Pegida founder Lutz Bachmann has come under fire for allegedly describing immigrants as "cattle" and "garbage" on Facebook and posting a picture of himself as Adolf Hitler.
The 41-year-old graphic designer, who has multiple convictions for burglary and drug possession, deleted his Facebook profile after Dresden’s Morgenpost newspaper contacted him about the posts.
Pegida supporters attacked the conversations and images as fakes.
Newspaper screenshots
A Morgenpost reader sent the newspaper screenshots appearing to show a closed Facebook conversation with Mr Bachmann on September 19th, weeks before the first Pegida march in Dresden.
“He spoke in a derogatory manner about other people who didn’t live up to his ideas,” said the unnamed Facebook user to the Morgenpost.
“When I challenged him, he blocked my profile.”
In a conversation about a local asylum seeker hostel, Mr Bachmann appears to have written, in capital letters, that there are “NO REAL WAR REFUGEES”.
"Whoever can afford the trip clearly does not belong to a threatened group," the post continues, urging the woman to "wake up and stop spreading the propaganda of the gleichgeschaltete press" - a term used to describe Nazi-era control of Germany's mass media.
Remarks challenged
When the woman challenged Bachmann’s remarks about the residents, saying her mother’s partner worked there as a security man, the Pegida organiser allegedly replied: “Then he should know the cattle that really come here ... and have to be watched FOR GOOD REASON.”
On another occasion, Mr Bachmann posted a picture of himself with a Hitler-style square moustache and comb-over haircut over the caption “He’s Back”.
Mr Bachmann told the newspaper it was an homage to a recent satirical book of the same name, now being turned into a film.
Shortly after his Hitler selfie, Mr Bachmann posted a Ku Klux Klan image, stating “Three Ks A Day Keeps Minorities Away”.
Such a philosophy, Mr Bachmann added, would have kept an asylum home out of a Dresden neighbourhood.
Since October, Pegida has held Monday night demonstrations in Dresden, warning about liberal migration and asylum policies and the “Islamisation of the west”.
Last Monday’s march was banned due to threats from extreme Islamist organisations.
