On March 2, Monday, thousands of anti-fascists gathered in Dresden, Germany, to counter a far-right rally organized by the Islamophobic group Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident (PEGIDA) at the Neumarkt square in the city center. The anti-fascist mobilization was called by several groups, including Antifascist Action, HOPE-fight racism, Die Linke (The Left), LifeLine, leftist-socialist-Green youth groups, and others.
Ruptly reported that around 2,500 people joined Monday’s anti-fascist rally, with signs reading “Nazis out” and “All together against fascism”.
Following the anti-PEGIDA mobilization, the campaign group ‘Nationalism Out of Your Mind’ said that racism must be removed from the streets of Germany. It must be countered wherever it appears and eliminated in all spheres of public life, the group said.
Dresden has been the home turf of the PEGIDA, where it was formed in 2014 as a German nationalist movement to resist the rising number of Muslim immigrants in Germany and to counter the alleged ‘Islamization’ of the country. The German far-right has been on the rise, with electoral gains made by the ultra-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a spike in hate crimes and hate speech across the country. On February 19, a far-right terrorist shot and killed nine people in Hanau, near Frankfurt.