We carry a new report from Germany by Dan Armstrong:

Yesterday the largest rightwing street demonstration in the history of postwar Germany took place in Dresden. This time  the Pegida anti-immigration movement mustered over 30,000, some say 40,000, for its 12th Monday march through the city. Heartening was the fact that in total over 100,000 counter demonstrators  could be counted across the whole country with 30,000 in nearby Leipzig, the heart of the anti-stalinist demonstrations in 1989.

Pegida has so far failed to sink serious roots in any other city apart from Dresden and their failure has led to many of their Dresden particpants being bussed in from outside.

That said, we should be observing the way that this movement has been developing. Going back a year or two, we saw the tiny English Defence League staging rallies and riots but participation was largely confined to already committed rightwing activists and hooligans, spoiling for a street fight.
Further attempts at mobilisation by EDL, BNP and UKIP included marches against pedophiles, the siting of psychiatric clinics, Roma camps. There have been similar demos against same-sex marriage in France and Russia, Roma in Hungary and so. The crowds have proved fruitful recruiting grounds for entrist fascist grouplets but the new groundswell of anti-islamism in Germany has reached a wider audience and has proved to be longer-lasting than earlier movements.

Pegida has only existed for a couple of weeks as an actual organisation. But has mobilised ever growing numbers of marchers for 12 (twelve) Monday demonstrations in Dresden so far. The demos mobilise hardliners and many thousands of the periphery of the rightwing parties such as NPD and AfD, but more importantly unorganised workers, students and often pensioners who gather around the nonsensical slogans of stop the compulsory wearing of the veil for German women (!) or the  introduction of Sharia law but also the following demands:
stop uncontrolled immigration,
immigrants should be compelled to integrate themselves,
islamists should be deported,
the people should decide policy through referendums,
the warmongering against Russia should be stopped (this is aimed at Linke voters),
internal security should be strengthened.

As you can see, there are demands there which many people can support without being fascists. But the fascists are active in finding recruits amongt the crowds, leading chants about the “lying press” and “we are the people”.
Difficult to understand are the two facts that Dresden has a lower unemployment rate than much of east Germany and that there is an extremely low presence of immigrants of under 2% of the population (London has 40%!) It may be that the local people are yearning for the old stability of both the stalinist DDR (which was also xenophobic in practice although not in words) or even the 3rd Reich or the 2nd Reich or the Kingdom of Saxony; they have basically hardly ever lived under bourgeois democracy and with every generation there has been complete disruption of their lives.

The two elements aiding the right are 1) the use of facebook etc to call for action and also to bombard any opponents (individual or in the media) with a hail of abuse arguments and threats. WIth only a cadre of ten people sometimes using extra fake IDs, the appearance can be gained of a mass movement. And 2) the pitching of the demands broadly enough to draw in a wider periphery of possible recruits.
As it stands, the actual Pegida will snap and shatter into different currents fairly soon but not before the right has made substantial gains.