Sahra Wagenknecht’s demonstration.

Adina Danes

 

I see discussions about how many far-right participants were at the Sahra Wagenknecht’s demonstration. Before the demonstration, the organizers sent ambiguous messages like “everybody is welcome” but “no far-right or Russian flag is allowed”. In other words, anybody can come, just hide your face under a “peace” flag instead of the flag that you would like to show. If there are doubts about the number of dubious people from the demonstration, just listen to the video below. In this video, when the organizers say that no pro-Russia-flags, -military symbols or -maps are allowed, you start hearing more and more booing sounds from the crowd (minute 0.54 is the peak): https://tinyurl.com/3jkendtx

A lot of people were revolted that they could not show these symbols at the demonstration. These sounds show that in the crowd there are a lot of people who are pro-aggressor or pro-aggression. Only based on this sound alone, we can say without exaggerating that this was a cross-front demonstration (querfront). If we also add all the images with persons from far-right circles (most came with peace signs btw), then any doubt will dissipate. Of course, if everybody comes with peace signs, how can you distinguish one group from another: https://twitter.com/Gegen_die_AfD/status/1629839196545269763

In addition, anybody with mild pro-Ukraine symbols or messages (so not about arms deliveries) would not have been safe during this demonstration, but, on the contrary, they would have been harassed (it happened).

This was a pro-Russia protest, with different subgroups of participants subscribing to this position and coming from different directions: DDR-nostalgia, pro-war Russian-Germans, far-right groups, conspiracy-oriented and Corona deniers, hard-campists/tankies-left (which I would not call left).

There were also left-wing people who don’t support the aggressor but went there because they thought it is a demonstration for peace, and because they are too stuck in their narrative to be able to distance themselves from the obvious toxicity of this protest.

Sahra Wagenknecht has a history of flirting with the far right on different topics, according to a lot of left-wing people. So, there is no wonder that a call launched by her, that focused on the safety of the “German people”, would gather such a mix of people.