Pegida leader pictured posing as Adolf Hitler
Germany's anti-Islam movement leader says picture of him posing as Adolf Hitler was 'a joke'
Pegida leader Lutz Bachmann posted this image on his Facebook page with the caption 'he is back'
By Justin Huggler in Berlin
2:31PM GMT 21 Jan 2015
The founder of Germany's anti-Islam movement Pegida has been forced onto the defensive after a photograph emerged of him posing as Adolf Hitler.
Lutz Bachmann originally posted the photograph, in which he appears with a distinctive Hitler moustache and swept-across fringe, on his own Facebook page with the caption "He's back".
Mr Bachmann insisted the picture, which was published by the Dresdner Morgenpost, a local newspaper in his native Dresden, had been "a joke".
But it could prove damaging to his Pegida movement. The newspaper also published screenshots of a number of racist comments posted on Mr Bachmann's Facebook page under his name.
Mr Bachmann and the other Pegida leaders insist they are not racist or xenophobic, but only concerned at what they say is the "Islamisation" of German and erosion of its Judeo-Christian culture at the hands of immigrants.
But the Dresdner Morgenpost published screenshots posts in which Mr Bachmann appeared to describe immigrants and asylum-seekers as "filth", "trash" and "brutes".
"There are no real war refugees," said another post, which went on argue that any asylum-seeker who could afford to travel to Europe was no in real danger.
The posts have since been deleted from Facebook, and there is no proof Mr Bachmann wrote them, although they appear under his name.
He claimed the picture of him posed as Adolf Hitler was taken for the cover of a satirical audiobook, and was intended as a joke.
"You have to take the mickey out of yourself sometimes," he told Bild newspaper.
Mr Bachmann was the target of a specific assassination threat by suspected Islamists that caused police to order the cancellation of a planned Pegida march in Dresden on Monday.
A Pegida gathering in Germany ealier this month (Photo: AP)
He started the movement under the banner of Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, or Pegida, last October. A few hundred people turned up to the first demonstration, but numbers quickly grew and 25,000 took part in a Pegida march in Dresden last week.
Police in the nearby city of Leipzig are preparing for huge crowds after a local Pegida offshoot claimed they would bring 40,000 people onto the streets on Wednesday night.
With 19 separate counter-protests also taking place in the city, police say they are preparing for crowds of 100,000 people on the streets, and drafting in reinforcements from neighbouring states.
The Leipzig offshoot, which calls itself Legida, is much more radical than the main Pegida movement, and has openly called for an end to Germany's "culture of war guilt" over the crimes of the Nazis.
People with a poster reading 'For the fatherland, peace, German culture, against religious bigotry, against islamization and multi culture' attend a rally of LEGIDA (Picture: Odd Anderson)
It made a similar prediction of huge crowds last week, but only 4,800 people took part in a march. This time, it is hoping large numbers who were unable to march in Dresden because of Monday's police ban will swell its ranks.
Counter-protests are expected to draw large crowds, after 35,000 people marched against Pegida in the city last week.
Police have said the Leipzig march can go ahead because there has been no specific terror threat against it.
