In 2016, the recorded number of racist and xenophobic attacks in Germany spiked dramatically. But last year, despite the xenophobic Alternative for Germany being elected into parliament for the first time as the leading opposition party, that number decreased. So for Andre Löscher, who is a counsellor for victims of far-right violence in Chemnitz, it was scary to note that since the riots in August, forty-seven racist hate crimes have been reported, which is already twice the total number of hate crimes recorded for the small city last year. Four restaurants have been attacked. On September 14, a group of men walked into a park and threw a glass bottle at a 26-year-old Iranian’s head after demanding to see his and his friends’ identification; it later turned out that some of the men in the group of attackers were making a plan via Whatsapp to buy guns and “overthrow the media dictatorship and its slaves” on the anniversary day of German reunification, on October 3. On the 80-year anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 pogrom against Germany’s Jews, a dozen “stumbling stones”—bronze plaques that commemorate residents who died in the Holocaust—were smeared with oily tar, while the Pro Chemnitz lawyer made a call to arms against “the Merkel regime.”

A similar pattern of violence has played out in Wurzen, another Saxon city that was previously terrorized by neo-Nazis in the post-reunification chaos of the 90s. Recently, there have been a series of arson attacks and physical assaults on the street. In the evenings, youths who call themselves “the people’s militia” get drunk and march through the city chanting “Out, foreigners!” They’re the sorts of street protest associated with the groups like PEGIDA (an acronym that stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West). In Saxony, Löscher has observed that when Pegida and other far right demonstrations started to wane a few years ago, hate crimes decreased in the areas where protests stopped. Now, both the demonstrations and the hate crimes seem to be back. “When so many people are moving around in the streets and notice that they are many,” he says, “It really motivates them.”

Yet there are signs of pushback. A few weeks ago, the Chemnitz city council installed shiny new cameras in the city center to restore a sense of security. In Berlin, 242,000 people took to the streets last month to protest against the far right. 75,000 people showed up in September to an anti-racism rock concert in Chemnitz. Next week will be the first time since August that Pro Chemnitz will not hold their Friday night rally. And barely two weeks after the far-right’s nemesis, Angela Merkel, announced that she would not seek re-election as German chancellor—cause for celebration among the anti-immigrant crowd—demonstrations during her Sunday visit were relatively restrained.

Like the far-right street movements before them, and also somewhat like President Donald Trump in the United States, speakers at the Pro Chemnitz rallies do their best to assure people that the media lies about their crowd size. (“I see at least 5000 people!”, one guy blustered at Friday night’s rally. The police estimated 2,500.) But however intimidating they may understandably be to their targets, it’s also clear the groups lack real momentum. “We are too few,” one man says. He has been active in far-right politics since he broke up with his long-term girlfriend one year ago. But now that daylight is limited and winter is coming, “I can also think of other things to do on a Friday night instead of freezing my ass off here.” Even Marlene, who spent most of the evening reciting the latest conspiracy theories the far-right has concocted based on the UN migration pact, and who is convinced that “doom is coming,” agrees.