Planned protest falls flat as Pegida wimp out of Edinburgh rally

A protest march from Pegida scheduled to take place outside Holyrood Palace was cancelled at the last minute on Saturday afternoon.

Pegida is the translated name for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

A considerable police presence was around the city centre in anticipation of the Pegida march.

Hundreds of people voiced their displeasure at Pegida and demonstrated for the Unite Against Fascism group.

Strong anti-fascism turn out

Explaining why he believed Pegida didn’t turn up, Antifa spokesperson Luke Henderson said:

“First of all, the racist Nazi far-right have not been able to successfully regroup. Their attempt was to use another veneer, a front of respectability and use the front of Pegida to pull together the really nasty Nazi elements of society but they were not successful and capable of doing that.

“The other reason is, you saw the demonstration here today. There are hundreds and hundreds of us. The diversity of this city is what brought so many here.

“People from the LGBT community, Hibs fans, Hearts fans and Muslims all came. We represent the whole town and they represent a tiny slice of the most nasty and intolerant.

“They didn’t have the confidence to turn up because they knew they would be humiliated.”

Unite Against Fascism spokesman, Luke Henderson

Henderson also thought the city still has a problem with the far-right.

“A black woman here today was racially attacked just last week, unfortunately these events still occur and are not uncommon.”

A young Muslim from Edinburgh who wanted to remain anonymous said to us:

“I don’t fear coming to these anti-Muslim marches because I know the fascists will always be outnumbered by groups such as Unite Against Fascism. It also gives us confidence in the community when we see people from so many different backgrounds here.”

A quick look at the Pegida Facebook page shows that despite its 18000 likes, only 98 had clicked ‘attending’ to the march.