The German anti-Islamisation PEGIDA movement celebrated its 200th rally on Monday with German media accusing Alternative for Germany (AfD) firebrand Björn Höcke of calling for a coup during the event.
The rally took place in Dresden on Monday evening and saw the controversial AfD Thuringia region leader invited to speak as an estimated 2,500 counter-demonstrators took to the streets backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Deutsche Welle reports.
Björn Höcke. (Photo: Matthias Rietschel/Getty Images)
According to newspaper Berliner Zeitung, however, during his speech, Mr Höcke is said to have called “for a coup” with the paper quoting him as saying: “The rule of the used up parties and elites must be replaced and we will replace them. The country is upside down. We have to put it back on its feet, we have to put the bottom down again. We will fight this fight together and win together.”
Höcke went on to ridicule the counter-protesters, labelling them “the victims of the German educational catastrophe”.
The alleged call for a coup was disputed by German conservative newspaper Junge Freiheit which claimed that the Berlin-based paper had fabricated the entire quote along with claims that Hocke had labelled the counter-protesters as “mentally ill”.
Mr Hocke has made headlines in Germany recently when he and the Thuringia AfD helped to oust Left Party Minister-President Bodo Ramelow by joining forces with the CDU and electing Free Democrat Thomas Kemmerich to the post.
After a massive backlash from other political parties and the far left, Kemmerich announced his resignation as minister-president just 24 hours later.
Both a reaction to the growing Islamisation of Germany and the 2015 migrant crisis, the PEGIDA movement once boasted up to 10,000 participants in its weekly Monday evening meetings.
Despite being a peaceful protest movement, its leader and founder Lutz Bachmann, who also spoke on Monday, was forced to flee Germany in the latter half of 2016 due to targeted attacks on himself and his family, moving to the Spanish Canary islands. Bachmann was banned from the UK in 2018.
Bachmann was also taken to court and found guilty of hate speech offences in May of 2016 and made to pay a 9,600 euro fine.
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