This story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.net/en/.
   License: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/
   international.
   --------------------------------------------------------------


Transatlantic Islamophobia: PEGIDA before and during the pandemic
By:   []
Date: None

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.

Since 2014, PEGIDA Dresden has been performing highly standardised and symbolically charged demonstrations in the historic city centre every two weeks or so. In February 2020, just before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, PEGIDA celebrated a major success, attracting up to 3,000 protesters.

Contrary to the expectations of most political and media commentators, PEGIDA’s capacity to mobilise sympathisers during the pandemic and associated lockdowns, when the right to public assembly was severely restricted or forbidden, was barely disrupted. Since May 2020, in particular, PEGIDA has returned to active street protests against multiculturalism and “liberal elites” in Germany.

Canadian offshoot

Founded in January 2015 by Ontario resident Janice Bultje (aka Jenny Hill), PEGIDA Canada has not been very successful.

In 2015, it tried to organise demonstrations, first in Montreal and then in Toronto. In both cases, the demonstrations were cancelled because PEGIDA was quickly outnumbered by hundreds of counterprotesters. In 2017, another anti-Islam protest of 30-40 PEGIDA Canada members resulted in a clash with a larger group of counterprotesters.

In 2018, about 60 PEGIDA protesters (joined by the Canadian Proud Boys, the Northern Guard and Sons of Odin, all far-Right groups) rallied in Toronto to “warn against encroaching Islam”, but were overwhelmed by counterprotesters. In 2019, a smaller protest in Toronto was yet again “drowned out” by 200 anti-racist activists.

Before it was banned from Facebook this year, PEGIDA Canada had 30,000 followers on the platform. At present, it only has around 3,000 followers through the totality of its different regional Facebook accounts (Profile Canada, Pegida Canada Alberta, Pegida Canada Manitoba, and Pegida Canada New Brunswick). Despite leader Jenny Hill arguing that the group is “changing people’s minds”, it is probably because of its lack of success that this Canadian offshoot has been largely ignored.

As a result, we have not examined this transatlantic element when studying PEGIDA and radical-Right anti-Muslim mobilisation. After more than a year of the pandemic, when the radical Right seems to be expanding globally at pace and creating more coordinated networks of radicalisation online, it seems it is time to take this seriously.

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/transatlantic-islamophobia-pegida-and-during-pandemic/