Thousands of people protested against right-wing extremism a week before the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia. According to the organisers, 11,000 people took to the streets in Leipzig and Dresden; the police initially did not provide any numbers of participants. In front of the Erfurt state parliament, the organisers counted 7,000 people, the police spoke of 4,500 participants.
In Dresden, the coalitions We Are the Dresden Firewall and Herz nicht hetz jointly called for a rally on the Theaterplatz. Participants then marched through the city with banners, posters and flags. The organisers said the aim was to send a strong signal to civil society on the weekend before the state elections and to call on people to vote for democratic parties.
In Leipzig, three rallies took place for a demonstration through the city centre. The motto was “Hand in hand for democracy and human rights”.
Director of concentration camp memorial warns against AfD
In Erfurt, organisers held a week of actions under the motto “Thuringia on the brink” against a shift to the right in Germany and a possible electoral breakthrough. AFD in the state. Those calling for it included the Alliance on Your Places, the German Federation of Trade Unions and a cultural association.
Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorial Foundation, spoke at the rally in the Thuringian state capital. He threw the AfD in Erfurt In terms of the many statements of top party representatives in the past, this is not only aimed at putting Germany’s National Socialist history in perspective. Meanwhile, AfD representatives also regularly make positive references to National Socialism. “These people are Nazis,” said Wagner. Despite all its efforts to present itself as a bourgeois-conservative force, the AfD is an ethnic and nationalist party.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies the AfD’s Saxon and Thuringian regional association as “definitely right-wing extremist”. Led by chairman Björn Höcke, the party has been leading the state election in Thuringia by a significant margin for several weeks. For Saxony, polls predict a close result between the CDU and the AfD.
If the AfD has more than a third of the votes in state parliaments, it can block important decisions with a so-called obstructionist minority. For example, constitutional changes would no longer be able to be passed without their consent.
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Thousands of people protested against right-wing extremism a week before the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia. According to the organisers, 11,000 people took to the streets in Leipzig and Dresden; the police initially did not provide any numbers of participants. In front of the Erfurt state parliament, the organisers counted 7,000 people, the police spoke of 4,500 participants.
In Dresden, the coalitions We Are the Dresden Firewall and Herz nicht hetz jointly called for a rally on the Theaterplatz. Participants then marched through the city with banners, posters and flags. The organisers said the aim was to send a strong signal to civil society on the weekend before the state elections and to call on people to vote for democratic parties.