Outrage and mystification

Berlin (dpa) – Outrage and mystification were the main reactions to the events at the Reichstag in Berlin on Saturday evening when a large group of demonstrators had breached the building’s security barriers. They charged up the steps and positioned themselves triumphantly in front of the glass-walled visitor entrance. Police managed to force the demonstrators back.

«It concerns us all if a clearly right-wing extremist minority that is willing to use force seeks to storm the building of our parliament», said Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble. «Our basic law guarantees freedom of opinion and the right to demonstrate. This is the response to the failure of the Weimar Republic and the horrors of the Nazi era. Nazi symbols, Reichsbürger flags and flags of the former imperial Germany have absolutely no place in front of the German Bundestag», said SPD Chancellor Candidate Olaf Scholz.

The international press reacted with astonishment. The New York Times wrote: «These demonstrations are something of a mystery. One of the strangest things about them is that there is hardly anything to protest: Most restrictions, never as strict as in some other European countries, have been lifted.»

And Zurich’s «Tages-Anzeiger» commented: «Whether German democracy is alive, self-confident and strong will be revealed not so much by whether a Reichsbürger or a neo-Nazi is able to raise their anti-democratic flag in front of the Reichstag, but by whether they achieve anything in doing so. However, the overwhelming majority of Germans see the right-wing extremists as the danger that they are. And the state has been countering them with ever increasing resolve for two years, and rightly so.»