The article creates the impression, this is about the AfD, a far-right party that is gaining seats in parliaments nation-wide, but it’s not. The recent ‘scandal’ is actually about non-AfD politicians conspiring with far-right movements.
Yes, it’s a loud and colorful movement against neo-fascism, but this is also clear statement to the ruling parties not to give in to pressure from the right. And it’s definitely against people who are moderate on the surface and brown behind the scenes.
This is about the majority to unite and stands against the Nazis. This is about us. You don’t change a Nazi by shouting at their house. you change a bystander by encouraging them to join the march.
They are currently and consistently strong in the polls for the federal elections, where they come in second at 25% and in many state elections that are going to happen this year they are by far the strongest in the polls.
Also together with the EU parliament elections there will be muncipal elections in many states, where also the AfD could get a “landslide” and be strong enough to dominate budget and planning decisions. They are already cooperationg with the former conservative, now right populist and in somer areas far right CDU, whose members also participated in the deportation plan meeting, on a local level. They made decisions like cutting funding to organizations that help victims of racist violence, cutting funding for theatres and cultural groups that were welcoming to refugees and limiting the ressources for sheltering refugees.
With all the excitement about the current protests we must not forget, that the current and former governments and all parties currently in the parliament were and are responsible for creating the growth of the AfD and fascist ideology in Germany.
We currently see many politicians applauding the protests. But applauding is not getting us anywhere. We need to demand action.
- The first step needs to be formaly initiating the banning case at the constitutional court. But we must not stop there. We see many cases of police, military, intelligence and state prosecutors being infiltrated by fascists. (see below)
- We need urgent action to investigate and remove such structures and people from the executive, as otherwise they can just grab power by force.
- We need the prohibition of associations and structures of the AfD, the fascist parts of the CDU and other actors from the fascist movement, that do not fall under the protection of political parties.
- We need investigations into the CDU as a suspect case of extremism
- We need to roll back on the social and financial politics that continued to impoverish the poor and middle class, while granting more and more tax money to the rich and affluent
- Chancellor Scholz needs to speak a word of power and get the FDP in line, who kept and keep blocking progressive politics, violate agreements between government parties last minute to stop the government from acting and enfore austerity against the normal people while granting record tax breaks and subsidies to the rich.
- The new deportation law that was passed just last thursday, including many violations of fundamental rights like protection of housing, privacy, right to due process and freedom, needs to be revoked immediately. It is a wrong step and fatal signal towards the deportation plans of the fascists.
- All democratic parties must reinforce their commitment angainst fascists. In particular they need to make internal resolutions that prohibit the cooperation and coordination with the AfD or other actors from the fascist spectrum. People who violate these resolutions must be kicked out of the parties immediately.
- All files from the NSU case must be published. The secrecy order that initialed was set to 120 years and then set to 30 years has the clear intent to protect the interior intelligence and people who aided the terrorist group from exposure and prosecution.
For non Germans, a few things of what is going on in Germanies executive:
There has been a series of Nazi terror attacks in Berlin, where prosecutors and investigators were found to have “private” meetings with the suspects. Even an attempted murder at a politician remains unresolved despite the suspects being well known to everyone.
There is a group of police officers from Frankfurt who used their access to police information to threaten lawyers, comedians, activits and politician who spoke out against nazi structures and terror. The police officers are still suspended with pay, despite their being a whatsapp group uncovered in which they shared fascists memes, talked about rapeing the corpses of female crime victims, congratulated each other on Hitlers birthday and other heinous shit. They named themselves NSU 2.0 after a Nazi Terror organization that muredered more than a dozen people in Germany between 2000 and 2011 and was likely protected by the interior intelligence.
In the City of Dessau there is a police office, where in 2006 a black man was murdered by pouring gasoline on him and setting him on fire in his cell. To this day the case remained unpunished and the officers present in the timeframe just received a fine of about 10.000€. the head of that police office in 2016 helped to hide the body of an asian student that was brutally raped and murdered by his stepson, who is also the son of another police officer from that office. As a “punishment” he was sent to teach at a police school, and even that was overruled later.
Special police and military units have repeated stolen ammunition and weapons and gave them to nezi terrorists, who prepared for a violent insurrection, including having death lists of politicians and civil society actors they would murder.
After much media attention and great propaganda around it, a woman was convicted for alledgely being head of a leftist terror group that had beaten up fascists in saxony. The conviction was weak, and is mainly based on the single testimony of a former member of that group. Now a member of the AfD, who regularly had access to sensitive information from the case, probably through the prosecutors office, boasted that thanks to him that testimony came to be. He boasted himself with having had the witness beaten up by nazi hooligans in Poland, where the witness had moved. This court case needs to be reopened and the prosecutor needs to be investigated for probably coordinating with a violent criminal to threaten the witness into a potentially fabricated testimony.
Good grief, does the general public not know about all this heinous stuff, or is it the classic apathy present everywhere?
The last two AfD supporters with whom I spoke didn’t seem to be aware of all this (granted, I wasn’t, excellent post there). They also prefer to believe that not all of AfD is that bad and focus on the people who they like.
If you’re asking about non-AfD supporters … just note that roughly half of Germany votes CDU or AfD. Many actually like the rightwing extremists for one “reason” or another. Because, not despite.
A lot of these topics are not tackled by the media, or there is only one uproar and then it is over. Consistently reporting on issues, holding politicians accountable to promises and reporting again if they fail to deliver arent done for these kind of issues.
But unfortunately it is also met with apathy in large parts of the population.
Ah yes, protests! Famously capable of stopping evil people in their tracks. That’s why ww2 is a fictional tale!
Good job, you burned that strawman to the ground e a s i l y.
Seriously though, no one believes this would solve everything. And it can still be one thing worth doing for other, smaller reasons.
But since you still have a very obvious point, why don’t you skip to the interesting part; how to do better? What’s your approach?
Nothing I could possibly say could alter the course of moronic humanity. You cannot even accept an obvious statement of fact without dejection and snark.
Humanity is too stupid to change its fate, and I am not above saying I told you so; at least I recognize saying it changes nothing just like protests change nothing.
Ah yes, the right way to fight fascism is to complain, that the world is shit and do nothing about it. That’s the spirit.
There are a lot of people, that fight against fascism daily, who are active in their communities and strive for a better world. The hopes of these people got crushed by the constant negative press and the climb of the right wing in election surveys. Now they see, that they have indeed a backing in the general population. Furthermore it was a huge AfD talking point, that they speak for the silent majority, which is why they attack the protests now by calling them fake or that the protestors were paid by the government.
It doesn’t stop evil people, but before these protests I thought this country was slowly drifting into the far right, like so many other European countries. Now I know that a million people are willing to go on he streets. Hell, even in my right wing city in Saxony ten thousand people went to the protests, this time not because of an anti fascist concert like last time.
Yes, I do think this can fight against fascists. We can start talking about what to do against them and why people feel the need to vote for the AfD and their likes, collectively.
Or we can just stay miserable like you
Ahh yes, that concert sure slowed them down.
They already know they’re a minority. Why are you assuming you are not a majority against them?
Everyone has such fucking pathetic responses to people who LITERALLY WANT TO KILL YOU if you’re not “normal”. You should already know those troglodytes are a minority.
It’s not the troglodytes, it’s not Sellner and Höcke and all the other nazis that are the problem. It’s these idiots who literally, LITERALLY, I’ve spoken to colleagues like that here in Chemnitz TODAY, think that these guys are overly demonized, that not everything the AfD is all right but maybe you can take some campaign points of them because they aren’t so unreasonable, that LITERALLY segway the conversation about the protests into how you can’t even call it Zigeuner Schnitzel anymore and that those protesters would have been fuming if they saw the menu of restaurant they were on that weekend. I guarantee you, they don’t know what these people were protesting against, but are so angry at the government that they ignore anything that would suggest that they are wrong and give in to their bigotry
I just want to know that there are more people that would go on the streets against the fascists than those blind sheep.
Thank you. I had this in mind as a reason, or maybe more as a hope.
before these protests I thought this country was slowly drifting into the far right, like so many other European countries. Now I know that a million people are willing to go on he streets. Hell, even in my right wing city in Saxony ten thousand people went to the protests
This is uplifting news! Thanks for sharing.
The headline is not wrong but somewhat misleading. Yesterday there where more than 300,000 people protesting against the Nazi party (AfD) and yesterday wasn’t even the first or the last day of protests.
People are realizing that we are not talking about an ultra-conservative party but about an anti-democratic and racist party that wants to deport millions of people - many of them Germans - from Germany. That is exactly the plan Hitler had and that led to the Holocaust.
Edit:
Those people lost their minds.
The AfD parliamentary group leader for Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, is also in the room. It is he who will, later on in the day’s proceedings, appeal for donations. He has considerable influence within the AfD; the party is currently polling in first place in Saxony-Anhalt. His sales pitch, very much in keeping with the “masterplan” of Sellner, details his ideas to change the image of German streets. Foreign restaurants would be put under pressure. Living in Saxony-Anhalt should be made “as unattractive as possible for this clientele.” And that could be accomplished very, very easily, he claims. His comments could have consequences for the region’s upcoming elections.
https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-against-germany/
No more indian / chinese / greek / italian / thai … restaurants. Only schnitzel and pork roast.
No more indian / chinese / greek / italian / thai … restaurants. Only schnitzel and pork roast.
Thats insane
Good time to become vegan. They can’t be against that!
Of course they can. The following is a AfD request (source: German parliament, auto-translated by DeepL)
AfD demands warning against vegan diet
The AfD parliamentary group is calling for warnings about vegan diets. The Federal Center for Health Education (BZgA) should “explicitly and emphatically warn of the dangers of a vegan diet without the additional intake of supplements, especially for risk groups”, according to a motion (20/9798). The warnings would have to be visible digitally on the website of the Federal Agency. Furthermore, the warnings should be included in corresponding printed materials, including a list of possible symptoms of malnutrition.
(…)
https://www.bundestag.de/presse/hib/kurzmeldungen-984214
They are simply against everything. That’s the way they operate. Their party platform states that they want to remove all subsidies for farmers. At the same time they are protesting that a very small part of those subsidies is being removed. They try sow chaos, hatred and division. An AfD politician even said: “The worse Germany is doing, the better it is for the AfD”
Meanwhile, the AfD is trying to cast doubt on the number of people protesting with targeted disinformation via social media. Pathetic.