Sachsenschweine — Saxon pigs — said the graffiti as my train moved out of Berlin on its way to Dresden. Germany is not as monolithic as it can seem: not only do some of its ancient kingdoms continue a ghostly existence as states of the Federal Republic, but also their populations nurture historic rivalries, at least on the football pitches. But the new popular movement in Dresden — Pegida, or ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West’, no less — has thrown into relief keener intra-German divisions: not only those between immigrants and ethnic Germans but also those between many German voters and the country’s mortally politically correct establishment.
The French-Russian philosopher Alexandre Kojève was right to predict that, in a post-modern globalised world devoid of traditional values, the only remaining factor structuring society would be snobbery. When Kathrin Oertel, the de facto leader of Pegida, appeared on a chat show on 18 January, she was asked by the anchorman, ‘Who are Pegida’s supporters?’ ‘Ordinary people like you and me,’ she replied. Quick as a flash, the presenter retorted, ‘Like you, maybe. Like me, maybe not.’ Seldom has a member of the media super-class spoken so lucidly.
It is not difficult to mock her thus. Frau Oertel is Essex woman. Although she and her colleagues can mobilise 15,000 to 20,000 people in a wintry square every week, she is tongue-tied and gauche when dropped into national TV. Some of what she says makes sense but, for a protest movement, it has a bizarre lack of focus: the gripes range from immigration to the ‘media of lies’ and the need for more referendums. The language and views of the Stammtisch (the pub regulars) may be a growing political force in Germany, but they have yet to find someone to articulate them in the public sphere: in Britain, Nigel Farage’s smiling combination of dapper suits with a pint and a fag does the trick perfectly.
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