Another successful anti-PEGIDA protest in the Netherlands today. The day started with the friendly anti-demonstration at an earlier time and a different spot than the PEGIDA demonstration, with about a thousand attendees listening to music and speeches by several organizations and politicians.

Afterwards many of those present there went to the location of the PEGIDA demo, where they were joined by other antifascists who weren’t that interested in the politicians’ speeches. Turns out the original place PEGIDA had been appointed to use had been closed off because of a suspicious package (which turned out to contain some fireworks), so they had to make do with a small spot on the other side of the building. In this new spot the antifascists could get quite close to them and after a large group of antifascists almost broke through police lines the racists were forced away from the small backup square and onto a bridge. There the around 200 racists, including a large number of imported nazis from Germany, Poland and Belgium stood around for about an hour and a half, before being herded into buses by the cops because they couldn’t guarantee their safety.

There were a number of arrests (around 20) of antifascists and many people hit by the cops, who charged into the counter protest on horseback.

So in the end the antifascists held a nice rally and outnumbered the fascists by a large number, while the fascists had to move their rally to a different place, had to be moved from there for their safety as well, couldn’t hold their speeches because they had to leave their PA system behind, and were bused off more than an hour earlier than they had planned to end their demonstration.