One week after Austria was shocked by the news that its right-wing, anti-immigrant Freedom Party, had swept the competition, gathering over 35% of the vote and leaving the other five candidates far behind, Europe’s anti-immigrant juggernaut just added to its momentum when neighboring Germany’s populist AfD party adopted an anti-Islam policy on Sunday in a manifesto that also demands curbs to immigration according to AFP. The biggest surprise however, is that the three year-old party is now also Germany’s third strongest party.
Formed only three years ago on what was originally a eurosceptic platform, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gained strength as the loudest protest voice against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome to refugees that brought over one million asylum seekers last year. However, with the migrant influx sharply down in recent months, the AfD has shifted focus to the signature issue of the xenophobic Pegida street movement, whose full name is Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident.
“Islam is not part of Germany” ran a headline in the AfD policy paper agreed in a vote by some 2,400 members at the party congress in the western city of Stuttgart.
The paper demanded bans on minarets on mosques, the call to prayer, full-face veils for women and female headscarves in schools.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 05/01/2016.
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