The acronym PEGIDA has been associated with grassroots anti-Islam protest for some years. In fact, the group – full name ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the (Christian) West’ – is one of the largest examples of sustained far-Right protest in western Europe in recent decades. What is less known is that local PEGIDA chapters have emerged outside Europe – in Canada, for example.
The anti-immigrant and anti-elitist organisation originated in Dresden, in former East Germany, in 2014. It soon became known all over Europe: at first, due to the public outcry caused by the mobilisation of the far Right in Germany, a country where airing far-Right views in public was still largely taboo; and then because the label PEGIDA spread across western and northern Europe throughout 2015, where it was adopted by local activists in countries such as Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.
Most PEGIDA offshoots were not as successful in drawing support as the original group in Dresden, partly because they were often outnumbered by leftist counterdemonstrators. Nevertheless, its rapid spread suggested that PEGIDA “came to stay”, as its founders like to say.
