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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  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    11 months ago

    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!

  • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • Vub@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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?

    • fiat_lux@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Senshi@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • fiat_lux@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          In places that were invaded, resistance were thrown from the top of buildings after they were interrogated, their bodies were left there to be collected by whoever dared. At night all you could hear were their screams while they were being tortured in cellars by the Gestapo. Dissidents were hanged from lampposts in the main street and left as warnings. The concentration camps were often in the middle of the town, not placed at a distance to avoid offending the locals.

          And the next generation in those places grew up right next to those concentration camps and mass graves. They were raised by physically and psychologically scarred people, in places that were not funded by the Marshall Plan reconstruction funds that even West Germany received. Decades later there was still rubble and half destroyed buildings.

          I appreciate there is much trauma involved in losing any family, friends or community members to war, or to experiencing the bombs being dropped around you. But, I think the level of cruelty and fear experienced by invaded regions was next level. And I don’t think Germans generally understand the details of what life was like for the places that were occupied - but that is only my suspicion. I can’t understand how else the AfD could discuss deportations or receive such a huge proportion of the vote.

          Neither Axis aligned country tesidents nor the invaded would cherish reliving it, but they have had and continue to have very very different experiences as a consequence of the war.

  • theinspectorst@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    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.

    • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        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

      • barsoap@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        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.

  • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    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

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      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.

        • barsoap@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          Thanks, but I have read the order I don’t need a random secondary source to know what’s in there or not. Paragraph 80.

          I mean even on the face of it: It’s Israel which is getting sued, not the rest of the world. Of course the ICJ is thus going to order Israel to do stuff, not the rest of the world, which isn’t in the dock.

          • LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            The court determined that there is risk of genocide, so the world community MUST act. Instead they cut of funding for humanitarian aid, which is in direct contravention of international law.

            https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/about-responsibility-to-protect.shtml

            1. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner …
            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              11 months ago

              That’s not a court order. It’s not even a treaty. It’s a summit paper summing up how the participants understand applicable international law. The summit was 2005. Israel already did shady shit back then but SA hadn’t yet brought a case before the ICJ, mostly because Israeli politicans hadn’t yet run their mouth regarding the seed of Amalek and stuff which enabled dragging Israel before court in the first place as the charge of genocide requires intent to destroy, not mere war crimes, those kinds of quotes are necessary to prove intent.

              Learn to actually read and contextualise the stuff you’re quoting. I don’t disagree with the sentiment but boy are your posts full of holes. Hasbara would have you for breakfast.