AfD leads protest event in Magdeburg

 

AfD leads protest event in Magdeburg

https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-rally-divides-magdeburg-after-attack/live-71139565

 

Alice Weidel, the AfD co-leader and candidate for chancellor, said the attack was 'an act of an Islamist full of hatred for what constitutes human cohesion.' The perpetrator expressed sympathy for the AfD.Image: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP Photo/picture alliance

Germany's far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party staged a demonstration on Magdeburg's central Domplatz on Monday evening in response to Friday night's deadly Christmas market attack.

 

Precise attendance figures were not immediately available, but footage appeared showed many people on the square listening to speeches made by AfD politicians, including chancellor candidate Alice Weidel and Jan Wenzel Schmidt, the AfD's leader for the state of Saxony-Anhalt.

 

"Someone who hates — and kills — the people of the country that gave him asylum, who hates all we stand for and all that we love, does not belong to us," said Weidel, who had traveled to Magdeburg from Berlin.

 

"We want things to finally change in this country so that we will never again have to mourn with the mother who has lost her son in such a pointless and brutal way," she continued, describing the attack as "an act of an Islamist full of hatred for what constitutes human cohesion ... for us Germans, for us Christians."

 

The perpetrator of the Christmas market attack is a Saudi man who came to Germany in 2006. In social media posts, he called himself an atheist who renounced Islam and attacked German migration policies as too lenient. He also expressed sympathy for the AfD, saying it pursued the same goals he did.

 

Wenzel Schmidt called the attack a "monstrous political failure" on the part of the authorities who had granted the "mass murderer" asylum despite him having publicized his intentions (see entries below). Individual police officers, he said, had had their "hands tied" and been "left alone" by their superiors.

 

During the demonstration, which was titled "Grief unites — for a secure future," attendees intermittently chanted for "deportations."

 

After the speeches, the AfD is set to lead a march around the city center.

 

Simultaneously, several counter-demonstrations took place with slogans such as "We want to mourn — give hate no chance" and "Give fascism no chance."