The crowd half-chanted, half-hissed at me – “Lügenpresse!” (“Lying press!”).

It’s a Nazi-era term revived by anti-immigration protesters in Germany and it’s slightly unnerving to hear when you’re the only representative of the press in the middle of a large, hostile crowd.

There were at least 7,000 people crammed into Dresden’s glorious Theaterplatz, the square outside the city’s opera house that was once known as Adolf-Hitler-Platz. It was a sea of flags fluttering in an autumn breeze, glowing in the streetlights under a darkening sky. It was a beautiful setting but the rhetoric was ugly.

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“My friends, are you fed up to the back teeth with the millions that invade our beautiful country?”

“It’s our country and it will stay the way we want it to stay! The way it was. If we let it slide … they’ll build mosques non-stop! Are you ready for Islamisation?”

I was filming a rally held by the grassroots movement, Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West (Pegida), and taken aback by the absence of any other reporters, photographers or cameramen. Turns out they knew better than to gamely elbow their way past skinheads wrapped in the German flag, armed with only a smile and an “Entschuldigung!” (“Excuse me!”). I saw one other camera crew discreetly filming from a safe distance – perhaps the others were hidden on nearby rooftops?

Usually protesters crave media attention but here people turned their backs, pushed my camera away and threatened violence using a variety of gestures I understood all too well. I guessed that some didn’t want to be filmed because there’s a stigma attached to supporting Pegida – a social price to pay if you’re a schoolteacher or public servant. As one of the speakers complained:

Apparently asylum critics only make up the minority and are therefore “vermin”. Anyone who doubts or questions … will be relentlessly pursued by denouncers – “disgusting” is a modest term to describe this scum.

Perhaps some didn’t want to be filmed because they’re up to no good – attacks on refugee housing have quadrupled over the past year, most carried out by people with no prior criminal record. Asylum seekers being housed by the government in nearby Freital and Heidenau have been met by xenophobic mobs.

But as soon as someone asked me where I was from, I realised I could instantly defuse the nasty vibe with one simple word: Australia.

Suddenly, it was all smiles. As far as the protesters were concerned, my nationality meant I was friend, not foe. Clearly Australia’s reputation for “stopping the boats” preceded me.

A week before, I’d been welcomed as a fellow traveller at a rally by the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD).

“I’m delighted to have an Australian TV crew here with us,” announced Jens Baur, the party’s regional leader in Saxony. “As you know we have a few similarities to Australia’s ‘No Way’ campaign’”.

The NPD are usually described as neo-Nazis, and Baur was a huge fan of the Australian government’s tough line on asylum seekers.

This the madness that is happening here in Europe, whereas in Australia it’s a bit harsher with the “No Way” campaign. Refugees … on their way to Australia are instantly caught and stopped by the Australian naval boats. Refusing to accept them into Australia, and sending them back home instead, is the only real solution – not how our government is going about it.

Seeing yourself through others’ eyes can be galling. It’s disturbing to discover that the political centre in multicultural Australia, at least when it comes to irregular immigration, is not so different from the extreme right of the political spectrum in Germany.

The political centre in Germany is simply unimaginable in Australia. This is a country where the biggest-selling newspaper, Bild (an equivalent tabloid to News Corp’s Sun) is running a national campaign to assist refugees, splashing the headline “Wir Helfen” (“We’re Helping”) over a photograph of sleeping migrant children on its cover.

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The media and political establishment appear more cautious about inciting fear in Germany than they are in Australia – perhaps because they have more experience of where that can lead. I hope it lasts. As Germany considers the scale of the challenge it faces – absorbing hundreds of thousands of refugees – there are signs the debate is shifting.

Dr Emily Haber, the head of the German interior ministry, told me she’s worried about a surge in support for the far right, especially if the new arrivals are not quickly integrated.

If we don’t manage that, then the cohesion of the society will be at risk and we’ll have a degree of polarisation which may in fact be very divisive.

The first cracks are already appearing. The Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, has threatened to take the federal government to the Constitutional Court over its refugee policy.

When refugees become a political issue, things get ugly fast. That’s something we’ve learned in Australia.

Amos Roberts is a video journalist for Dateline and his story airs Tuesday 13 October on Dateline, 9.30pm, SBS.