We are the people! How the German right repackaged unification

‘Wir sind das Volk’ – ‘We are the people’ – has become the slogan of Germany’s disaffected. The phrase is the rallying cry of Pegida, the country’s anti-Islam protest movement. At one of the group’s first rallies in Dresden, back in 2014, it was taken up as a popular protest chant. In the disenfranchised east, it is a phrase which has gained currency since then, with Pegida and Alternative for Germany (AFD) keen to use it to exploit the widespread feeling of dislocation from central government and ‘Wessis’ (west Germans), who continue to be richer than their eastern neighbours. A recent government report found that, in the east, GDP proportionally was 66 per cent that in the west; and eastern unemployment remained over four per cent higher. Germany is a nation divided, and September’s election reflected this division at the ballot box. While the AFD scored 12.6 per cent nationally, in Saxony that number rocketed to 27 per cent. In