Saturday's protests were part of a wider movement that has been going on for weeks.
About 200,000 people gathered in different parts of Germany on Saturday to demonstrate against the extreme right and the Alternative for Germany party (AfD). The news agency Reuters and the German media Deutsche Welle (DW) report on the matter, for example.
According to the AFP news agency, there were a total of around 200 protests across the country.
According to the police estimate, there were about 150,000 demonstrators in Berlin. The demonstrators gathered in front of the parliament building to protest against the extreme right and show their support for democracy. According to the organizers' estimate, there would have been up to 300,000 participants in the Berlin demonstration.
DW's according to the demonstration in Berlin, several politicians participated. Among them was the Chancellor Olaf Scholz as well as several of his party mates from the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Scholz also showed his support for the protesters on the messaging service X.
“In both small and large cities across the country, citizens are coming together this weekend to protest against forgetting, hate and hate speech,” Scholz wrote.
He described the demonstrations as “a strong message for democracy and the constitution”.
Saturday the protests were part of a wider movement that has been going on for weeks. The protests in Germany began when the investigative publication Correctiv revealed in early January that members of the AfD had attended a secret meeting of far-right influencers in Potsdam.
According to the publication, they came up with ideas on how to expel immigrants and also German citizens from different backgrounds from the country.
The Potsdam meeting saw symbolism for the Wannsee Conference in 1942, where Nazi-era officials planned the mass extermination of the Jews.
Three state elections will be held in the fall in the region of the former East Germany, where the party's support is over 30 percent. The current parties in power fear that the AfD will win the state elections in the fall, although according to recent opinion polls, the party's support has turned to a slight decline.
Germany's other parliamentary parties do not cooperate with the AfD because they consider it anti-democratic.
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