1y ago

About 200,000 people protest across Germany against far-right AfD party

www.theguardian.com

About 200,000 people have taken to the streets of Germany in further protests against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Protests on Saturday also took place in Dresden, Mainz and Hanover in a sign of growing alarm at strong public support for AfD.

Roughly 150,000 people flocked to the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, where protesters gathered under the slogan “We are the Firewall” to protest against right-wing extremism and to show support for democracy.

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Was one of them. Not in Berlin of course. Fuck that. But in my city they expected 700 people. We have been more than 5000.
- Good shit! I hope those bastards felt exactly as unpopular as they should
- Thanks for standing up to Nazis. It gives those of us who had family experience the horrors wrought by fascists in WW2 hope that Germans haven't been won over again by the same poisonous ideas.
  
  Meanwhile in america...
  
  Almost all Germans have bad family experiences from that time as well.
  Either you lost someone due to Nazi terror, or you lost someone who was being a Nazi.
  I expect neither is an experience that anyone would cherish to relive.
- Keep it up!
- Yeah also went to a protest in my town. 500 expected, the newspaper said around 3500 attendees. That's like 7-8% of the population on a Friday afternoon where lots of people were still working. So many good signs :D
- Your phrasing makes it look like you say “I was also demonstrating but of course not in Berlin, fuck Berlin”, I guess you meant something else?
It is really inspiring that so many Germans are coming out to make their voices heard like this. It's easy to tell a pollster you don't like Nazis; but coming out on the streets week-after-week in the middle of winter like they've been doing recently shows commitment.
Gut. Freiheit, Gleichheit, Geschwisterlichkeit. Der Rechsextremus muss scheitern.
- Thats the French one.
  German is Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit, found in the national hymn, on old German mark coins and now German minted euro coins.
  Translates to Unity, (rule of) Law and freedom.
  
  Recht also simply means justice, literally "what is right". And Einigkeit tends more towards concord or consensus than pure unity which can have overtones of uniformity, that's a different word in German (Einheitlichkeit). Freiheit means what it means.
  
  Yeah I’m not as familiar with German anarchic slogans as I am with French and Spanish (married a mutualist and am a syndicalist), but good to know this
- Rech-sex-tremus.
  Deutsch is hard.
  
  Yeah it’s a real bitch going from English to a language where the spelling makes more sense but the words are long enough to trip you up
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Protests on Saturday also took place in Dresden, Mainz and Hanover in a sign of growing alarm at strong public support for AfD.
The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, wrote on X: “Whether in Eisenach, Homburg or Berlin: in small and large cities across the country, many citizens are coming together to demonstrate against forgetting, against hatred and hate speech.”
Jakob Springfeld, who speaks for the NGO Solidarity Network Saxony, said he was shocked that it had taken such a long time for mass demonstrations against the far right, given the AfD had been successful in many smaller communities already.
Earlier this week, a Forsa poll showed that backing for AfD had dropped below 20% for the first time since July, with voters citing countrywide demonstrations against the far right as the most important issue.
The protests, which are now in their fourth week, followed a report last month that two senior AfD members had attended a meeting to discuss plans for the mass deportation of citizens of foreign origin.
AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla told broadcaster Deutschlanfunk that while it was “legitimate to take to the streets”, protesters should not allow themselves to be used to distract parties from the country’s actual problems.
The original article contains 380 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 47%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
My country could take a lesson (even on protesting, in general).
This is very nice. In the meantime the German government cut funding for the UN humanitarian aid organization, with the predictable outcome that many thousands of civilizations are going to starve or thirst to death or die from diseases. Because Israel said so after the ICJ ruling.
This in contravention of the ICJ ruling that ordered to stop Genocide. Which is binding for all countries to take steps to prevent genocide. German press isn't really reporting on what that means.
Which means the current "social democratic / green / liberal" coalition is potentially aiding in a genocide.
Fuck the AfD fascists but you know... fuuuuuuuuuuuck
- with the predictable outcome that many thousands of civilizations are going to starve or thirst to death or die from diseases.
  UNWRA currently isn't able to get aid in because the IDF blocks everything so right now is actually the about best time to put pressure on them to clean ship. Not to mention that there's other agencies and organisations in the area doing generic humanitarian work, schools are about the last of Gazan's worries right now.
  This in contravention of the ICJ ruling that ordered to stop Genocide.
  The ICJ said no such thing. The preliminary order requires Israel to make sure that aid is getting to Gazans.
  
  The ICJ said no such thing. The preliminary order requires Israel to make sure that aid is getting to Gazans.
  What’s Next After The ICJ Ruling? | Diana Buttu | TMR

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