Revival of Civil Society – Emancipation

Since the shock of a secret conference between AfD executives and neo-Nazis, Germans have mobilized en masse to defend democracy and diversity. Thousands demonstrated again this weekend.

Despite the rain on Saturday 3 February, demonstrators turned out in even greater numbers than the previous week; Between 150,000 and 300,000. They deployed the seat of the Federal Assembly around the Reichstag in Berlin “Far Right Obstacle”.

For many, it is a great relief to see so many people “Defend the Cordon Sante”. “You see, the far right does not represent the people,” Wolfgang Thiers, the former Social-Democrat president of the Federal Assembly, gestured to the crowd at the historic site. It is here that Adolf Hitler, with the support of a narrow conservative elite, took absolute powers on March 23, 1933, in the Kroll Opera House, opposite the Reichstag, which had been burned by the Nazis a month earlier.

Civil society’s reaction to the rise of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), a former Eurosceptic party overthrown by identitarians and neo-Nazis, has been historic. At the call of churches, unions, NGOs, climate activists even sports associations, mi