2024-01-21 13:16:29
People across Germany are demonstrating for democracy and against right-wing extremism. The largest gatherings take place on Sunday in Cologne, Munich and Bremen.
Demonstrators at the rally of the “On your Squares” alliance on the cathedral square in Erfurt.
Paul-Philipp Braun / Imago
The hopes of the German federal government have been fulfilled. Olaf Scholz explained in his video format “Kanzler Kompakt” on Friday that “hundreds of thousands” took to the streets “from Cologne to Dresden, from Tübingen to Kiel” “to show their faces”. Well over 200,000 people did this at the weekend. More than a hundred demonstrations were registered across the country. As the Chancellor put it, they were intended to set an example “for our democracy and against right-wing extremism”.
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser from the SPD and the head of the domestic secret service, Thomas Haldenwang, welcome the protests. Faeser told the newspapers of the Funke media group that she was “very positive that so many people have taken to the streets for democracy in the past few days”. Right-wing extremism remains the “biggest threat to our democracy”.
With Antifa in Munich
Haldenwang told the “Westdeutsche Allgemeine” that it was gratifying that so many people were demonstrating “against extremism and anti-Semitism”. In addition to Scholz himself, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Greens and the Social Democratic Development Minister Svenja Schulze had already joined the protests. The CDU chairman Friedrich Merz praises the joint “stop sign against all forms of extremism and racism” and against “all forms of hatred, against incitement and against historical forgetfulness”. Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised the people’s commitment to “our republic and our Basic Law” and called for an “alliance of all democrats”.
The mottos of the demonstrations are different, but have the same thrust: the AfD, which ranks above 20 percent in surveys, should be met with resistance. Sometimes it is said, with reference to the party color of the opposition Alternative for Germany, “The new brown is blue!” (Dortmund), sometimes simply “Fight the AfD” (Oldenburg) or “All together against the AfD” (Stuttgart). In Ulm, around 20,000 demonstrators gathered “together against the hatred and incitement of the AfD”.
In many places the protest is directed “against the right”. In the calls, headlines and speeches, the boundaries between the terms “right-wing” and “right-wing extremism” are blurred. Federal Family Minister Lisa Paus from the Greens promoted the Munich demonstration “Together against the right” on Sunday afternoon in front of the German Bundestag. Left-wing extremist groups also invited people to this event, although according to the organizers there was a “broad alliance of Munich civil society”.
The “Autonomous Antifa Munich” organized a separate Antifa bloc, but the “Open Antifa Meeting” and the “Left Youth Solid”, observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in some countries, also took part. There is criticism of the participation of the climate protection activists from “Fridays for Future” and “Extinction Rebellion”, who have attracted attention in the past with statements that were sharply critical of Israel, if not anti-Semitic. The police expected over 25,000 participants.
Prime Ministers join in
The most popular rallies on Saturday were in Frankfurt am Main and Hanover, with police estimating around 35,000 participants each. Almost 20,000 people gathered in Münster in North Rhine-Westphalia under the slogan “Not a meter to the Nazis”. However, an anti-Semitic incident apparently occurred there. As the Münster “Youth Alliance Against Anti-Semitism” reports, an “anti-Israel bloc” from the “Palestine Anti-Colonial” group prevented the speaker from the youth alliance from giving his lecture with chants and flags. The troublemakers were “avowed anti-Semites”.
Larger meetings also took place in Thuringia, where the AfD is by far the strongest party according to surveys. Around 9,000 participants demonstrated in the capital Erfurt under the heading “Never again is now – you have to do anti-fascism yourself”. CDU Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer was a guest speaker at the demonstration in Görlitz, Saxony, on Sunday. The conservative politician joined the slogan “Together against the right”. His party is currently behind the AfD in polls.
On Friday, a meeting in Hamburg had to be canceled early due to the high number of participants. According to police reports, around 50,000 people were on the streets. As the “Hamburger Abendblatt” writes, the demo was ended at around 4:45 p.m. for security reasons. There was concern that “people could fall into the Alster”.
A banner at the Hamburg demo with the inscription “Zionism = right-wing” prompted Anna Staroselski, the spokeswoman for the Jewish “Values Initiative,” to comment on Platform , like deportation fantasies & Nazi ideology”.
High hurdles for a party ban
Hamburg’s First Mayor Peter Tschentscher from the SPD gave a message to the AfD and its “right-wing networks”: “We are the majority, and we are strong because we are united and because we are determined to protect our country and our democracy after 1945 not to let it be destroyed a second time.” The current council chairwoman of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, warned that Christian faith and ethnic thinking do not fit together.
In Cottbus, SPD Prime Minister Dietmar Woidke spoke on Sunday at “Together against the right – We are the firewall!” to the demonstrators, in Bremen at “Loud against the right” his Bremen party friend and colleague Andreas Bovenschulte. He wanted to “set an example for cohesion and togetherness.” The police assume there were over 30,000 participants in the Hanseatic city. In Cologne, more than 50,000 people joined the demonstration “Cologne is taking a stand – protect democracy, fight the AfD”.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Faeser is causing a stir with a historical comparison: “This brings back memories of the terrible Wannsee Conference,” the SPD politician also told the newspapers of the Funke media group. She was referring to what she said was a “meeting of right-wing extremist actors in a villa on Lehnitzsee near Potsdam.”
Right-wing and right-wing radical people came together there for a private event in November last year, including Martin Sellner from the “Identitarian Movement”, who spoke about “remigration”, but also members of the AfD and CDU. At the Wannsee Conference in early 1942, National Socialist ministries and authorities agreed to work together to murder European Jews.
Faeser specified that history does not repeat itself and added: “Nevertheless, we have to be careful and recognize the threat to our democracy.” The AfD despises “our modern Germany”. The opposition party apparently “doesn’t want” many people with a migrant background in our country. Nevertheless, the hurdles for banning a party are rightly very high. It is “the strongest legal means and not a means of political debate”.
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