Lessons for grassroots activists.
Populist movements have been making steady progress in Europe. A major development of the past year has been PEGIDA, a grassroots movement founded in Dresden, Germany. PEGIDA–a German acronym that stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West–is a textbook case of how a grassroots movement can quickly rise and then flame out even more quickly. It saw participation at its rallies grow from a few hundred in October 2014 to no fewer than 25,000 in January 2015. Spinoffs spread to other German and European cities, such as Cologne, Munich and Copenhagen. At what seemed the height of its popularity the movement collapsed, with attendance at Dresden rallies dropping to just a few thousand. PEGIDA still exists, and announced it will run candidates in the upcoming elections, but its prospects are nothing like what they could have been. What happened? ...
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