But even these massive protests, which broke out last week in Chemnitz in response to the alleged murder of a German man by two immigrants, were dwarfed by a counter-protest in the city on Monday night.
But the show of solidarity toward refugees occurs in a dark context, in which the populist far-right Alternative for Germany AfD party is gaining popularity in polls while stoking fears among some voters that Germany is being overrun by immigrants. Yet the far-right rallies have also found support within the government itself. Such opposition, as my colleague Krishnadev Calamur reported , comes despite the fact that asylum applications and crime in Germany are both at historic lows.
Migration is down, crime is low, but Merkel is in trouble. This is particularly true in places like Chemnitz and elsewhere in the eastern German state of Saxony, where the number of immigrants remains low relative to the rest of the country.
Andreas Zick, a researcher who studies extremist groups and conflict at Bielefeld University, told me many of these attitudes date as far back as the reunification period in the s.
The refugee detectives. Though there has been a historic presence of neo-Nazi groups in Saxony, what happened in Chemnitz was largely unprecedented—and not just because of the scale of the riots. Though the AfD has attempted to distance itself from groups like Pegida in the past, some within the party have called for making common cause with them in order to mobilize more supporters.
