ERFURT: Several thousand people demonstrated on Saturday in Erfurt, capital of Thuringia state in Germany’s former communist east, where far-right lawmakers last week helped install a new state premier.

“Not with us! No pacts with fascists any time or anywhere!” is the motto for the protest, organised by the DGB trade union federation, NGOs, artists and politicians belonging to the “Unteilbar” (indivisible) movement. Organisers said they expected a total of 10,000 protesters to join.

Demonstrators carried banners with slogans including “We don’t want a Fourth Reich” or “We don’t want power at any price”.

Thuringia rocked national politics on Feb 5, when state lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party voted with far-right, anti-immigrant AfD representatives to elect liberal politician Thomas Kemmerich state premier.

“I’m demonstrating because the AfD is gaining a lot of influence in the eastern regions,” said Maria Reuter, a 74-year old Erfurt resident.

“A red line was crossed when the right and far-right combined their votes,” she said, adding: “This cannot stand”.

The Erfurt gathering was the latest of many protests that broke out spontaneously across Germany in response to the controversial electoral pact, and which have been targeted especially against the CDU and Kemmerich’s Free Democrats (FDP).

Barely 24 hours after accepting the vote, Kemmerich agreed to step down.

But outrage at the centrist parties accepting help from the far right, a first since the founding of the Federal Republic in 1949, remains deep-seated among the protest organisers.

“This election was the end of a taboo” against cooperation with the far-right, Michael Rudolph, leader of the DBG in Thuringia, said.

Saturday’s protest appeared peaceful, but elsewhere in Germany had taken out their rage in attacks on FDP offices this week, Der Spiegel reported, a sign of festering tensions nationwide.

Published in Dawn, February 16th, 2020