The first PEGIDA rally in Austria faced a total defeat after 5,000 anti-PEGIDA protesters took to streets of Vienna.
The anti-Islamization demonstration gathered around 300 people. Protesters were chanting slogans "We are the people!" and "The demonstration should pass peacefully," according to Georg Nagel, the organizer of PEGIDA protests in Vienna.
A rally in opposition of PEGIDA was, according to police, attended by nearly 5,000 people, who chanted "Shoulder to shoulder against racism!" and "Refugees stay — Pegida goes away."
Local law enforcement agencies reported no incidents at the rallies in Vienna so far.
PEGIDA’s founder and initial leader, Lutz Bachmann, a convicted thief, resigned in January, following public outrage over a front-page photo of him posing as Adolf Hitler, published in the German daily Bild.
The picture, which was taken two years ago, showed Bachmann looking vengefully into the camera while wearing a toothbrush mustache and having combed the bulk of his hair to one side as used the German despot.
The number of group’s supporters started to subside following the revelations about Bachmann with the number of people attending weekly protests dropping from 25,000 to 17,500.
PEGIDA -- which loosely translates as, "Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West," --has sprung offshoots in other European countries including Denmark, Switzerland and Spain.
