A week after the attack on SPD politician Matthias Ecke, he announced that he would soon return to the election campaign. “I will not let the attack silence me,” said Ecke Free Pressthe Leipziger Volkszeitung and the Saxon newspaper in a joint interview on Friday. “I’m struck, but not intimidated.” If the healing process allows it, he would like to attend individual appointments starting next week. According to the politician, he doesn’t experience fear in his party either.
“I’m feeling better every day,” Ecke told the newspapers – but he’s still in pain. “I don’t have a feeling of limited security at the moment. However, I have to see how I can cope with the experience in the medium term.” The attack on him a week ago in Dresden came suddenly, said Ecke, “a matter of a few seconds.” He was asked provocatively why he was putting up an SPD poster, and then the blow came. “People have used the social climate, which is becoming increasingly harsh, as an opportunity to resort to vigilantism.”
:“Giving up is not an option”
Election campaign in Germany in 2024: Some are sending their employees to martial arts courses, others are no longer supposed to hang posters alone. Out and about in the streets of Chemnitz with Sandra Göbel and Sebastian Reichelt from the SPD.
Ecke also said he was reminded of the 1990s. “Back then, too, there were spaces of fear that were created by neo-Nazis. Old acquaintances from back then and party friends also felt the same way. This was even an issue among the staff in the emergency room on Friday.” The AfD has poisoned the social climate in recent years. “We are dealing with a manufactured disinhibition and an organized brutalization that the AfD creates together with other structures of the extreme right.” He thinks of the free Saxony and the Identitarian Movement. This level of brutalization has never been seen in election campaigns before.
The Saxon SPD European top candidate was beaten up while posting posters in Dresden on Friday last week. He suffered broken bones in his face and had to be treated in hospital. Research by SZ, NDR and WDR confirms the suspicion that the perpetrators probably have connections to the right-wing radical scene. On Sunday night, a 17-year-old turned himself in to the police. Three more suspects were arrested on Monday morning. You are 17 or 18 years old.