzoekers).

On the other hand, Pegida advocates a Pan-European Allocation system voor asylum seekers to be divided equally over the shoulders of all European Union member states. If this were to actually take place, the Netherlands would be required to take more asylum seekers than in the current situation is happening, because the most asylum seekers ought to remain in southern European states according to current European policy.

 

A number of Pegida standpoints are entirely irrelevant: for example “stop the illegal supply of weapons to the PKK”. The Netherlands state don’t supply weapons to the PKK.  The Dutch state do supply weapons to conflicts in Afghanistan, Egypt, Irak amongst others – the very same conflicts from where people are seeking safety and refuge (http://stopwapenhandel.org/node/1785).

 

It is apparent that Pegida are not only ignorant of existing facts and the status quo, but that Pegida are uncertain of what they want. This does not stop them from presenting themselves as a real movement of concerned citizens who have “had enough” and want “real changes.”

This framing guarantees Pegida media attention: you portray yourself as a victim of the system, someone whose voice isn’t heard by politicians and who marches out of discontent. The reality being that the standpoints of Pegida are already reality in practice and are being supported by a broad spectrum of political parties for the last 15 years (http://kafka.antenna.nl/pro-patria-en-identitair-verzet-radicale-voorhoede-pvv/).

 

This is why Pegida is dangerous. Pegida’s protest is not aimed at the government (because the Dutch government have been practising what Pegida want, for years), but theirs is a project to create a space where moderate, right wing, or worried citizens and violent, radical extreme right activists can openly meet each other. In other words:  Pegida facilitates the extention of the extreme (far) right’s netwerk. This will lead to racist and xenophobic violence. Mosques will be attacked, and there will be swastikas and anti-asylum seeker jibes painted on walls and asylum locations (http://www.metronieuws.nl/binnenland/2015/09/door-heel-het-land-worden-opvanglocaties-beklad). In Germany, where neo-nazi’s are better organised than in the Netherlands, the xenophobic climate has culminated itself to the miserable reality of daily incidents of violence against migrants, including arson. (http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/6/15/asylum-seekers-face-increasing-violence-in-germany.html and https://afanl.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/gevaarlijke-herhaling-van-de-geschiedenis-in-duitsland/)

 

This political climate is a typical stage for the scapegoating of the ‘other’, in this case being that muslims and migrants are blamed for economic or social problems caused by capitalism or imperialism systems run by white Europeans and Americans. The ruling classes profit from this because they are not called to account, whilst people of colour become attacked in a system where they are already targets of marginalisation and repression. The media scaremonger with daily messages of how many migrants are coming to Europe and the Netherlands and how many problems this will cause, whilst no political party or large social organisation gives a clear analysis of how it is capitalism and imperialism that creates the conditions which lead to the stream of asylum seekers, or of how every time Muslims appear in the news the context is always negative, or in connection with terrorism, where politicians encourage racist police violence but no politician or person of note supports the right of self defence. This is how the working classes polarise themselves by the mechanism of racism, xenophobia, and islamophobia. It provides a breeding ground for rage and hate which groups such as Pegida can easily utilise.

That’s why it’s important that we don’t allow Pegida to demonstrate in Utrecht. Pegida offer no solution for current problems, on the contrary, Pegida make the problems worse. There are various initiatives available to people who want to take a stand against Pegida in Utrecht on the 11th October. If you want to take part there is a blockade, or a counter demonstration at Janskerkhof  (https://www.facebook.com/events/1677360559173443/ en https://www.facebook.com/events/891750114193344/).