Hundreds of thousands of people protested across Germany on Friday, Saturday and Sunday against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and right-wing plans to "remigrate" the population.
The organizers of the protest claim that there were a total of 1,4 million people on the streets.
The largest gathering was in Berlin on Sunday, where, according to the police, up to a hundred thousand people gathered, while the organizers claim that there were 350.000.
Large gatherings with tens of thousands of people were held in Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig, and were supported by all ruling politicians, from Chancellor Olaf Scholz onward.
The occasion was recent media reports about a meeting of a group of extreme right-wingers, entrepreneurs and individual politicians from the AfD and the Christian Democratic Union.
At the meeting, Martin Zellner, a well-known Austrian extremist from the "Identitarian Movement", presented the "remigration" plan. It is an old right-wing fantasy of ethnic and ideological cleansing - asylum seekers, foreigners, but also Germans who are not "assimilated" would have to leave Germany. That is, who are not valid Germans.
The AfD distanced itself from that meeting, announcing that it had not organized it or invited it. Although the personal representative of party leader Alice Weidel was at the meeting, she says that she did not know anything about it, and that the representative did not know that Zellner would speak there either.
The protests were supported by all other parties except the AfD, some even demanding that the party be banned.
AfD talks about persecution
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised the large number of people at the protests. "These people encourage us. They defend our republic and the Constitution against their enemies. They defend our humanity."
In the AfD, they see in everything a campaign of the "left-green caste" against the party, and that, as they say, is because it is currently setting records in the polls.
AfD MP Bernd Baumann argued that the term "remigration" only meant the return of asylum seekers who did not have the right to stay in Germany. By that, he clarified, he means the 300.000 rejected asylum seekers who are still in the country and the 600.000 Syrian refugees who only enjoy temporary protection.
Photo: AP Photo/Michael ProbstProtest in Frankfurt
"Everyone else is heartily welcome here," he said. "He who has a German passport is a German."
The alternative for Germany hangs over the head of a possible work ban procedure, which is being called for by more and more other politicians. Some provincial branches of that party are already under the surveillance of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional Order because they are considered extremist.
Admittedly, only the Constitutional Court can issue a ban on the entire party, and that is a long shot. Because the German system, due to the experience of Nazism, sets extremely high obstacles for banning a party so that it is not misused to silence critics.
The question is whether the court would mark the entire party ready for unconstitutional action, even though there are extreme elements in it.
Failed "sanitary cordon" tactic
After general price increases and dissatisfaction with the migrant policy, the ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals is the least popular since there are measurements, and last week it faced historical protests of the poor.
At the same time, the Alternative for Germany is listed at 22-24 percent in the polls, which makes any attempt to form a government spicy.
This year, elections are held in three eastern states - Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia - and in each the AfD is the strongest in the polls with 32 to 36 percent support. In the last two provinces, the parties of the federal ruling coalition can't win even twenty percent - in total.
The Christian Democrats, who are the strongest party in the whole country, according to polls, will be wondering if the right-wingers could soon take over the government. Their popularity is recovering under party leader Friedrich Merz – a wealthy, hardline conservative who always opposed former Chancellor Angela Merkel and built his career as a manager of the Blackrock investment fund.
Until now, the other parties have formed a sanitary cordon around the AfD, refusing any cooperation. Obviously, that tactic continues even now, when the party is being banned.
Who is this suitable for?
Political scientist Ursula Minh says that when cheering for the AfD ban, there is a danger that even more people will show solidarity with that party, which is acquiring the aura of exiles.
"That's why I hope that there were less demonstrations against something and more for something," she told Deutschlandfunk, referring to the need to defend the German Constitution.
In it, the first sentence says that "human dignity is inviolable."
In this spirit, the newspaper Mannheimer Morgen also writes: "If people in this country succeed in further mobilizing and exposing the AfD as an alternative that cannot be voted for, then the tricky procedure for the ban, which would make the party a martyr, would become redundant."
In the country's largest tabloid, Bild, which has sided with the farmers in recent days and otherwise leans more towards the right spectrum, it is stated that this "ostracism" is AfD's problem. Namely, they are getting stronger and stronger.
