Pegida’s rise has been watched with much attention in Poland. The phenomenon tends to be regarded as a reaction to globalisation and a way of fuelling debate about its discontents. Polish observers note that although Pegida’s leadership is of dubious reputation, its demonstrations attract many disenchanted members of the middle class. Pegida is therefore seen […]

Pegida may have caught everyone by surprise in Germany, but its spirit is unfortunately all too familiar to French people. With the Front National’s enduring presence and future prospects, anti-Islam, ant-immigration, anti-establishment views of the world have been casting a long shadow over French politics for more than thirty years now. This may paradoxically explain […]

“We are the people.” Like other right-wing populists across Europe, Germany’s Pegida is the latest to advance this Manichean view of societal change. The ‘Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident’ claim to be reacting to the alleged threat of Überfremdung: that indigenous culture is being tainted by too many foreign influences. The last […]

In Europe, the populist Pandora’s box has been opened. From Athens to Dresden, Paris to Madrid, we are seeing strong signs of a people’s revolt against the established order everywhere. A pan-European crisis of political trust and representation comes to the surface, focussing mainly on the presumed dark sides of migration and European integration. Nearly […]

For most of its history, the Federal Republic of Germany proved to be a blank space on the map of European right-wing populism. The rise of the euro(pe)sceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) could change this. Having come up just short of crossing the five percent threshold in the 2013 federal elections, the newcomer achieved its […]

Many protest movements grow up first of all well away from the glare of public attention. They create an infrastructure of communication and mobilization, gradually expand the number of their supporters and their public appearances and, thereby, finally, gain national or even international visibility. The labour movement, women’s movement and ecological movement are examples of […]

UKIP’s recent success has triggered a cry of pain from liberal Britain. But responsibility for the rise of this modern populism lies substantially at the door of those self-same liberals. To borrow from Tony Blair any sensible response that wants to be tough on UKIP must be tough on the causes of UKIP. And what […]

How has this “anti-Islamisation” movement managed to mobilise huge crowds in less than three months? Catrin Nye reports her experience of attending one the the marches in January. The noisiest bit of the Pegida march is the brief moment, at a Dresden tram intersection, at which demonstrators meet their opposition, something the German police have blocked along most of the […]

The Pegida demonstrations in Dresden have attracted a lot of international media attention and raised considerable concerns about social peace inside Germany. Many people simply cannot understand why Pegida are warning about a so-called Islamisation of the West in a state, Saxony, with so few Muslims; Muslims make up only around 5% of the entire population […]