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| The leader of the right-wing anti-immigration group has since deleted his Facebook profile [PHOTO: FACEBOOK] |
Berlin: Lutz Bachmann, the head of Germany’s anti-immigration movement PEGIDA stepped down Wednesday after a photo showing him dressed as Adolf Hitler surfaced online and went viral.
Lutz Bachmann was pictured on his Facebook page sporting a toothbrush mustache and with his dark hair combed straight into a side parting to resemble the Nazi leader, the New York Times reports.
Dresden Prosecution started investigations after he insulted aslyum-seekers on Facebook calling them "scumbags", "stupid cows" and "trash".
On Wednesday, supporters of PEGIDA (for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West) gathered in Leipzig for an anti-immigration rally.
Bachmann started PEGIDA in October 2014 to protest plans to add 14 refugee centres in Dresden, Germany.
Through PEGIDA he rallied the disparate forces of the German right against the "parallel societies" of Muslims in Europe. Bachmann publicly renounces extremist violence of any kind and insists his enemy is not religion itself.
Born 1973 in Dresden, Bachmann had a working class upbringing.He is the son of a butcher.
He was a trained chef and graphic designer, and played professional soccer for teams in Dresden and Düsseldorf. Bachmann has a criminal record for sixteen burglaries, drunk driving, dealing cocaine and assault.
In 1998, after Bachmann had been sentenced to several years in prison, he fled to South Africa but was deported back to Germany.