(Munich) A flood of light in Berlin, saturated streets in Munich: hundreds of thousands of Germans demonstrated all weekend against the AfD in a country shocked by the radical tendencies of this far-right party.
Around a hundred demonstrations have taken place since Friday across the country, bringing together more than 1.4 million people, according to the organization Friday for Future and the citizens’ alliance Campact, which are among the organizers of the movement.
“I said to myself: ‘My God, now is really the time to show our faces, to take to the streets, to show our presence against the extreme right,’” a Berlin resident told AFP, Gerald Angerer, in the compact crowd gathered in front of the Reichstag building.
In Berlin after dark, the light points of thousands of mobile phones were pointed skyward by demonstrators, estimated at 100,000 according to the police cited by RBB radio, 350,000 according to the organizers.
PHOTO EBRAHIM NOROOZI, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Demonstration in front of the Reichstag in Berlin.
The influx was such in Munich (south) that the planned march in the streets of the Bavarian capital had to be interrupted. Police estimated the gathering at 100,000 people.
No country-wide figures have been provided by the authorities for this rare-scale mobilization, which began a week ago.
It testifies to the shock caused by the revelation on January 10 by the German investigative media Correctiv of a meeting of extremists in Potsdam, near Berlin, where, in November, a plan for mass expulsion of foreigners or foreigners. foreign origin was discussed.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser compared this meeting in the press to “the horrible Wannsee Conference”, where the Nazis planned the extermination of European Jews in 1942.
Against a backdrop of economic slowdown and inflation, the anti-migrant and anti-system Alternative for Germany (AfD) party continues to progress in the polls, a few months before three important regional elections in the east of the country.
In the processions, some brandished signs “Nazis out” or “Never again, it’s now”.
“Correctiv’s research, which drew parallels with the Wannsee conference, really frightened a lot of people,” said Benedikt Bogner, an NGO employee, in the crowd in Berlin.
Against a “brown government”
“Those who perhaps do not yet know whether they are going to vote for the AfD or not, after these demonstrations, they can no longer do so,” said Katrin Delrieux, 53, who came to the Munich rally for her three children. so that “they don’t grow up with a brown government.”
In Dresden, capital of the eastern regional state of Saxony, an AfD stronghold, police spoke of a “huge number of participants”.
PHOTO JANA RODENBUSCH, REUTERS
Demonstration in Cologne.
In Cologne, Bremen, Bonn, tens of thousands of demonstrators were counted, but small towns also mobilized.
Among the participants in the “meeting of shame”, as some media described it, were a figure of the radical identity movement, the Austrian Martin Sellner, and members of the AfD. Martin Sellner presented a project to send back to North Africa up to two million people – asylum seekers, foreigners and German citizens who would not be assimilated -, says Correctiv.
Football and church mobilized
The anti-immigration movement confirmed the presence of its members at the meeting, but denied adhering to the “remigration” project led by Martin Sellner.
Many political leaders, including Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who himself demonstrated last weekend, have stressed that a plan to expel foreigners would be an attack on democracy.
“The Republic is rising,” commented the weekly Der Spiegel. Other demonstrations are announced in the coming days, including a human chain on February 3 around the Bundestag in Berlin.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier judged on Sunday that the demonstrators “are defending our republic and our constitution against their enemies” in a video message.
The AfD has benefited in recent months from the feeling of dissatisfaction resulting from a new influx of migrants into Germany and the ongoing quarrels between the three parties in the government coalition.
The far-right party, which entered Parliament in 2017, is firmly established in second position in voting intentions (around 22%) behind the conservatives, while the government coalition of Olaf Scholz with the ecologists and the liberals is facing record unpopularity.
In its strongholds in the former GDR, the AfD even tops opinion polls with more than 30%.
Six months before the European elections, several EU countries are facing a surge from the far right which could upset the major balances of the European Parliament.