Hundreds of thousands of people stand close together on the streets at the weekend and send a signal against right-wing extremism. Support comes from federal politics, but not everyone thinks the demos are right.
The protests against right-wing extremism in Germany have continued for weeks – hundreds of thousands also took to the streets at the weekend to take a stand against the right. In Berlin, according to police reports, more than 150,000 people gathered in front of the Reichstag building on Saturday to demonstrate for democracy and tolerance, against right-wing, hatred and the AfD. The organizer, an alliance called “Hand in Hand”, spoke of 300,000 participants.
It wasn’t just in the capital that many people took to the streets on Saturday: According to organizers, 30,000 people came to a rally in Dresden under the motto “We are the firewall.” The police did not provide any specific information about the number of participants. Around 30,000 people gathered in Freiburg, around 25,000 in Augsburg and around 10,000 in Krefeld, according to police information. Further demos were also registered on Sunday, for example in Bremen, Lübeck and Magdeburg.
The trigger for the large-scale demonstrations was research by the media company Correctiv into a meeting of radical right-wingers in Potsdam in November, in which AfD politicians as well as individual members of the CDU and the very conservative Values Union also took part. There, the former head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement in Austria, Martin Sellner, said he spoke about the concept of so-called remigration. 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.
Scholz and Lauterbach: Demos are a clear sign
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) described the numerous anti-right demonstrations over the weekend on the X platform (formerly Twitter) as a “strong sign” for democracy and the Basic Law.
Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach shared a photo of the demo in Berlin on X that shows him with SPD leader and party colleague Saskia Esken and the Vice President of the European Parliament, Katarina Barley. “The large demonstration against the right in front of the Reichstag is a clear sign,” wrote Lauterbach. The broad majority of people do not want to let “semi-Nazis take away their democracy and prosperity,” said the posting in which Lauterbach linked the AfD account as the addressee. “Many people are now realizing that this is not science fiction, but a real danger.”
The Green Party leader Ricarda Lang also published a photo of herself at the demo in Berlin on X. “The AfD lives from the lie that it represents a silent majority. But now the majority is standing up. And it is damn loud: against right-wing extremism and for democracy,” Lang wrote.
Protest researcher: A certain “narrative change” has been achieved
According to protest researcher Tareq Sydiq, the numerous demonstrations of the past few weeks could lead to a long-term protest movement. Although there is no clear objective yet, the demonstrators can already claim success: With their sign against the right, they have created a “certain narrative change” in that the content of the AfD is now not constantly discussed, “but that people are talking about right-wing extremism in the AfD,” said Sydiq, who works at the Center for Conflict Research at Marburg’s Philipps University.
SPD member of the Bundestag Hakan Demir finds it unfair that the demonstrations were sometimes harshly criticized for the migration policy of the traffic light coalition. “Anyone who compares the plan of the right-wing extremists, who want to deport millions of people, with the politics of the traffic light, is simply a populist,” Demir told the dpa.
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