Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West

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Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the West (PEGIDA) is a far-right populist movement in Germany. The name is an acronym derived from the German ‘Patriotische Europaeer Gegen die Islamisierung Des Abendlandes’ (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamisation of the Orient).

History

PEGIDA began holding weekly demonstrations on Mondays at Schlossplatz square in October 2014. Initially attendance figures were in the dozens or hundreds but by December 2014 its rallies are believed to have attracted at least 10,000 people more than once. The movement’s Facebook page had 44,000 ‘likes’ at the end of 2014.

Attendees at PEGIDA demos appear to include far right activists and football hooligans but reportedly also include members of the public concerned about immigration.

Most media outlets called the PEGIDA marches ‘anti-Muslim’, others as ‘anti-immigrant’. The organiser claim to only be against ‘extremism’ but demonstrations have been supported by neo-Nazi groups. [2] Far-right elements identified as having links with PEGIDA include Fist of the East a far right Dresden hooligan group, Hooligans Elbflorenz (Florence on the Elbe, a nickname for Dresden), and Skinheads Sächsische Schweiz, a banned far-right organisation.

Germany takes in more asylum seekers than any other EU country[2] but PEGIDA’s protests have centred around the east German city of Dresden, the capitol of Saxony, home to neither a large proportion of immigrants (about 2.5%, or 100,000) or a significant Muslim minority (just 0.1%).

According to Der Spiegel, PEGIDA has a ‘middle class leadership’ and at least three key organisers, including founder and leader Lutz Bachmann have prior criminal convictions, including burglary, drug crimes and fraud charges.

Ideology

According to The Independent newspaper, PEGIDA’s slogan ‘“wir sind das Volk” (we are the people), harks back to protests before the fall of the Berlin Wall but ‘Volk’ and ‘Vaterland’ also retain connotations of the Nazi-era. . But the group has made efforts to distance itself from the far right, stating that it is against ‘preachers of hate, regardless of what religion’ and ‘radicalism, regardless of whether religiously or politically motivated’.

PEGIDA reportedly emphasises the preservation of what it calls “Judeo-Christian Western culture” as opposed to a perceived rise in “radicalism” and “parallel societies with Sharia police”. Its manifesto lists policies including integration, “sexual self-determination” and stopping the “almost obsessive” movement against gendered German language. It reportedly also calls for the immediate deportation of asylum seekers with criminal convictions. Berlin professor Hajo Funke claimed the organisers played on fear of Isis and al-Qaedas .

Der Spiegel linked the emergence of PEGIDA to a general rise in far right protests in Germany in 2014, including 86 attacks on asylum seekers’ hostels between January and September. It also reported that many of those involved in the PEGIDA protests don't believe the official statistics regarding the numbers of Muslims or immigrants but ‘are convinced that a cartel of politicians and "main-stream media" are audaciously misleading the public over the true state of affairs’.

Many people on demonstrations waved German flags. Some PEGIDA banners bore the slogan ‘Non-violent and United Against Faith Wars on German Soil’ (‘Gewaltfrei & Vereint Gegen Glaubenskriege auf Deutschem Boden').

Activities

PEGIDA began holding weekly demonstrations in Dresden on Mondays in October 2014.

A march in Cologne on 26 October 2014 attracted 400 far-right activists who, according to Der Spiegel, ‘went on a rampage’. The the group Hooligans Against Salafists (HoGeSa) who staged the demonstration are said to share at least one organiser with PEGIDA.

A march in Dresden on 8 December attracted approximately 10,000 people. An anonymous PEGIDA speaker reportedly invoked Martin Luther King Jr., beginning his speech with the words ‘I have a dream’, saying he hoped for ‘peaceful coexistence’ but calling for acceptance of what he described as ‘the hard reality that we are in a state of war’.

A march in Dresden on 15 December 2014 attracted between 10,000 and 15,000 people. Around 5,700 attended a counter-demonstration.

A march in Dresden on 22 December 2014 attracted more than 17,000 people; some estimates put the number at as many as 20,000.

Copycat protests

Der Spiegel reported that the PEGIDA movement spawned ‘many clones’. Copycat protests took place in 2014 other German cities such as West Dusseldorf, Kassel and Würzburg but these only had a few hundred supporters.

In December 2014 the newspaper that PEGIDA protests were planned Cologne, Düsseldorf and Unna in 2015. On 5 January 2015 there were protests in Dresden, Berlin, Cologne (the Berlin variant called itself Baergida - also spelled Bärgida or Bergida – and the Cologne demonstration using the name Koegida). However the latter two drew only a few hundred supporters and massive anti-PEGIDA demos took place in Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart and Dresden.

The PEGIDA protest also inspired French anti-Islam activists to take to the streets. The Gates of Vienna blog reported that 18 January 2015 was the date organisers in France has chosen to call for ‘anti-Islamisation’ rallies across the country.

Political responses

One the eve of one PEGIDA march, Germany’s most senior policeman is reported to have spoken of “a visible rise in xenophobic crime countrywide”, including growing number of anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish incidents. Germany’s domestic security agencies were said to be monitoring a number of groups including Hooligans Against Salafists HoGeSa.

Anti-PEGIDA protests have taken place or been planned in Würzberg, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Dresden, Munich and Cologne. Thousands of anti-fascist protesters on the counter-demonstrations have used the anti-Nazi slogan “nie wieda” - never again.

According to The Independent newspaper, the leaders of PEGIDA have reportedly been labelled ‘Nazis in pinstripes’ by opponents (this quote has variously been attributed to Thomas Opperman of Germany’s Social Democrat SPD party [3] and Ralf Jäger of the same party) .

Meanwhile Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were said to have offered ‘mixed’ responses with some urging understanding for the march’s motivations . Saxony Interior Minister Markus Ulbig of the CDU said: ‘We cannot label 10,000 people as right-wing extremists. That creates more problems than it solves’, adding that there were many "middle-class citizens" among the demonstrators, ‘and you can't toss them all into the same Neo-Nazi pot’.

However, Alexander Gauland, one of the leaders of the ‘fast-growing’ Eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD) however, declared his party ‘the natural allies of this movement’ and announced his intention to attend a Dresden protest on 15 December 2014.

The far-right National Democratic Party (NPD) also appeared to welcome the protests which, according to Der Spiegel, it saw as ‘a chance to take their worldview directly to the middle class’.

Affiliations

• BAEGIDA
• KOEGIDA
• Alternative for Germany (AfD)
• National Democratic Party (NPD)
• HoGeSa

People

• Lutz Bachman – founder and leader