For the first time in my life I'm scared when I think of my country. The beautiful country of Germany, which I love from upstream the Odra and from downstream the Rhine, but there is one part I can't love anymore. Germany cleaves into two parts or does somebody cleave the country into two parts? I don't know, but what I know is that I am scared. I am scared when I look at the beautiful city of Dresden, for years a symbol of Germany's comeback after World War II, where nowadays every Monday a movement called "Pegida" shouts out and celebrates its hatred toward refugees, Muslims, journalists, and everyone who doesn't fit in the participants' narrow minded world. It's the riot of the indecent people, the convention of tomorrow's mass murderers.
For the first time in my life I'd like to be a border guard. I'd like to protect the borders of decency who fall every single Monday when self-claimed patriots bring back an image of Germany, which I thought had died with the downfall of the Nazi regime in 1945. For the first time in my life I'm scared of this regime coming back. For now, I still hold fast onto the German constitution, hold fast onto dignity, democracy, and my belief in the good in man. However, I start to believe that I'm hiding behind these terms and that they are nothing but incentives to my fear, to my anxiety of refugees and foreigners being chased through cities whose hearts and souls haven't even fully recovered from the terrible happenings of WWII.
These cities and the whole country aren't on fire yet but paroles filled with hatred, leaders that dress up like Adolf Hitler, and decent people who close their eyes to these ideas have lighten a small fire on Dresden's "theaterplatz." I'm scared that Germany becomes once again a double deuce for refugees who search for a better life but find hatred, skepticism, and brutality toward them instead of happiness, satisfaction, and peace.
For the first time in my life I want to build a wall. A protective wall of silence around the stupidity of this movement. I want to throw history books in the middle of the crowd to enlighten them on how the country they claim to love fell to the ground because of the same ideas those self-appointed homeland lovers support. I want to step up the stage, take the microphone and tell them about freedom, a free state, the right to vote, and how we lost all of this once before when we didn't push back to similar leaders with similar ideas in 1933. Up to 30,000 people demonstrate every Monday and with the amount of refugees increasing, the amount of people who push down increasing, and politicians who ignore the enormous threat, this number is certainly not going to hold. These people can call themselves Pegida, they can call themselves Germans and they can even call themselves patriots. However, we should call them what they are: The German Taliban. And the German Taliban can only survive if we back down and remain quiet just like we did in 1933. I'm scared.
