Hundreds of thousands of people took the streets across Germany this weekend as the nation enters a second week of protests against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Around 100,000 gathered outside the Bundestag in Berlin alone, said the police, with up to 200,000 counted by the organizers in Bavaria’s Munich. Significant turnout was also reported in the cities that represent traditional the AfD voting strongholds in eastern Germany, like Leipzig and Dresden.
Finally an article mentioning that CDU members were also present and supporting the plans of the AfD. They are the enablers and cause for the “Rechtsruck” with their policies and rhetoric, trying to fish for far right votes for years.
They are enablers but at the same time it’s impossible for them to position themselves into opposition to the ruling parties because they’ve been “the establishment” for far too long. So the anti-establishment right flocks to the AfD as the only viable option for them and gets radicalized.
Wish we could have something like this in the US, but apparently we’re just going to let the Nazis take over instead.
There have been great lengths taken over the course of decades to make protestation on this scale prohibitively difficult for Americans. The exact numbers are apparently up for debate but between 40 and 80% of Americans can’t afford to miss a single paycheck. Splinter protests across the country do fuck all for federal issues and since most people can’t afford to make the trip to DC we’re stuck with a non-starter until things get so bad that it doesn’t matter if people are getting paid or not.
Raising awareness of a problem is the first step towards solving it. The AfD and its followers are nothing but alt-right fools.
Are protests the only way people communicate? That has some serious, “don’t take my statue, how would I know history!?” false logic energy there.
Protests are an expression just like a riot. Riots are outright damaging while protests make people feel better. What they specifically do not do is solve any problem that cannot be solved in much better ways.
Making people feel better without actually doing anything to slow down bad people… is not a positive gain from a situation. If anything, people who feel better about a situation are less inclined to DO something about it.
An important point for them is the belief that they are the “silent majority”. Showing that they are not might help to reduce some of their support
It would at least help the completely ignorant from simply going with the flow, though many would argue someone so detached from the concept of freedoms hardly deserves them. Like Thomas Jefferson, “When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.”
Contrast that with, “When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.” and it should become VERY obvious he and many other defenders of freedom throughout history were very OK with punching Nazis, even if they lived before Nazis were a thing.
First they came for the Nazis, and I said nothing. Because fuck Nazis.
The End
This is just so good to see. A giant majority coming out against an insane minority to tell them that they are insane.
I’m in this picture (not literally, I was in Halle) and I like it!
