Düsseldorf and Osnabrück, Sigmaringen and Elmshorn: demonstrations against the right and the AfD continue throughout Germany. Prominent politicians also speak out – and issue urgent warnings.
Berlin – Several hundred thousand people demonstrated again across Germany at the weekend against the right-wing and the AfD. This means that the nationwide campaigns are still very popular around two weeks after they began. According to the police, around 100,000 people were on their feet in Düsseldorf alone on Saturday. According to police, around 60,000 people gathered on Sunday, and around 100,000 people spoke to the Fridays for Future movement, including climate activist Luisa Neubauer. The participants chanted “Hamburg hates the AfD” or “We are more”.
Complete nationwide participant numbers were not initially available. In many places the events were supported by politicians. Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) was there privately in Sigmaringen on Saturday, and Schleswig-Holstein's Prime Minister Daniel Günther (CDU) and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) demonstrated in Aachen. In Saxony-Anhalt, the local Prime Minister Reiner Haseloff (CDU) took to the streets in Wittenberg. In Osnabrück, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) warned against the AfD at a rally.
Comparison with the Weimar Republic
The police spoke of around 25,000 demo participants in Osnabrück, the organizers put the number at around 30,000. Pistorius said the AfD wanted system change. “That means nothing other than that they want to go back to the dark times of racial madness, discrimination, inequality and injustice.” He drew a comparison with the Weimar Republic, which perished not because of its enemies, but because of the weakness of its friends be. “Today we know better, history must not repeat itself.”
In Düsseldorf, the demonstration was under the motto “Against the AfD – We are not silent. We don't look away. We are taking action!” The protesters included people of all ages, including many families with children. On the banners there were inscriptions like “I generally don’t like Nazis” and “Not again!” A 69-year-old, who, in his own words, took part in a demonstration for the first time in decades, said: “If we don’t show our colors now, we’ll go in a direction we can’t get out of.”
Düsseldorf's mayor Stephan Keller (CDU) said at the final rally that around 1930 the dangers to the first German democracy were underestimated. “This must not happen to us again,” he warned. “We shout to the extremists: You will never be in the majority again!”
Demos from Lübeck to Singen
In Kiel, the police counted around 11,500 participants in a demonstration against right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism. According to the police, there were around 8,000 demonstrators in Lübeck, around 6,000 in Kaiserslautern and up to 20,000 in Mannheim. According to officials, there were around 20,000 people in Aachen, more than 12,000 in Marburg and up to 6,000 in Bremerhaven.
But people were also on the streets in smaller towns, a selection: In Singen the police counted around 4,000 demonstrators, in Sigmaringen there were around 2,000 people. In Neumarkt in der Oberpfalz, officials spoke of around 1,500 people at a demonstration against the right, and in Elmshorn of around 6,000 people. In eastern Germany, Frankfurt/Oder (around 4,500 people), Zwickau (around 4,000) and Bautzen and Weimar (around 1,500 each) stood out.
Demos for a few days now
According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, more than 900,000 people took part in anti-right-wing demonstrations the previous weekend. It relied on police information.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) welcomed the numerous demonstrations against right-wing extremism. “Our country is on its feet right now. “Millions of citizens are taking to the streets,” he said in his weekly “Chancellor Compact” video. It is the solidarity of the democrats that makes democracy strong. “Our democracy is not God-given. It is man-made. She is strong when we support her. And she needs us when she is attacked.”
Extremism expert sees insecure AfD
The sociologist Matthias Quent told the portal tagesschau.de that the AfD was deeply unsettled by the ongoing protests. “The extreme right is literally in a panic,” said the right-wing extremism expert. The images from the mass demonstrations questioned the aura that the AfD was “the party of the people”. Attempts are being made to question these demonstrations as fakes and as stagings. “But these narratives don’t really penetrate.”
The protests were triggered by revelations by the Correctiv research center on January 10th about a meeting of radical right-wingers in which some AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union took part in Potsdam. The former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, said he spoke about “remigration” at the meeting on November 25th. When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that large numbers of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress. According to Correctiv, Sellner named three target groups: asylum seekers, foreigners with the right to remain and “unassimilated citizens”.
Elections in September in three eastern German states
New state parliaments will be elected in September in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia. According to surveys, the AfD could become the strongest force in all three federal states, by a significant margin. In two nationwide surveys by Insa and Forsa (for “Bild am Sonntag” and for RTL/ntv), the AfD recently lost popularity, but remained the second strongest force after the Union with 21 and 20 percent respectively. The AfD is assessed by the respective Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia as definitely right-wing extremist, and nationwide it is classified as a suspected case. dpa
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