On a Monday evening in early April 2020, around 1,000 users are waiting for a YouTube livestream, hosted by Lutz Bachmann, co-founder of the Dresden-based protest movement ‘Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the Occident’ (PEGIDA). For the second time already, Bachmann’s YouTube channel ‘LUTZiges’ – a pun of his given name and the German word lustig (‘funny’) – invites to a ‘virtual evening march’.
Protest in times of Coronavirus
Since October 2014, PEGIDA had been mobilizing against the ‘Islamization’ of Europe, the political ‘elites’, and the established media. On a weekly basis, PEGIDA organizers and supporters demonstrated in Dresden. They marched through the city center and gave speeches with xenophobic and anti-elitist content on some of the most iconic squares. The marches, always scheduled on Mondays, aimed to re-perform the ‘Monday demonstrations’ which toppled the GDR regime in the fall of 1989.
Over the years, participant numbers consolidated at around 1,500 supporters per demonstration. In February 2020, numbers peaked again at 3,000 or so during the 200th march of PEGIDA, marked by the visit of Björn Höcke, a high-ranking politician of Germany’s far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
