A former German politician has protested the rise of the Dresden-based anti-Muslim movement Pegida by tweeting a nude picture of herself with the words “Bomber Harris, Do It Again”.
Mercedes Reichstein, formerly of the Pirate Party and a Femen activist, sent the topless image earlier this month using the Twitter handle @Debbie_Anna, with the hashtags #nopegida and #fuckpegida.
The Tweet read, “The people must go”, referring to the German far-right group that has gained more than 18,000 supporters in the past three months under the banner Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.
Arthur “Bomber” Harris, who led the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command during the Second World War, is a highly controversial figure, having ordered the firebombing of Dresden, an act that led to the deaths of 25,000 Germans over two nights in February 1945 – many of them civilians.
Speaking to Bild on Wednesday, Reichstein, who is currently a student, said: “Sure, I provoke. It’s a protests against the far-right.”
On Wednesday Lutz Bachmann, the leader of Pegida, resigned from the movement after a photo of him posing as Hitler prompted prosecutors to investigate him for inciting hatred.
A version of this story first appeared on HuffPost Germany. The original can be found here.