English Defence League and like-minded groups from across Europe are easily outnumbered by protesters at summit It was heralded as the start of something big: the opening salvo in the formation of a pan-European coalition of anti-Islamic groups that opponents feared might replicate a network of street armies similar to those that undermined European democracies in the 1930s. Instead, attempts to orchestrate a new European anti-Islamic group by Tommy Robinson, the head of the English Defence League, appeared to falter in the weak Danish sun. Despite a rallying call to create the largest mobilisation of the far right on Danish soil since the second world war, barely 200 supporters converged at the league’s European Counter-Jihad Meeting, its first such summit. Those who gathered before the city’s Bibliotek on a patch of parkland were easily outnumbered by the media and onlookers. By contrast, up to 4,000 anti-fascist demonstrators gathered several minutes’ walk east along Aarhus’s Vester Alle arterial road, a figure far higher than expected.

Keep reading:
Europe