Huge crowd at Dresden PEGIDA 1-18-16

Huge number of people fill the Marktplatz - great turnout!

PEGIDA Dresden Jan. 18, 2016

Watch livestream now (only first half due to technical problems):   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB7M0wxI2Uw&app=desktop

See Enrico Schneider's great photos here https://www.facebook.com/Enno1977

Live Ticker coverage (in German) at Epoch Times   http://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/pegida-demo-dresden-heute-am-neumarkt-vor-der-frauenkirche-hier-ab-1830-live-ticker-18012016-a1299821.html

 6:41 pm Though it is 4 degrees below zero, freezing cold in Dresden, the Neumarkt is full. On display are the usual posters and banners.

The speakers have been announced: Siegfried Däbritz, Tatjana Festerling, Helene from Chemnitz and a guest from Great Britain.

6:45 Siegfried Däbritz opened the rally. It starts with a response to an interview of Saxony Prime Minister Tillich. Actually it is a Tillich-bashing ...

Mr Tillich had suddenly discovered that there are parallel societies. "Mr Tillich, it is not we who have knowingly allowed parallel societies, you have done this," cries Däbritz. People have pointed this out for decades. We therefore suggested years ago that he withdraw from his former party (FDP) - so as not to detract from their electoral success. And he did it and then was leaked, said Däbritz. [?]

For "invasion of professionals," Tillich says that Germany in 2016 could not again bear the numbers of 2015. And also that a rejection of persons at the German border, who have no chance of recognition as an asylum seeker, was not an inhuman act, Tillich had reportedly said.
Däbritz calls him a turncoat.

"We want to live freely. Without the construction of mosques, without concealment, without the cancellation of events," said Däbritz.

6:55 Tatjana Festerling comes with a pitchfork onto the stage and the demonstrators react. She stated that her rhetorical use of “pitchfork” in Leipzig [last week] as a historical comparison was now being portrayed as a call for violence. "The media and politicians are allowed to defame us with impunity, even threaten us", she says. One need only recall the Mainz professor who had asked that Pegida be intimidated with water cannons.

Speaking of rights: Within three weeks, three Constitutional Court judges have named the illegalities of Merkel. The journalists, however, are not at all interested in it.

The media had long since transformed "into compliant Merkel court- historian reporters," said Festerling.

"Are we in North Korea, or what? We are dealing with the targeted misleading of the people. "

"These distorters of truth from the lying Press now add criminal charges of sedition."

Festerling says the international media should see that in Germany today a political show trial is being carried out. Then she mentions: Sarah Connor is honored on the Semperopern-ball, because she has received a refugee family with five children - "People of the category DSDF - Germany looking for the super-fugitive."   [A mockery of DSDS (Deutschland sucht den Superstar), a popular talent show where most candidates are utter failures and get harsh critiques from the judges.]

7:05  "Pitchforks are a symbol of revolution - and nothing do we need more here in Germany," exclaims Festerling. She suggests to "smoke the ballot boxes" in the next state elections in March, as in Baden-Württemberg. Because there is currently no parliamentary opposition in Germany.

"The only opposition in Germany is us, is Pegida and the AFD. And that's why they fight us. In contrast to those who finance the violence and make common cause with organizations such as the Antifa, Pegida is a peaceful movement, which relies solely on the Basic Law and its compliance."

"We are calling on the federal government and these lunatics at the helm, to kindly adhere to treaties, rules and laws," Festerling said further.

The pitchfork would figuratively be for the mucking: Out with the crap out of the Parliaments. "We will not let up, and ye shall be in our teeth a hard nut", she addresses to the elites.

(Crowd shouts: "mucking mucking!")

"Pegida was, is and remains a peaceful movement," Festerling stressed again - "despite all the rhetoric"

"No violence! What you do not want to be done to yourself, do not do to others. "

[Note: Festerling's controversial quote from last week was:

"If the majority of citizens would be their right mind, they would resort to pitchforks and beat these betraying people, these ethnically offensive elites, from parliaments, from the courts, from the churches and from the press worldwide."]

7:20 Walk through Inner Dresden begins

8:04 A prominent guest speaker, Gavin Boby is a lawyer and Islamisation opponent from the UK, nicknamed "The Mosque Buster". As the name already suggests, Boby has specialized to prevent the construction of mosques - with the help of construction law. The head of the "Law and Freedom Foundation," he claimed in 2014, according to the Guardian newspaper, to have successfully prevented 17 of 19 planned mosques - solely by means of construction requirements.

Boby offers his services even when it comes to the conversion of buildings into a mosque. In a YouTube interview, he explained that residents and communities would mostly be abandoned and left in the lurch by the political elites and therefore must themselves be active. And most people would do this not only out of concern for their neighborhood and their immediate living environment, but also with regard to the future of the country in general. He was surprised by the positive feedback on his work. Even as he began his work in 2011, he received more requests than expected.

8:23 The next speaker is Helene from Chemnitz.

She says: "I am so overwhelmed by so much courage, Every Monday Dresden is on the road coming here - I bow to you all!"

The engine of motivation starts from Dresden and has to be kept running. We all had a difficult year - full of slander and attempts to divide. Many people ask me every day in Chemnitz – does it still make sense? We have to withstand the incitement and defamation of this policy. Pegida has attained it, that "our predicted warnings that we here on the street have said for over a year with you", are now dominating the media coverage.

Helene asks for Merkel's resignation and there is again a "mucking" call from the demonstrators.

The idea for Pegida was "a cross-border work of all patriots. There are many countries which have recognized that a peaceful coexistence in Europe is only possible with self-determination and defense of national interests," said Helene.

Helene calls for a transitional government until new elections take place and before the adoption of a first proper constitution for Germany.

"We are the people and we will determine who controls us," said Helene.

That the Chemnitzer Pegiden have often held rallies near the Karl Marx monument, was not to commemorate but to dun it: "We all have to understand what communist dictatorship means - today we have these ideologies closer than ever again, because red-red-green holds sway everywhere," said Helene. This trend must be stopped immediately.

8:35 Now the singing of the national anthem with the lighting up flashlight and phones. The rally is over.