Pegida organizer Lutz Bachmann speaks during a protest | Jens Schlueter/Getty Images Germany’s anti-Islam Pegida movement launches political party The Popular Party for Freedom and Direct Democracy will work with the far-right AfD in the 2017 elections.

The head of Pegida, an extreme-right anti-Islam and anti-immigration movement in Germany, has founded a political party and intends to join forces with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), local media report.

The new party will be called the Popular Party for Freedom and Direct Democracy (FDDV).

"We will support the AfD in the next elections and we will have direct candidates in only a few constituencies," Lutz Bachmann said at a weekly Pegida meeting in Dresden. Bachmann had announced his intention to create a "parliamentary arm" of the movement last year.

Bachmann, who was convicted and fined in May for inciting racial hatred after he called refugees “cattle” and “scum,” said he would not contest the FDDV's leadership.

The party will be linked to regional AfD associations Germany-wide, Bachmann said, except for that led by AfD head Frauke Petry in Sachsen. "Other regional associations have understood that it can only work if we are together."

The move comes as the AfD finds itself increasingly divided, with the party recently split over anti-Semitic remarks made by now-expelled regional lawmaker Wolfgang Gedeon.