| Pegida Switzerland | |
| Native Name: | Pegida Schweiz Pegida Suisse Pegida Svizzera Pegida Svizra Pegida Helvetia |
| Leader Name: | Mike Spielmann Tobias Steiger |
| Location: | Switzerland |
| Headquarters: | Dresden, Germany |
| Type: | Anti-Islam |
Pegida Switzerland is the Swiss branch of the German anti-Islam movement Pegida. It was launched on 9 January 2015, two days after the Charlie Hebdo attacks.[1] [2]
In January 2015, the spokesperson Ignaz Bearth was accused by the media of having bought likes for his Facebook Page.[3] The reason: Reporter Sebastian Sele from Vice magazine claimed that when he used Stern magazine's Facebook like check tool[4] to see what it would show about Ignaz Bearth's Facebook Page, it showed that 43% of Ignaz Bearth's Facebook Page's likes were from India.[5] According to Marco Lüssi from 20 Minuten, Lutz Bachmann wrote in a Facebook post on 5 March 2016 that Ignaz Bearth "had agreed to leave Pegida months ago and is in no way a representative of our burgher movement."[6] This means that Bearth is no longer welcome as a speaker at any Pegida rallies anywhere in the world. Ignaz Bearth agreed, for "the good of the movement," to step down from his role as spokesperson for Pegida Switzerland.[3]
Mike Spielmann and Tobias Steiger then took over the role of doing official communication with Dresden for Pegida Switzerland.[7] Spielmann and Steiger have plans to make Pegida Switzerland a full-fledged political party "in consultation with [Pegida leadership in] Dresden."[7]