PEGIDA as Part of Right-Wing Populism in Germany and Europe

Abstract

This chapter brings all findings together and classifies Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA) as part of right-wing populism in Germany and Europe. It is argued that PEGIDA is to be understood as a first successful populist attempt to mobilise from existing ethnocentric attitude patterns in Germany. Its protest, however, was not directed at specific political concerns in the first place, but instead expressed a general feeling of political dissatisfaction and indignation. PEGIDA took up something which was already present but not visible and then joined everything together. People with right-wing populist, xenophobic and Islamophobic attitudes, critics of democracy and right-wing extremists could identify with its label, but also sceptics and those dissatisfied with their situation found a platform in the demonstrations. In doing so, PEGIDA made feelings of resentment socially acceptable and as a ‘regulars’ table’ of the street made a decisive contribution to a coarsening of the discourse and to a disinhibition of the protest culture. Even if the movement was neither able to transform into a political party nor able to establish itself internationally as a partner in the phalanx of right-wing populist groups, it was decisive for the establishment of right-wing populism in German politics and paved the way for the latest electoral successes of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).