Germany’s Gathering Clouds of Discontent
Ominous street protests, outfitted with mock guillotines, are now almost daily occurrences. In Dresden, during a gathering of several thousand citizens who purport to defend Western civilization against the influx of barbaric Muslims, a man held up a homemade gallows with a dangling sign reading, “Reserved for Angela Merkel.”
.. And they’re angry about more than just refugees. Around the same time, in Berlin, protesters rallying against the proposed trans-Atlantic free trade agreement carried a guillotine.
.. What we see on the rise, in other words, is not the anger of a classic loony fringe, but rather mainstream people striking out at elites who they believe have lost touch with reality and common sense. To many here, the refugee crisis, the euro crisis, the Ukraine crisis and the threats seen in an unleashed global capitalism have converged in a fundamental question: Do the mighty still know what they are doing?
.. As a prominent member of the liberal Green Party, Mr. Palmer is the last person to stir up xenophobia. Yet even he has warned that the refugee crisis means that “the social peace in this country is at stake.”
.. To them, the fringe parties — Alternative für Deutschland on the right, Die Linke on the left — offer quick and easy certainties: no to refugees, no to free trade.