Cologne

Last weekend, some 1,700 Germans turned out for a PEGIDA rally in Cologne to protest the wave of sexual assaults that unfolded in the city on New Year’s Eve in the town center.

PEGIDA nearly faded into obscurity early last year when then-leader Lutz Bachmann posted a picture of himself dressed as Hitler on Facebook with the caption “He’s Back”, but thanks to the 1.1 million Mid-East asylum seekers that poured across Germany’s borders in 2015, the anti-immigrant group has seen something of a resurgence over the past six or so months.

What began as a series of reports from women in Cologne who said they were sexually assaulted by men of “Arab and North African origin” on New Year’s Eve has mushroomed into a full blown crisis that threatens to further undermine support for Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy on the way to fomenting social upheaval in Germany.

On Sunday, we learned that the man who stormed a Paris police station while waving a meat cleaver and donning a fake bomb vest once lived in a center for asylum seekers in Germany and may have ties to the wave of sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne on New Year’s Eve.

The revelations came just a day after some 1,700 people turned out for a PEGIDA rally where demonstrators waved anti-migrant banners and called for the ouster of Angela Merkel.

Angela Merkel just can’t catch a break these days.

The “Iron Chancellor” was already under intense pressure to effectively repeal Germany’s open-door policy on Mid-East refugees after attacks in Paris left 130 dead and a bomb scare in Hannover forced the evacuation of two soccer stadiums. Then, on New Year’s Eve, hundreds of men purportedly of “Arab origin” sexually assaulted women gathered in Cologne’s city center in what has been variously described as a premeditated mass attack.

Nigel Farage has spoken out against the increasing dangers to women in Europe who he says are being “molested regularly in certain districts”.  The former UKIP leader says that recent events in Cologne, where large groups of women were raped on New Year’s Eve, points to “an unconditional German surrender” due to the response by German authorities to the crisis. Breitbart.com reports: German girls in public actually dress and behave more conservatively than in many parts of the United Kingdom.