A spate of arson attacks are hitting refugee shelters in Germany, in a wave of xenophobic violence being driven by anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin sentiment within the far-right and conspiracy movements, experts say.On Tuesday, just three days before the attack in Bautzen, the far-right, anti-immigration AfD (Alternative for Germany) party held a demonstration in front of the hotel protesting the imminent arrival of asylum seekers and what it described as an ““uncontrolled wave of migration.” Known neo-Nazis were present at the rally, according to Rössel.The party denied any culpability for the attack, saying it condemned violence and that the demonstration was an expression of the democratic right to protest.Rössel said he saw the volatile, anti-democratic Querdenken movement as a kind of continuation of the PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) movement – the Islamophobic street protest movement, founded in Saxony in 2014, which played a key role in drumming up xenophobic hatred during the 2015 migration crisis.Online, Querdenken activists are scathingly referred to as “QUERGIDA.” While the xenophobic rhetoric of 2015-16 had a strongly Islamophobic character, railing against migration from the Muslim world, experts say that the current climate has a strongly pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian flavour – reflecting the receptive audience that Kremlin propaganda had found among far-right groups and conspiracist scenes worldwide."