Thousands Rally In Munich Against Far- Right, Racism, Anti- Semitism

[appalachiablue]

Source: DW

Germany is experiencing a steady increase in far-right, racist and anti-Semitic hate crimes. More than 7,500 people gathered in Munich on Friday to rally against far-right terror, racism, anti-Semitism. The protest was also angled against the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The demonstration was organized in light of the rise of far-right attacks in Germany in recent months, such as in Hanau. Organizers had expected at least 5,000 participants, and police estimate over 7,500 attended.

"Hate, agitation and anti-Semitism have no place here," wrote Bavarian Premier Marcus Söder on Twitter, after giving a speech at the demonstration.

"We need to be certain that the poison does not trickle down into the groundwater of our democracy," he said at the rally, according to the dpa news agency, echoing words used by German Chancellor Angela Merkelafter the Hanau attack...


Read more: https://www.dw.com/en/thousands-rally-in-munich-against-far-right-racism-anti-semitism/a-52672004

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The AfD 'want to drag Germany back to the 1930s': Söder also strongly criticized the AfD for their part in the rise of the far-right in Germany, saying that they wanted to drag Germany back to the 1930s.

In the crowds, protesters held signs with slogans like "colorful not brown" and "grandmothers against the right." The Left party and the Greens were also among the protesters.

[mpcamb]

1. Munich has been the father right than most of Germany. So, a good sign...?

[appalachiablue]

2. Definite good sign in Bavaria, 'cradle of fascism.' Bravo Munchen folk!

[CatMor]

3. Very encouraging

[AllaN01Bear]

4. should have no place in the usa but it does , and the thing in the white house helps it.

these people knew what it is like to be under fascisim and they dont wat to see it happen again.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

5. It should be millions if not more.

We should all be against hatred of one another.

[Mosby]

6. With antisemitic hate crimes in Germany there seems to be classification issues.

Doubts about the ministry’s methodology have become more pronounced as its data have increasingly diverged with information from across Western Europe — and from the perceptions of German Jews themselves.

Last month, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that supporters of far-right groups were responsible for about 90 percent of the 1,800 recorded anti-Semitic incidents recorded in Germany in 2018, a 20 percent increase over the previous year.

In France, by contrast, more than half of anti-Semitism incidents, and virtually all the violent ones, are perpetrated by immigrants from Muslim countries or their descendants, according to the National Bureau of Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism.

In Britain, the Community Security Trust suggests that far-right perpetrators are responsible for 50-60 percent of the incidents where victims offered a physical description of their attackers. This happened in about 30 percent of 1,652 cases in 2018, a 19 percent hike from the previous year.

In the Netherlands, the previous director of CIDI, the country’s foremost watchdog on anti-Semitism, said that Muslims and Arabs are responsible for about 70 percent of all cases recorded in any given year.

In a 2016 survey of hundreds of German Jews who had experienced anti-Semitic incidents, 41 percent said the perpetrator was “someone with a Muslim extremist view” and another 16 percent said it was someone from the far left. Only 20 percent identified their aggressors as belonging to the far-right.

“There is clearly a mismatch here, and it speaks to the inaccuracy of the German official statistics,” the RIAS researcher Poensgen said.

....

Poensgen doubted that official German statistics are being deliberately mislabeled for political purposes.

“Most likely it’s the result of an out-of-date classification system, that for historical reasons is designed to monitor far-right anti-Semitism,” he said.

He cited one case in 2014 in which about 20 men shouted the Nazi slogan “Sieg heil” at an al-Quds Day march, an annual pro-Palestinian event where the mostly Muslim participants typically chant anti-Israel and anti-American slogans. The episode appears as a far-right incident in the Interior Ministry’s records.

Such mislabeling does, however, help the German far-right’s attempt to discredit the government, Poensgen said.

https://www.jta.org/2019/06/14/global/germany-is-accused-of-downplaying-anti-semitic-attacks-by-muslims