BERLIN, Germany – {Lutz Bachmann, a known anti-Islamist leader, who had been at the front of thousands-strong protest rallies in Germany, has resigned from a rightwing group after a selfie of him appeared in the media posing as Adolf Hitler.}
The controversial photograph surfaced on the internet weeks after he denied any Nazi sympathy. The issue is grave because of its sensitivity in Germany as Chancellor Angela Merkel and other high-ranking officials have repeatedly Bachmann’s anti-immigrant movement, widely known by its German acronym Pegida, which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West.
The movement gained momentum particularly after the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
The image was found on Bachmann’s Facebook page and appeared on the front page of the mass-circulation newspaper Bild on Wednesday. It soon went viral on social media sites, prompting an instant resignation from Bachmann as chairman of the group.
Another image surfaced that Bachmann posted of a man in a Ku Klux Klan robe with the caption, “Three K’s a day keeps the minorities away”.
“I apologize to everybody who has felt attacked by my online postings. They were comments made without serious reflection, which I would no longer express today. I am sorry that I thereby damaged the interests of our movement, and draw the appropriate conclusion,” Bachmann said.
His spokeswoman Kathrin Oertel said on Facebook that the Hitler selfie was an act of satire. In the photograph, Bachmann has his dark hair combed straight and severely parted above his right temple and wears a toothbrush mustache, closely resembling Hitler.
While every citizen has the right to engage in satire, Oertel said insulting foreigners is not satirical.
Bachmann apparently has deleted or deactivated his own Facebook account, but screen grabs published by numerous media outlets suggest that the Hitler photo was posted in September, while the KKK image is from 2012.
“I took the photo at the hairdressers, for the publication of the audiobook of the satire ‘He’s Back.’ … You need to be able to joke about things now and then,” Bachmann told BILD.
Pegida has been successful in organizing weekly anti-Islamization demonstrations in Dresden. Police estimated that 18,000 people attended a January 5 rally, while about 25,000 people showed up at a January 12 rally.
The group claims to have supporters in more than 30 German cities and 18 countries in Europe.
Big News Network
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