- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
With all the current negative articles about the political and economic situation in Germany, I think it’s also important to remember to share the positive ones. Although that’s not to say there aren’t worrisome things going on here.
There’s another article from this morning here, it might give you a more complete picture of what’s happening: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/21/germany-afd-party-deportation-masterplan-protests
There are more protests happening across the country today, the one in Berlin is at 4 pm at Brandenburger Tor. See you there.
There are protests all over Germany, Friday, Saturday and today. Everywhere.
See you there! We’ll need the spirit. (And it will be fun with bands playing)
Okay, so I finally googled it. Theyre angry because the AFD is anti-Islamic terrorism, anti-EU and pro-German?
Man, I must be missing some translation here or maybe some context, because that all sounds like reasonable things.
The part either you or the sources you read are leaving out is that they are also anti-democratic and not just anti-Islamic terrorism but also anti-Islam. Or more precisely just generally racist.
You either read sources that fell for their bullshit downplaying self-description or you are actively trying to play down their harmful views yourself.Recently a group of journalists revealed that the AfD had a secret meeting with far-right extremist groups and neo-nazis where they made mass deportation plans for people with a migration background (even those born here with German nationality) which includes millions of people. That’s what sparked the protests.
And the AfD is far more than anti islamic terrorism, they’re hardcore islamophobic, antisemitic, queerphobic and ultranationalist. There’s a reason one of their most prominent figures, Björn Höcke, is legally allowed to be called a fascist and a nazi.
With all the excitement about the current protests we must not forget, that the current and former governments and all parties currently in the parliament were and are responsible for creating the growth of the AfD and fascist ideology in Germany.
We currently see many politicians applauding the protests. But applauding is not getting us anywhere. We need to demand action.
- The first step needs to be formaly initiating the banning case at the constitutional court. But we must not stop there. We see many cases of police, military, intelligence and state prosecutors being infiltrated by fascists. (see below)
- We need urgent action to investigate and remove such structures and people from the executive, as otherwise they can just grab power by force.
- We need the prohibition of associations and structures of the AfD, the fascist parts of the CDU and other actors from the fascist movement, that do not fall under the protection of political parties.
- We need investigations into the CDU as a suspect case of extremism
- We need to roll back on the social and financial politics that continued to impoverish the poor and middle class, while granting more and more tax money to the rich and affluent
- Chancellor Scholz needs to speak a word of power and get the FDP in line, who kept and keep blocking progressive politics, violate agreements between government parties last minute to stop the government from acting and enfore austerity against the normal people while granting record tax breaks and subsidies to the rich.
- The new deportation law that was passed just last thursday, including many violations of fundamental rights like protection of housing, privacy, right to due process and freedom, needs to be revoked immediately. It is a wrong step and fatal signal towards the deportation plans of the fascists.
- All democratic parties must reinforce their commitment angainst fascists. In particular they need to make internal resolutions that prohibit the cooperation and coordination with the AfD or other actors from the fascist spectrum. People who violate these resolutions must be kicked out of the parties immediately.
- All files from the NSU case must be published. The secrecy order that initialed was set to 120 years and then set to 30 years has the clear intent to protect the interior intelligence and people who aided the terrorist group from exposure and prosecution.
For non Germans, a few things of what is going on in Germanies executive:
There has been a series of Nazi terror attacks in Berlin, where prosecutors and investigators were found to have “private” meetings with the suspects. Even an attempted murder at a politician remains unresolved despite the suspects being well known to everyone.
There is a group of police officers from Frankfurt who used their access to police information to threaten lawyers, comedians, activits and politician who spoke out against nazi structures and terror. The police officers are still suspended with pay, despite their being a whatsapp group uncovered in which they shared fascists memes, talked about rapeing the corpses of female crime victims, congratulated each other on Hitlers birthday and other heinous shit. They named themselves NSU 2.0 after a Nazi Terror organization that muredered more than a dozen people in Germany between 2000 and 2011 and was likely protected by the interior intelligence.
In the City of Dessau there is a police office, where in 2006 a black man was murdered by pouring gasoline on him and setting him on fire in his cell. To this day the case remained unpunished and the officers present in the timeframe just received a fine of about 10.000€. the head of that police office in 2016 helped to hide the body of an asian student that was brutally raped and murdered by his stepson, who is also the son of another police officer from that office. As a “punishment” he was sent to teach at a police school, and even that was overruled later.
Special police and military units have repeated stolen ammunition and weapons and gave them to nezi terrorists, who prepared for a violent insurrection, including having death lists of politicians and civil society actors they would murder.
After much media attention and great propaganda around it, a woman was convicted for alledgely being head of a leftist terror group that had beaten up fascists in saxony. The conviction was weak, and is mainly based on the single testimony of a former member of that group. Now a member of the AfD, who regularly had access to sensitive information from the case, probably through the prosecutors office, boasted that thanks to him that testimony came to be. He boasted himself with having had the witness beaten up by nazi hooligans in Poland, where the witness had moved. This court case needs to be reopened and the prosecutor needs to be investigated for probably coordinating with a violent criminal to threaten the witness into a potentially fabricated testimony.Good grief, does the general public not know about all this heinous stuff, or is it the classic apathy present everywhere?
The last two AfD supporters with whom I spoke didn’t seem to be aware of all this (granted, I wasn’t, excellent post there). They also prefer to believe that not all of AfD is that bad and focus on the people who they like.
If you’re asking about non-AfD supporters … just note that roughly half of Germany votes CDU or AfD. Many actually like the rightwing extremists for one “reason” or another. Because, not despite.
It’s almost literally a reenactment by the AFD of what happened around the 1930s. It’s so fucked up.
But this is 2024 , so people should be more aware, and are protesting massively. Unfortunately, the resurgence of (forms of) fascism is a worldwide trend, and not an isolated phenomena.
Add: many people seem to be calling Fascistist “Nazis” nowadays. That’s so confusing to me, as if they don’t know that Nazism is a particular form of Fascism. While Fascism in all its varieties and guises should be the true denominator for trouble, and is the enemy of democracy.
Add: many people seem to be calling Fascistist “Nazis” nowadays. That’s so confusing to me, as if they don’t know that Nazism is a particular form of Fascism. While Fascism in all its varieties and guises should be the true denominator for trouble, and is the enemy of democracy.
The AfD has been taken over by literal Neo-Nazis that see themselves in the tradition of the NSDAP though, calling them that is correct.
Saying Nazi instead of fascist is a distinction without a difference. All Nazis are fascist, but not all fascists are Nazis. Most people don’t even know fascism originated in Italy or got the name from the fasces Roman lictors carried while escorting senators and dictators. I think it’s ok if people are only able to recognize fascism as Nazism, because it all gets to the same idea, they are bad organizations that want to rule you and take away rights.
No idea where they got the 100,000 figure. There were several cities that had significantly more than that on their own. Munich had ~200,000 and Berlin had ~350,000 just to name two. Several cities were well into the tens of thousands too. The real number is more likely closer to a million people protesting throughout Germany this weekend. Additionally there were also protests during the week with tens of thousands of people joining.