The average Pegida marcher is surprisingly average. He’s 48, lives in Saxony, is educated and has a slightly higher than average income for the state of Saxony. He claims no political party affiliation and doesn’t belong to a church.
That’s according to the Technical University in Dresden, who on Wednesday released the first empirical survey on who is Pegida.
And every Monday, he turns up with thousands of others to chant “We are the people” or “Wir sind das Volk” in protest against what he believes is ruining Germany.
Pegida or the Patriots Against the Islamisation of the West is not just an evolution of the Hooligans against Salifists demonstrations that turned violent in Cologne in October. Nor is it an arm of the neo-nationalistic party, the National Democratic Party.
It is far too smart to get lumped in with those massively unpopular groups.
What began as a group on social media emerged from the virtual to the real world starting in early 2014.
On January 12th, 2015, the latest "evening walk" in Dresden attracted 25,000 participants in the wake of the killing of 12 staff at French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo at the hands of three Muslim men.
“I’m here because I think that, in Germany, we have a nice culture with tradition and history, and I worry that in the future, we will lose some of those things to the migrants bringing in their other beliefs and not wanting to conform to the beliefs that we have made our society on,” said one Pegida marcher who didn’t want to be named. He had driven all the way from Stuttgart to attend his first walk.
His sentiment is one that is shared by the Pegida founders. » | Sabine Devins | Friday, January 16, 2015
