If I didn’t know that Pegida stands for Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West, and thought perhaps the acronym was merely a reference to three politically active friends (PEtra, GIsela, DAgmar) who organised a demonstration every Monday evening, I’d go along with interest. I don’t know why the people of Germany don’t take to the streets much more often to demonstrate over their political grievances.

On one recent Monday, on the weekly Pegida march in Dresden, in former East Germany, there were 8,000 demonstrators; the day before, at an anti-Pegida event with the mayor and the prime minister of Saxony in attendance, there were significantly more. There will be another counter-demonstration this Monday, too, although not until after Pegida’s march.

As I approach the meeting point for the Pegida march, near the German Hygiene Museum shortly after 6pm, I’m rather confused. The atmosphere is cheerful, like a traditional Father’s Day outing. In fact, almost everyone I see is male, most of them even older than me. The young generation is missing, says one of the old men, in a reproachful tone. The young generation hasn’t yet realised, he says, that this is all about their future.

Many, like me, do not live in Dresden, but have travelled from further afield. They greet each other by name, they’re pleased to see each other, they get into discussions. More and more flags are brought along, German flags and the flags of the federal states. One placard says: “Better upright for Pegida today than on our knees facing Mecca tomorrow.” I wish I had your problems, I feel like saying. But we’re too tightly packed for me to see who’s holding the placard.

I’m the only person on my own here; all the others have come at least in pairs, and most in groups. When the first speaker begins, a chant soon sets in: “Wir sind das Volk! [We are the people!]” Even in October 1989, I found it hard to join in with chants.

Whenever the speaker says something the crowd disapproves of, there are boos, and when he praises something (“Dresden is showing the way!”), the we-are-the-people chants start all over again. They give me goose pimples, but it feels as if someone’s calling my name, while meaning someone else entirely. Something’s not right. Is it the exhilaration that’s missing, the exhilarating openness that was there in 1989, despite the fear that every one of us had to overcome? Is it the lack of witty slogans and joy at protesting? As the wind sends the German flags fluttering again and the words Volk and Heimat (translated very roughly as “homeland”) come clanging out of the loudspeakers, I realise all of a sudden that I recognise the atmosphere. This is what it was like by the end of 1989, and above all in 1990, when some were still calling “We are the people!” but others, the ones who went on to win the election, were shouting: “We are one people!” The pro-unification slogan originated from an election poster for the West German chancellor Helmut Kohl’s CDU, its inherent message being: abandon all sovereignty and get instant deutschmarks in exchange. I wish I could talk to Petra, Gisela and Dagmar. I wish I could tell them something’s going wrong here.

At the Pegida demonstration in Dresden. Photograph: Jens Meyer/AP

I listen to the political demands, which the speaker says have been ignored by the press. An instant chorus of “Liar press! Liar press!”, then back to the speaker. First: qualitative rather than quantitative immigration; second: compulsory integration for foreigners; third: no entry visas for jihadis; fourth: referendums; fifth: a good relationship with Russia; sixth: more money for the police. I’m surprised at the applause and bravos. Petra, Gisela, Dagmar, I feel like saying, you can’t do all that. Qualitative immigration means leaving other countries to invest in training, while we take their specialists. Compulsory integration would go against the constitution. Jihadis are already facing arrest. You’re hardly the first people to call for referendums. And there are at least excuses for critical reporting of Russia ...

How is it, I feel like asking Petra, Gisela and Dagmar, that these six points mobilise more and more people every week? The speaker talks about fear of Überfremdung – a word that had its heyday under the Nazis and suggests a native culture becoming tainted by too many foreign influences – and in the same breath calls on demonstrators to bring along “Muslims willing to integrate and even sincere Muslims”. But Petra, would the sincere Muslims dare to come along next Monday? And if their wives and daughters wear headscarves, what then, Gisela? And now that I’m asking questions, Dagmar, it can’t be because of these six points that the demonstrators here are so enthusiastic and so angry and indignant. Is it these six points that get thousands on to the streets, week after week? Some of the demonstrators say themselves that these demands are too flimsy, that they’re not a basis for going forward. But they don’t quite know what they ought to be demanding. Elections? Merkel’s resignation? Penalties for the “liar press”? One man says: “I always think I won’t bother next Monday, but by Wednesday at the latest I’m so angry I can hardly wait.”

Then it’s time for “our dear Kathrin” to speak. Before the month is out, Kathrin Oertel will become and then stand down as Pegida’s leader, blaming threats and hostility. For now, we know next to nothing about her; only that she’s 36 years old, a mother of three born in Dresden.

I expect our dear Kathrin to send out a clear message. She’ll say what the previous speaker failed to mention, the reasons why we’re all here. She’ll talk about how the outbreak of the financial and banking crisis in September 2008 made it clear that the community is a hostage of those who have been pocketing exorbitant profits for years. Any moment now, she’ll say that the increasing polarisation of German society is fuelling existential fears, and that global inequality is killing one person every minute. Kathrin will say that the EU’s so-called free trade agreements with the US and Canada (TTIP and Ceta) and similar treaties equate to an unacceptable signing over of political and constitutional sovereignty to corporations, yet another political surrender to those who place their own profit above all else. In a minute, she’ll talk about Snowden and the whole NSA complex, about the CIA’s torture prisons and about rocketing poverty levels in a country such as Greece, where a third of the population no longer has health insurance. And then she’ll speak about Europe’s responsibility, our responsibility, because no conflict in this world can be understood without the history of colonialism and the cold war and neocolonialism. She’ll say the way we treat refugees is a scandal. And how ridiculous our aid budget is in the face of EU agricultural subsidies. There’s much too much to say. It’s important, she’ll emphasise at the end, to take to the streets and force the politicians to act for the sake of the community and not for profit-seeking, with solidarity and humanity rather than self-interest and bureaucracy.

However, no matter how closely I listen, our dear Kathrin says none of this. In fact, it’s hard to repeat what she does say. Freedom of speech, our beautiful Dresden, the Volk and above all her disappointment in a certain Herr Kaiser – Roland Kaiser, a German schmaltz-pop singer popular in Dresden. Kaiser seems to have made the best speech at the official anti-Pegida demonstration. No one, either pro or anti-Pegida, seems to care about Saxony’s prime minister, whose speech at the counter-rally consisted solely of police and more police and better police and then included the phrase “Jews, Muslims, Saxons”, as if the latter category excluded the first two.

The politically murky and uneasy protest on the street matches the situation in the Bundestag. All dissent in parliament has now been marginalised by the grand coalition of the CDU/CSU and SPD. Any challenge to government policy is either tame (the Greens have almost entirely abandoned their aims of social equality and pacifism) or is barely noticed (the post-communist Left party, when not tripping over its own feet, gets a cold shoulder from the media). If in doubt, our elected representatives bow to the party whip rather than feeling bound to election promises, bringing further alienation. Dresden’s local and regional elected representatives are paralysed, speechless and helpless.

And then the speeches are all over. And I think: these people don’t actually have any demands related to their lives and their disaffection. They appear to lack suitable terms – instead of society, they use Volk; instead of talking about social inequality, they scapegoat those who are allegedly workshy, or foreigners who want to live on what we’ve worked hard for; politics’ permanent genuflection to the demands of the business lobby is reduced to complaining about outside regulation by Brussels, etc, etc.

German police officers guard a Pegida march in Düsseldorf. Photograph: Ina Fassbender/Reuters

For the conservative and governing parties, Pegida demonstrators are a comfortable opposition, because the actual questions are not being asked. Pegida are the useful idiots. They can be used as an excuse to tighten laws and to discredit real opposition. But the anti-Pegida demonstrators are no help either, at least when it comes to better formulating our problems.

When 20 or 30 young people catch the police and Pegida unawares, sitting down on the street as a human barrier and chanting, “There is no right to Nazi propaganda,” the police kettle them and a breakaway activist is hauled away. With a slight delay, the stream of Pegida marchers squeezes past. “Gäht erst ma orbeeten! [Get a job!]” they’re told, and: “We’re the majority, there’s not enough of you!” – which is true, at least here. There are groups among the Pegida followers at whom I’d really like to shout what the blockers are shouting. For all that, some Pegida people hold placards that the counter-demonstrators could probably carry themselves: “No arms exports means no refugees.”

And suddenly a suspicion wells up inside me: if the two sides didn’t exhaust themselves with antagonism (were it not for the police, physical violence would ensue), but instead articulated their unease with the status quo to each other, how many points would they have in common? A surprising number, I suspect. That doesn’t mean I hold out any hope that Pegida will soon reinterpret its name as Petra, Gisela and Dagmar. What’s holding Pegida together now is the media and political attention and the feeling of cohesion during the demonstrations. The movement’s future won’t be decided by its leaders, but by the way the rest of us deal with this misguided protest.

I did meet these three ladies in person after all, sadly not in Dresden and not on Monday, but six days later, in Berlin at around noon on Potsdamer Platz. Along with them were 50,000 demonstrators, twice as many as in Dresden. And now all the things lacking in Dresden were on the agenda – and even more. “Demonstrate against TTIP, don’t just remonstrate like Pegida!” And as the march set off for the chancellery, flanked by a negligible police presence, I thought: They ought to see this, those Pegida Dresdeners and their supporters and their counter-demonstrators.

But little or nothing was seen or heard or read of this demonstration – and what was reported made it sound like a march by organic farmers. This was where the alternative was visible. This was where politics and the media should have been looking and listening. Reporting it was a moral imperative. The fact that that didn’t happen surprises me – even though Petra, Gisela and Dagmar might deride me for my naivety.

Translated by Katy Derbyshire