Rise of PEGIDA

PEGIDA, short for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West, is a German far-right movement that began in Dresden in late 2014. It was founded by Lutz Bachmann, and it organized weekly Monday evening demonstrations against immigration and what it called the Islamization of Europe. The protests attracted large crowds in early 2015, with tens of thousands of participants in Dresden at the peak, while counter-demonstrations drew many Germans who rejected its message. The movement was criticized for xenophobia and its links to extremists, and it split in 2015 after Bachmann was caught in a scandal over social media posts. Support later fell, but it did not disappear, and it became a part of the political background to the rise of the Alternative for Germany.

Open on the timeline