The leader of Germany’s anti-Islamic Pegida movement has caused indignation by linking a planned terrorist attack on two of Munich’s railway stations with the tens of thousands of refugees who were applauded when they arrived there earlier this year.

In a tweet sent soon after police shut the station, Lutz Bachmann said Germans who welcomed the refugees as they disembarked from trains at the main station should go back there and risk being blown up.

“All welcome-clappers should arrive immediately at Munich’s main train station,” Bachmann posted. He added the hashtag #RefugISISnotWelcome, a swipe at leftwing groups who have held counter-demonstrations at Pegida rallies using the slogan: “Refugees are welcome here.”

Bachmann’s tweet came after the chancellor, Angela Merkel, gave a new year address in which she asked Germans to see the unprecedented number of refugees arriving in the country as an “opportunity for tomorrow”. Without mentioning Bachmann by name, she urged sceptics not to follow racist hatemongers.



Merkel conceded that 2015 – which saw Germany take in more than a million migrants and refugees – had been unusually challenging. She warned of more challenges ahead but stressed that the outcome would be worth it because “countries have always benefited from successful immigration, both economically and socially”.

Referring to recent far-right rallies in several parts of Germany, especially in the former communist east, Merkel argued: “It’s important we don’t allow ourselves to be divided.” She added, in remarks that will be broadcast on Friday: “It is crucial not to follow those who, with coldness or even hatred in their hearts, lay a sole claim to what it means to be German and seek to exclude others.”

Bachmann founded Pegida in October 2014 in his home city of Dresden. Its name stands for patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the west. Initially a small protest group, it grew into an amorphous right-wing populist movement, attracting up to 30,000 people. By early summer 2015 it had dwindled. But its support increased again in response to the refugees arriving daily from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Other Twitter users poured scorn on Bachmann’s conflation of refugees and terrorism. Andre Gotthart, a student, responded: “Just get out of here. So pathetic. An unworthy German.” The Green MP Dieter Janecek wrote: “It would be so nice if you had a brain. You could drink it away.” Kim Torster wrote: “That’s despicable. Don’t you understand what people are fleeing? Shame on you.”

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Bachmann hit back at his critics with an unapologetic tweet: “I don’t get the uproar. You clap-idiots wanted the refugees in Europe. Why are you now wetting yourselves and not at Munich station?” He later retweeted a New Year’s Eve greeting from Donald Trump.

Merkel’s decision to take in a record number of asylum seekers, half of them from Syria, has sharply divided German opinion. The split has been felt in cities and in smaller towns and communities, all of which have faced the massive logistical challenge of providing food and housing for the arrivals.

According to a report in the Säechsische Zeitung, citing unpublished official figures, Germany accepted almost 1.1 million asylum seekers last year, five times the number in 2014. The chancellor has faced opposition in her conservative camp, especially from the CSU, her Christian Democrats’ Bavarian sister party, as well as popular concerns about the influx. She has vowed to reduce numbers in 2016.

Her plan involves persuading other European Union members to take in more refugees, so far with little success, and an EU deal with the gateway country of Turkey to improve its border protection. In her new year address Merkel said “there has rarely been a year in which we were challenged so much to follow up our words with deeds”.

She thanked volunteers and police, soldiers and administrators for their “outstanding” accomplishments and “doing far, far more than their duty”. Looking to 2016, she said: “There is no question that the influx of so many people will keep demanding much of us. It will take time, effort and money.”

But Merkel recalled that Germany had mastered past challenges such as reunification a quarter of a century ago and benefitted from a “robust and innovative” economy.

“I am convinced that, handled properly, today’s great task presented by the influx and the integration of so many people is an opportunity for tomorrow,” she said.