[18] Bachmann's impetus for starting Pegida was witnessing a rally by alleged supporters of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) against the siege of Kobani by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on 10 October 2014 in Dresden,[19] which he posted on YouTube on the same day.

[9][24] During the following days, the movement began gaining wider public attention, and, subsequently, the weekly Monday demonstrations drew larger numbers of people.

[36] Excerpts from a closed Facebook conversation incriminated Bachmann as having referred to immigrants with the insults "animals", "scumbags"[37] and "trash",[38] which are classified as hate speech in Germany.

(which the Sächsische Zeitung later discovered to be a forgery, reporting that the moustache was added after the photo was taken),[13] went viral on social media[38] and was printed on front pages worldwide.

On another occasion, Bachmann had posted a photo of a man wearing the uniform of the US white supremacist organisation Ku Klux Klan accompanied by the slogan: "Three Ks a day keeps the minorities away".

[36] The Dresden state prosecutors opened an investigation for suspected Volksverhetzung (incitement to hatred), and Deputy Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said the real face of Pegida had been exposed: "Anyone who puts on a Hitler disguise is either an idiot or a Nazi.

[51] Bachmann derided the demonstrators who made it, calling it a "laughable piece of work with spelling errors" ("lächerliche Bastelarbeit mit Schreibfehlern"), a reference to the fact that the name Sigmar had been written with an "ie" (Siegmar).

", he claimed that the majority of Germans were held in contempt by the political class and that politicians wished that there were "other alternatives [to fight Pegida supporters[55]] – but the concentration camps are unfortunately out of order at the moment".

[citation needed] According to Frank Richter, director of Saxony's Federal Agency for Civic Education, Pegida is "a mixed group—known figures from the National Democratic Party of Germany, soccer hooligans, but also a sizable number of ordinary citizens".

[24] Werner Schiffauer, director of the Migration Council, has pointed out that the movement is strongest where people have hardly any experience with foreigners, and among "easterners who never really arrived in the Federal Republic and who now feel they have no voice".

[62] In December, Gordian Meyer-Plath, president of Saxony's State Authority for the Protection of the Constitution, said that initial suspicion that Pegida might tie in with the riots staged by Hogesa earlier in Cologne were not substantiated, so the movement was not put under official surveillance.

This assessment was contested by the weekly Die Zeit who researched the ideological proximity of Pegida organizer Siegfried Däbritz to the German Defence League or the European Identitarian movement.

[105] The author, Vorländer, did not see Pegida as a movement of right-wing extremists, pensioners or the unemployed, but stated that the rallies served as a way to express feelings and resentments against a political and opinion-making elite which have not been publicly articulated before.

According to data from the WZB, Pegida was a male-dominated group, participants were mostly employees with a relatively high level of education, they had no confidence in institutions and they sympathised with AfD.

[111] In December 2014, representatives of the NPD encouraged people to participate in Pegida rallies,[112] as did the German Defence League and the internet blog Politically Incorrect in an uploaded 'propaganda clip'.

[120] German tabloid newspaper Bild launched a petition against Pegida, including former Chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder, as well as actress Karoline Herfurth and former footballer Oliver Bierhoff.

[126] A special report by the Bertelsmann Foundation, complemented by a TNS Emnid survey from November 2014, showed that a majority of German citizens considered Islam dangerous.

[128] The Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière said that among the participants of the mass rallies were many ordinary people who expressed their concerns about the challenges of today's society.

[136] Ulbig admitted that there had been a number of criminal acts committed by immigrants near the homes for asylum-seekers, but these were a minority and should not be allowed to undermine solidarity with the great majority of law-abiding refugees.

[146] Social psychologist Andreas Zick from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research on Conflict and Violence (IKG) assesses the party as a "middle-class right-wing populist movement".

[150] In his article for the German newspaper Zeit Online, political scientist and historian Michael Lühmann called it "cynical to want to place Pegida in the tradition of 1989".

In one of his columns in the Berliner Zeitung he referred to the Jewish emancipation of 19th century Saxony, where the comparatively few resident Jews were faced with unequally difficult legal obstacles.

[153] Explaining especially those protests against the actually non-existent threat of Islamisation from people with middle-class backgrounds, political scientist Gesine Schwan referred to results from studies on prejudice.

[158] Political theorist Wolfgang Jäger considers Pegida a part of increasingly right-wing populist tendencies in Europe, in their Islamophobia possibly being the heir to widespread antisemitism.

In France, Le Monde wrote that Islamophobia divided German society, while Libération and L'Opinion discussed possible parallels to the French far-right National Front.

In an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu compared Pegida followers with members of the terror organisation IS.

[162] Pegida has spawned a number of smaller offshoots across Germany, including Legida in Leipzig, Sügida in southern Thuringia,[72] Kagida in Kassel, Wügida in Würzburg, Bogida in Bonn, Dügida in Düsseldorf,[69] and Fragida in Frankfurt.

On 25 January they held a first rally in Erfurt under the title EnDgAmE (Engagierte Demokraten gegen die Amerikanisierung Europas, or "Committed democrats against the Americanisation of Europe").

[170] They attracted some 1,000 protesters, but were opposed by 800 mostly left-wing counter-demonstrators[171] including Erfurt's mayor Andreas Bausewein and trade union members, Jusos and the local Antifa.

Dawn's Marek Černoch said that the meeting was, among other things, a reaction to the attacks on women in Cologne in Germany on New Year's Eve, which took place as celebrations were being held to usher in 2016.