A young blonde woman sits in front of the camera, can of hairspray in hand.
Over the next few minutes she proceeds to lacquer her hair, scraping it back forcefully so her forehead takes prominence. She then applies heavy black eyeliner, chatting away in German all the while.
Finally – and I actually gasped when this happened – she takes a pink disposable razor and shaves off her eyebrows, before pretending to tattoo two thin black lines in their place.
This YouTube video, published this week by channel Interview in the Box, has already been watched by more than half a million people.
Called ‘Pegida Make-Up Tutorial’ it promises that you can: ‘Become a real Pegida Girl in less than five minutes: With a few simple tricks you are the star of the next Monday demo!’
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The ‘look’ it’s satirising is that of Kathrin Oertel. The 37-year-old ‘business consultant’ has just become the feminine face of Germany’s Pegida anti-Islam movement, following the resignation of its founder Lutz Bachmann after a selfie emerged of him dressed as Hitler.
It’s quite a sea change for the far-right movement that emerged in Dresden last October and has been gathering momentum ever since.
Pegida stands for Patriotische Europäer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West). The group has been holding weekly rallies, which have spread rapidly across Germany.
In Dresden, a reported 25,000 people now gather weekly to chant slogans such as ‘Wir sind das Volk’ (We are the people) and ‘Lugen presse’ meaning ‘lying press’ – a term first used by the Nazis and adopted by anti-communist demonstrators in East Germany during the 1980s.
(And, it’s worth saying that the number of counter-demonstrators far outnumber Pegida themselves).
Protestors against Pegida stand with a caricature of Kathrin Oertel. (Photo: Reuters)
Flags read “We want our homeland back”. Demonstrators voice concerns that Germany is being taken over by immigrants. In 2014, the country took in record numbers of asylum seekers - 200,000 largely from Syria and Iraq – more than any other country in Europe.
Hard-working, affluent Germans rub shoulders with known neo-Nazis and notorious gangs of football hooligans. Supporters are asked to abstain from drinking alcohol and to protest ‘peacefully’.
Men far outnumber women. Indeed, the first academic study of the movement, by the Dresden Technical University, found that 75 per cent of all attendees at Pegida marches are male, white, middle-class and have an average age of 48.
This is where Oertel comes in. This thin, pale, blonde and camera-ready – though she’s often referred to on social media as ‘Cruella de Vil’ - was already well-known as Pegida’s spokesperson. With the departure of Bachmann, she has been pushed into the limelight.
And it seems the Pegida marketing machine doesn’t intend to miss the chance to soften its hard edges.
Because Oertel brings Pegida something just by the simple fact of being a woman. Most Germans see it as a movement of angry men. To have a woman as its public face presents them with the potential to broaden its public appeal.
“I am a woman of the people,” Oertel told a recent crowd. I have three children”.
A scence from the spoof 'Pegida girl' makeover video on YouTube
A scence from the spoof 'Pegida girl' makeover video on YouTube
On Monday, at Pegida's first press conference, after the cancellation of its weekly demonstration - following threats made against Bachmann - she insisted "we're just normal people", adding “we cannot live with being called ‘Islam-haters”.
Certainly, Oertel appears a rather safe option in comparison to Bachmann. Long before the Hitler photograph (which she defended as “satire”), the Telegraph’s Berlin correspondent Justin Huggler tells me, the former Pegida chief was mired in controversy over his past criminal record (burglary and drug offences) and allegations that he’d been deported from South Africa.
We really know very little about Oertel. She’s notoriously private and, other than a number of controlled TV appearances, doesn’t court the media (at the time of going to press, even her Wikipedia page read ‘This article has been proposed for deletion’). Her political affiliations aside (and the fact she’s divorced - hardly scandalous), there appears to be nothing controversial about her. Supporters are calling her the 'clean wife of Pegida'.
Says Huggler: “She's the modern German woman: professional, divorced mother-of-three, respectable. She went on TV on a political talk show, and did okay against the seasoned politicians. She didn't come out on top, but she didn't make a fool of herself either, and she was up against people who do this for a living.”
So can this ‘modern German woman’ bring Pegida the respectability they so desperately crave? You don’t have to look far on social media to find commenters denouncing them as ‘Nazis’ and writing that the German people are embarrassed by their existence.
“Women tend to add softness,” historian Guy Walters tells me.
“The perception is that they are much nicer than men. We instinctively think they can’t be that bad.
“Historically the presence of women has made political movements more palatable and easier to swallow.
“But there’s no reason that women can’t be bigoted arseholes like men. To many, Thatcher proved that and was as ruthless as any man”.
Bachmann and Oertel
Bachmann and Oertel
To compare Oertel to Thatcher would, of course, be far-fetched. Indeed, in public she and the dozen other Pegida leaders insist they’re not interested in entering politics.
Huggler isn’t so sure. He tells me that this week Oertel phoned a local leader of Germany's rising Eurosceptic party for advice over what to do about the crisis over the Hitler photos - suggesting she may want to be more of a political operator than she lets on.
That – and the image of the ‘normal German woman’ that Oertel seems to be so keen on cultivating – could position her even more in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s firing line.
On New Year’s Eve, in a televised address, she warned German citizens to refrain from attending further ‘unpleasant’ protests – referring to Pegida without explicitly naming them.
“I say to all those who go to such demonstrations: do not follow those who have called the rallies, because all too often they have prejudice, a chilliness, even hatred in their hearts,” she said.
Merkel has accused them of “prejudice, coldness, even hatred in their hearts”.
But on Monday she came to their defence, saying “As Chancellor, I have an interest that demonstrations can take place anywhere in Germany, because it is a fundamental right.
“Such a great good must be protected as far as possible.”
At Pegida rallies, though, Merkel is a hate figure. The research into the movement showed that despite it’s ‘anti-Islamic’ label, Pegida protestors are largely motivated by anti-political establishment feelings. (Although some are there to campaign against battery-farmed chickens, while others call for the TV license to be scrapped).
Of course, Oertel could be accused of trespassing on Merkel’s territory. The Chancellor’s image is that of the normal German woman. She shops in Berlin supermarkets and has been pictured queuing at the tills to pay, alongside other customers.
Many Germans still affectionately call her ‘Mutti’ – or ‘mother’. Although at Pegida rallies, you’re more likely to hear her referred to as ‘Mutti Multi-Kulti’ (‘Mummy Multicultural’).
Oertel’s far right wing leanings are, however, unlikely to do Merkel – who has been accused of being further to the right of centre than she’d like to admit – any harm.
It remains to be seen whether the new face of Pegida can add a veneer of respectability to the movement and whether Angela Merkel can stem the tide of Germans, even modest, swarming to its Monday night marches.
“It remains to be seen whether she has Merkel's famous killer instinct behind the mask,” says Huggler.
And it remains to be seen how Merkel handles this fledgling political movement without isolating the voters who uphold her as ‘Mutti’. For now.
