Never again is right now!

Folko Mueller

Posted January 31, 2024

Germany is currently witnessing a massive wave of demonstrations against the far-right party AfD in cities large and small all over the republic. The mass protests have been going on for a little over a week, with aggregate numbers most likely being north of 1.5 million participants. At least two demonstrations, in Hamburg and Munich respectively, were so large that they had to be aborted, since the police claimed they could no longer guarantee the safety of the participants. The organizers’ estimate of the demo in Munich was roughly 250,000 people, and even the cops admitted that at least 100,000 were present that day, which triggered the cancellation.

The protests were sparked by a January 10 report from investigative journalism outlet Correctiv (1), which revealed that AfD members held a secret meeting with other far-right extremists in Potsdam in November to discuss the “remigration” or deportation of immigrants and “non-assimilated citizens” based on racist criteria. Once leaked, the meeting was quickly dubbed Wannsee 2.0 by the media. This was primarily because of the content of the discussions that took place on that day, but the fact that Potsdam is only about 6 miles from Wannsee did not go unnoticed. The original Wannsee Conference was the infamous meeting of high-ranking Nazi party and SS officials in January of 1942, which officially authorized and laid out the implementation of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, i.e. the industrialized genocide of millions of predominantly Eastern European Jews, we now refer to as the “Holocaust”.

Another alarming detail of the recent secret meeting was the fact that two members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the main (and “mainstream”) opposition party, were also present at the meeting in Potsdam. While they were most likely not there on official party business, it is nonetheless highly relevant, since the CDU’s policy of zero cooperation with the AfD, which they themselves have branded a “firewall”, has been eroding since last year. The CDU’s party leader Friedrich Merz himself started to chip away at it, when in an interview last Summer, he claimed that the “firewall” clause for CDU members was only meant to be applied to legislative bodies (2). The statement one hundred percent contradicts his previous remarks and drew strong criticism from within the party ranks. This turnaround will leave the door wide open for cooperation at a municipal level; unfortunately, in former Eastern Germany this has been the reality on the ground for some time. (3).

Also explosive is the fact that both municipal and state elections are coming up in three eastern German states and the AfD is doing extremely well in the election polls for all of them. As a matter of fact, it is predicted to become the strongest party in all three states, ranging anywhere from about 30% in Brandenburg to over 33 and 34% in Thuringia and Saxony respectively (4). How will the CDU react when it is being asked by the AfD to become a junior coalition partner?

Finally, with this revelation by Correctiv we are again hearing renewed arguments for banning the AfD from the political process or stripping individual politicians, such as the notorious Björn Höcke, of certain constitutional rights (5). In addition to having the potential of totally backfiring, I would oppose these calls on the grounds outlined in my article published here in November. We cannot rely on the state to take these measures, on principle but particularly because history shows us that they will just as easily, if not more easily, be applied against the left. A massive response from civil society is needed, and the huge demonstrations by democratically minded working people from all walks of life that poured into the streets over the last couple of weeks are a step in the right direction.