Counter rallies in Kaufbeuren show split between supporters of AfD and locals who acknowledge the Bavarian town’s Nazi past
Soaring church spires, the 1,000-year-old town centre unblemished by second world war bombing or graffiti, snow-capped Alps in the middle distance – Kaufbeuren, in Bavaria, can count many blessings.
Unemployment is in the low single digits, the Luftwaffe backed away from plans to move its training school for Eurofighter and Tornado jet technicians elsewhere and crime is at a historic low.
However, as voters prepare to elect a new European parliament next month, deep-seated fears have gripped a significant share of the electorate in one of the most affluent pockets of Europe’s top economy and delivered it to the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
The bond between the party and its voters appears unshaken even by a cascade of recent scandals. The AfD’s lead candidate for the election, Maximilian Krah, was forced by his party leadership on Wednesday to resign from its board and stop campaigning after he told Italy’s La Repubblica that the SS, the Nazi paramilitary force which ran the death camps, were not all criminals and could only be judged on the basis of “individual guilt”.
“It’s a catastrophe – the worst government we ever had,” said civil servant Manuela, 55, who was from a neighbouring town and, like most of the AfD supporters, declined to give her surname. She brought her teenage daughter to the rally. Despite the low rates of violent crime, she said her family no longer felt safe on the streets due to “Islamists”.
Anti-AfD activists booed and whistled from the sidelines as Krah addressed the rally. Manuela said: “They call us Nazis just because we’re patriots. The world laughs at us because no country is as dumb as Germany, with our exaggerated tolerance and diversity. They’ve been telling us for decades we should carry this guilt, and so we should rescue the whole world and be its dole office.”
Hey Manuela from paragraph two, you should talk to Manuela from paragraph one.
Also… Manuela. Is that a German name?
Manuela is a very German name, so much so a German rapper actually made a song about it.
But of course its origin isn’t Germanic at all. Which I doubt people with such convictions care about.
Manuela or Manuéla is a feminine Portuguese, Spanish and Italian given name. The name is a variant of the masculine “Manuel”, which is in turn derived from the Hebrew name “Emanuel”, meaning “God is with us”.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuela_(given_name)
Sounds like that German rapper doesn’t believe in German purity.
Edit: I posted this before the person above edited their post.
And there’s a very well-known TV show and filmmaker from Scotland named Armando Ianucci. I wouldn’t say Armando is a Scottish name.
Wikipedia says the root is Hebrew. So…. a European name? Seems pretty popular in Germany.
If it quacks like a Nazi…
If youre a german citizen and you’re far-right , you’re as nazi as it gets
Like the recent event in Sylt. You can easily find the Nazi sympathisers wherever the rich gather.
“they call us nazis” - literal nazis
