Protests against the right grow – 35,000 people in Frankfurt
Published: Saturday, Jan 20th 2024, 15:00
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The nationwide protests against the right and for democracy are spreading: According to the police, around 35,000 people took to the streets in Frankfurt on Saturday - the action was held under the slogan "Defend democracy". According to police and organizations, several thousand people gathered in Erfurt (Thuringia). In Freiburg (Baden-Württemberg) and Koblenz (Rhineland-Palatinate), there were around 5,000 participants each, according to the police. Tens of thousands of people were expected to take part in demonstrations throughout Germany until Sunday evening.
A demonstration against the right and the AfD in Hamburg already had to be called off on Friday evening due to the large crowds. One of the organizers referred to security concerns. The police spoke of 50,000 participants, the organizers spoke of 80,000.
Representatives of trade unions, associations, the Greens and the SPD in particular had called on people to take part. CDU leader Friedrich Merz described the nationwide demonstrations as encouraging. "The "silent" majority is raising its voice and showing that it wants to live in a country that is open to the world and free," he told the German Press Agency in Berlin on Saturday morning. "We stand by those who stand up for our democracy, our constitutional state and our open society," said Merz. "Together, let's not allow any discriminatory slogans or right-wing extremist slogans. Together, we will display a stop sign against all forms of extremism and racism: against all forms of hatred, against hate speech and against forgetting history."
North Rhine-Westphalia's Minister President Hendrik Wüst (CDU) thanked the tens of thousands of people who demonstrated against right-wing extremism across the country. This shows that there is a "broad alliance" in the middle of society, he said in Düsseldorf on Saturday. Wüst once again called for such an "alliance of the center" in politics, which must be formed across party lines and across all levels of government. "We need the democrats to stand shoulder to shoulder." He described the AfD as an "incendiary Nazi party".
The President of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, welcomed the rallies. "I am really pleased that the center of society is standing up", Schuster told the "Augsburger Allgemeine" (Saturday). The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, told the "Westdeutsche Zeitung" (Saturday): "It would be desirable if the silent majority of our population took a clear stand against extremism and anti-Semitism. And fortunately, many people are currently demonstrating against this."
The protests, which have been going on for several days, were triggered by a report last week by the media outlet Correctiv about a previously unknown meeting of right-wing extremists in a Potsdam villa on November 25. Several AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Werteunion (Union of Values) took part in the meeting.
The former head of the far-right Identitarian movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, spoke about "remigration" in Potsdam. When right-wing extremists use the term, they usually mean that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country - even under duress.
Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) feels that the meeting in Potsdam is reminiscent of the Wannsee Conference of the National Socialists. "It involuntarily brings back memories of the terrible Wannsee Conference," she told the Funke Mediengruppe (Saturday). She did not want to equate the two. "But what is hidden behind harmless-sounding terms such as "remigration" is the idea of expelling and deporting people en masse because of their ethnic origin or their political views."
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 - exactly 82 years ago - senior Nazi officials discussed the systematic murder of up to eleven million European Jews. The aim of the meeting in a villa on Berlin's Wannsee was to speed up the implementation of the genocide. It is considered one of the key dates of the Holocaust.
©Keystone/SDA
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