Pegida, the largest far-Right movement in Germany, was founded in Dresden in 2014 under the name ‘Peaceful Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident’. The group has regularly mobilised thousands of supporters for what it calls “peaceful marches” in the heart of this former East German city. These demonstrations express typical far-Right ideology, including the degradation of immigrants and the ‘leftist’ mainstream in media and politics.
Even though Pegida soon changed ‘peaceful Europeans’ to ‘patriotic Europeans’, the original name said it all. Pegida sees itself as a peaceful and non-violent resistance force in an imagined fight against what it perceives as an all-encompassing left-wing “opinion dictatorship” in Germany.
To symbolically flesh out its claim, Pegida usually stages its events near the Frauenkirche, the famous Baroque church that was almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing in the Second World War, finally rebuilt after German reunification and is now a global symbol of peace and reconciliation. Among the crowds, one can easily spot well-known peace symbols such as the dove and the 1980s German slogan about turning swords into ploughshares. No march is complete without the organisers praising themselves for “another peaceful and non-violent event".
