Tuesday, January 14, 2025

Police attack anti-fascist protest in Germany

Around 12,000 anti-fascists protested the far right AfD's election conference, but police violently suppressed the demonstration


Protesters in Riesa, Germany, outside the AfD conference (Photo: X/@m_lyki)

By Yuri Prasad
Monday 13 January 2025
SOCIALIST WORKER  Issue 2938

Some 12,000 anti-fascist protesters last weekend fought running battles with police in the German town of Riesa, where the far right AfD party was holding a conference.

Demonstrators were determined to stop the racist delegates from gathering, but the police used dogs, truncheons and pepper spray to ensure they did.

Protest organiser Maria Schmidt, said, “Today we are protecting the right of people to live in safety without the fear of deportation or being attacked.

“We are all making it clear—Riesa is not a peaceful place for fascism,” she said. But the police response to marchers was vicious.
Cops beat Die Linke party regional councillor Nam Duy Nguyen unconscious. An officer also hit his companion in the face.

In a bid to allow the racist rally to go ahead, police also set dogs on activists and threatened them with a water cannon.

Inside the convention centre, some 600 racists selected AfD leader Alice Weidel to be the party’s candidate for chancellor in next month’s general election.

Weidel, who says that Tory Margaret Thatcher is her idol, has the backing of billionaire bigot Elon Musk.

A relative moderate in the AfD, Weidel is being used by the party’s fascist wing as a figleaf. While she wants to make alliances with the mainstream right, they want to forge a much more hardline force. Nevertheless, Weidel is doing her bit for the fascists too.

She admitted recently that she is “slowly giving up her initial criticism” of figures including Bjoern Hoecke. In 2021, AfD regional leader Hoecke concluded a speech by proclaiming “Alles for Deutschland”—All for Germany—a phrase used by Hitler’s Nazis in the 1930s.

The AfD is currently polling at around 20 percent of the vote, with the mainstream Tory CDU/CSU party on 32 percent. The Labour-like SPD is on 16 percent, while the far left is marginal.

Only a bigger, more sustained anti-racist movement can stop the right’s advance.

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