Protest actions
Faeser: Bullying and violence are border crossings
According to Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the current aggressions no longer have anything to do with sharp democratic disputes. photo
© Hannes P Albert/dpa
The mood against the Greens is becoming more aggressive. Party events are massively disrupted. Bavaria’s Prime Minister verbally criticizes the Green Environment Minister. Faeser calls for moderation.
“This also applies when Democrats are defamed as ‘traitors’, when an incited mob visits politicians at their place of residence or when rulers are symbolically hanged on gallows,” said Faeser. All of these are border crossings that show a brutalization and poisoning of the discourse.
Green Party event canceled for security reasons
The Greens canceled their political Ash Wednesday event in Biberach, Baden-Württemberg, on Wednesday for security reasons. This was preceded by massive protests and blockades by farmers, among others. According to the police, there was aggressive behavior and police officers were injured. In addition to party leader Ricarda Lang, Federal Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir and Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann wanted to take part in the event. Lang was later booed, insulted and prevented from leaving at another event in Schorndorf near Stuttgart.
Faeser went on to say that political aggression does not come out of nowhere, but begins with language: “Anyone who verbally panders to radicals only strengthens the radicals that we have to fight together from the political center.” Without naming him, she criticized Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) for his comparison of Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) with Margot Honecker at the political Ash Wednesday in Passau. Such a comparison is “poison for a political culture of respect that we urgently need,” said Faeser.
Söder describes Lemke as the “green Margot Honecker”
Söder said on Wednesday that Lemke was a prime example of the Greens’ attempt to restrict the freedom of the hardworking through ever new requirements, as the “Green Margot Honecker”. Margot Honecker was Minister for Public Education in the GDR from 1963 to 1989 and the wife of the former GDR State Council Chairman Erich Honecker. She was a hardliner even within the SED leadership and hated by large parts of the population.
Lemke said this on Thursday evening in the ZDF program “Markus Lanz”: “To accuse me of having any parallels to this person, to Margot Honecker, that’s stupid, that’s infamous, but I think Markus Söder also lives in some way a world of its own and it just seems to be a big beer tent.” She doesn’t want to give it any more attention than necessary.
Trittin blames Söder for the escalation of the protests
The Green Party politician Jürgen Trittin blamed Söder for the recent escalation of the protests. “Anyone who calls Steffi Lemke the Green Party’s Margot Honecker is encouraging disinhibition,” he told the RND. Politicians like Söder and Free Voters leader Hubert Aiwanger “create an atmosphere in which a violent right-wing mob can then let off steam.”
With a view to the ultimately canceled event in Biberach, Trittin said that it was known beforehand that riots were to be expected. “There were three corresponding WhatsApp groups with 1,000 participants each. The Baden-Württemberg police must therefore ask themselves why they were not as prepared as they would have been to protect an event with the Prime Minister.”
The Bundestag’s SED victims’ representative, Evelyn Zupke, also criticized Söder’s comparison. “GDR comparisons like Markus Söder’s show me how little is known in our society about the repression in the GDR. This is always hurtful for the victims of the SED dictatorship,” she told the RND.