A prominent groups the Concerts Motto was we are more it began with a Moment Of Silence for the victim of the attack the prompted the initial protests a young man who was stabbed allegedly by migrants now in detention. The far right can germany defeat its demons thats our topic this week on quadriga and here are our guests its a pleasure to welcome Matthew Carney jake back to the program hes chief europe correspondent for politico and he says germanys demons are necessary and will never be overcome the question is whether germanys political elite is drawing the bright lessons from history the events of the past week suggest theyre not and its a pleasure to have valerie who theyre with us shes Political Correspondent in the Berlin Bureau of spiegel online and shes been reporting on cam thats the f. T. Community is gradually merging with right wing extreme the. Groups in germany she
says if the moderates in the party fail to take a stand against this development they will inevitably be done related by radicals and finally im very glad to greet our colleague from door to bella linda feel who also has been reporting from time thats she says the events in cannes thats have the potential to further divide German Society so we have seen to start lately different faces of kemet over the past ten days weve heard dramatically opposing views about what actually happened there on sunday august twenty sixth so you linda have been reporting for candidates and id like to ask you to get us started by giving us your sense of who is behind the violence and where chemists really comes down which is the face of candidates thats a difficult question. Something that the people there are some self i think ive talked to people from both sides as we can say initiatives and people that are very
engaged in fighting right wing extremism for many many years and they set they they never got the support they wanted to actually. Thats what they say for a long time but on the other side people from all not even from picking up being the Anti Muslim Immigrant Movement that had its birth in dresden which is not too far away from him thats exactly and people that are you know go to the demonstration theyre maybe not part of figure but they understand you know they have their fears and they actually fear the violence of the migrants so we really have two different fears here in the same city that that was my sins and of course ive been there for the concert and it was it was a very nice atmosphere but of course the question is. It was nice for the one side and the other one side the other side will it include you know will it be can it be included will the society. Divided by that are not and we want to pick up on that
question matthew just coming back to the concert it was certainly aimed at showing a different face of cabinets than the one that wed seen during the protests and the mob violence it did draw Sixty Five Thousand people your Opening Statement said the political elite doesnt seem to be learning the right lessons from history what about the people themselves what about those Concert Goers well i think thats an open question and i would say that we dont really know yet if you if you put on a free concert with some of the most popular bands in germany its inevitable that youre going to have thousands of people come whether most of those people were there for political reasons i dont know its interesting that a few days before the concert there was a demonstration also in chemists and depending on which numbers you believe they range from about Eight Thousand to Eleven Thousand roughly evenly divided between sort of you know more right wing oriented groups and even nato nazi groups and people who were arguing the other side thats not
a lot really right after everything that had happened in the previous ten days you know roughly ten thousand people show up Five Thousand to protest the nazi attacks doesnt really suggest to me that theres any sort of wave of anti nazi sentiment in the country at the moment to the point that people are going to go out onto the street thats why i thought it was fascinating that when they had the concert which i think was on a monday you had Sixty Five Thousand people there as you said and yet for this other protest which was really much more political which was on a sunday you only had a smattering of people show up valor their families calls since the riots chemists for people to take a stand to stand up is it naive to think that a concert can make a difference i think that for the people who live there who are on the left wing spectrum is actually important to see that they have support within the German Society. However of course this is one concert one day as matthew
was saying and its probably not going to make a huge difference in the political legislation that were going to see come forward now from from the sex sonia government i dont think that that would change much but i do think that for the People Living there who are on the left it was very important however also for the people on the right they obviously theyre going to be angry about the and theyre going to probably want to respond in some way as well and in fact we have voices from chemists that show us some of those divisions lets hear the voices both of some of those who attended and those who organized the event. If its quick to sit here its cool that so many young people have come to show their support for candidates its not out of. America preferred most people here are quite normal they believe in democracy and theyre
not right wingers i wish our sisters we wouldnt want them here just removed from. The final minute of the concert should have been neutral not against the right but simply for peace this way it was too provocative for. Business this this is not the left battling the right. This is crucial anybody with a sense of decency and whatever his or her political positions has to stand up to a moment of violence right wing extremists but on this is conservation its very important that we hope this kind of thing while its still a snowball before it turns into an avalanche on the forests and i live in a boat you know on the ocean the. Land of your Opening Statement referred to the rising divisions in German Society we heard a voice one person in that piece saying that a concert like this deepens the divisions because its against a group within society would you say theres something to that argument yes i think
so i mean i agree with company no i think it should be about left or right i think everybody in germany should actually be against right wing extremism we have right and left theres no problem to it but if it comes to extremism we just you know should brace all voice and with the history we have this should be an important test for the whole society but. The Concert Verse was problematic in a way that that was seen as the left wing and many people who came there talked to an old couple for example born still during World War Two they came there saying you know this is not our music but we we are against right wing extremism but on the same page we are against Refugee Violence here. Happening in our town and we are very so and this was very. Not a very typical situation because usually these people dont go to the demonstration its an either or and thats what i was experienced either for or against it so you know and this is where politics has to come in matthew these two faces of
candidates these two very different kinds of interpretations they look a lot like the polarization that were seeing in a lot of other places in the west germany has long prided itself on the kind of consensus tradition in its politics in fact the governing coalition is composed of two Rival Mainstream Parties which you say thats breaking down and were seeing the same kind of divisions opening up here as we have lets say in the u. S. Absolutely i think that ken its really is kind of a crucible of that i think its less about the town of chemists which is a really is a small city and its more about what People Project on to what happened there and you know if you if you go back and look at the way that this whole thing unfolded you know it started out as a murder by a couple of refugees apparently of a german citizen and thats what triggered all of this violence and i think the
problem in this debate is that the media and the society here theyve kind of like lost the forest for it for the trees a bit because i think that most germans if you speak to them say well what do you think about what happened they want to talk about what linda just mentioned which is the Refugee Violence ok which is in many peoples perception a big problem and you can look at the statistics and determine that yourself whether its a problem or not of germanys still a very safe country overall there has been an uptick in Violent Crime and murder and so forth where were refugees have been involved in recent years but it is something because there have been some prominent cases that people are worried about the been the murder of a couple of girls there was a fourteen Year Old Girl in june who was murdered and there was a fifteen Year Old Girl in a small town in southwestern germany last december who was murdered in her her her killer was from afghanistan and was was just was just sentenced this week in fact but it is something that people are worried about and i think that theres
a sense that the politicians dont want to talk about this they would rather talk about neo nazis and you know its not the sort of. Welcome you know theres one thing i mean to talk these days of a lot they have been talking about it this week in the context of chemist because that issue of what happened to the carpenter who was killed there was quickly overtaken by this talk of a a hunt for four people of color in the town by neo nazis which now appears not to have been the case depending on whom you ask and this question of the threat from the right and whether or not the german domestic intel. Agent service should put the party under surveillance lets go and this is what everybody is talking im going to quickly say that we will come back to some of those issues in just a moment because we have a short report that i want to bring in in a few cup in a few minutes on the political scene but if i may let me just pick up on one thing that matthew said and it relates also to the question of how much are we talking
about. Crime in the streets how much are we talking about far right protests and whos doing the talking where and for you valerie as a member of the online media can you just take us through the role that online media are playing in this Deepening Polarization and in what appears to be a certain discrepancy in terms of reporting on crime perpetrated by migrants because clearly many people who are going to the streets are people who feel that their streets are unsafe where is that coming from i feel like that thats one of the issues that really was underestimated by many people especially in berlin especially in the government where the internet has such a high potential for just getting these people together out on the streets and protesting in such a short amount of time however if youre talking about online media you have to
sort of thing wish between Popular Online media or you know Publishing Houses like im from to go online which is which is a Publishing House of the Mainstream Media outlet or facebook groups twitter groups where especially right wing extremists. Just can mobilize so many people so fast which we saw actually on sunday after the murder initially happened that they were able to mobilize a hundred to one thousand people in a matter of hours and thats something that i think was very much underestimated by the government of sex sonya by probably the German Government as well and by the police and that was i think that was an issue and just. Because you said that that were the politicians arent talking about the issue of violence that is coming from migrant i feel like there is theres such a focus on it though to where
a lot of media is focusing on these the civic crimes where theyre not focusing on crimes that are committed by germans. But i think that theyre focusing on these high profile crimes i dont know that theyre focusing on the larger issue and what the political consequences of that can be and what it could mean and i think just again this new nazi thing is quite interesting because is it really that surprising that in germany given especially in east germany where you had this new nazi basically hit Squad Roaming through the country for ten years killing people that you have this very child sees them and says you as you did it is germany that murdered with impunity exactly as you said they were able to put together online you know they would get six or Eight Hundred people together to come to chemists neo nazis well thats obviously horrible but is that really that surprising in a country of Eighty Million that you can you know that these networks exist in the bay can mobilize very nerve there my little one surprising is that you know that there is not a strong stand up against it and saxony has had
a problem with driving it seems in for a long time and actually there wasnt a strong voice against it from the ruling party from this you this for me is surprising and she says says you know were quote talking about. Democratic values and a strong voice against nazi i mean this is of the this is the comfort zone of german of german mainstream. Politics is to be against nazis everybodys against nazis its like being against poverty or Global Warming and its like everybody to. Know we have to do something because of ocracy it isnt one of the challenges of standing up the apparently diffuse nature of this right wing sentiment well of course to suppress the press because in fact as we saw so among those sound bites many of the people who are joining these protests in chemists would say im not a member of the far right i am not a member of the of the party but im out here to tell people that i dont feel im safe on the street right but if youre marching along with it in violence they
complicit in seeing a phobia i would say they are there they know what theyre doing and they know they are marching next to me and on these and this is not only that a state many members of they have are not neo nazis theyre democrats but the a. F. D. Just have theyre just merging with right wing extremist groups and they have they were marching with people who definitely are right wing extremists and are neo nazis and i do feel like the politicians that were marching are complicit in this you know that result now the people i feel like its hard to judge them but on the other hand theyre marching next to people who have insignia who have tattoos that are very clear in their methods so im but this is not a reflection of the fact that they dont think that their concerns are being taken seriously by the political. Climate on the city of refugees so let me bring in the report that shows us exactly that march and does point to that blurring of the
lines between the far right neo nazi groups and a party the ifti that is represented in the federal parliament. Right groups marched through candidates holding up portraits of people they say were victims of crimes committed by migrants in the Bank Guard Politicians from the right wing populist f. T. Party such as beyond well known for his inflammatory anti foreigner tirades f. T. E. National leadership does not rein him in. Lot sparkman was also that hes one of the founders of the far right and the muslim peggy movement hes been convicted of inciting racial hatred. Meo nazis and other right wing extremists who are out in force many already known to the police and ordinary townspeople this is the first time right wing populists and extremists have marched together so blatantly. The police broke up the march but its message had already come through loud and
clear how dangerous is such an Emergent Right Wing nationalist alliance. Linda let me pass that question right on to you how firm and how dangerous is this alliance between a Party Sitting in the federal parliament the f. D. A. Right wing party came to power partly on anti immigrant positions and actual neo nazis. Well its its also its a sign you know its a symbol also i mean weve been hearing things in the in the business talk in the parliament. That are that are racist so you know the party is setting a tone that people on the street pick up they think its ok to say that there are so you problem you know i mean its ok to criticise and theres reason to criticize also on migration politics here in germany. You know in a democratic circle lets put it like that valerie you talk to your Opening Statement about the blurring of the lines would you say that this means we are
seeing mob violence actually orchestrated by the far right by neo nazis and would you say that this ideology is taking on mass appeal in large swathes of eastern germany or does that go too far. Well i think those are really two very different question i dont think that theyre orchestrated by the f. D. A. I think theyre theyre more spontaneous eruption these are definitely the protests are organized but what weve seen that you know people who arent white are being chased through the streets the video that we saw that. I dont think that that thats just an eruption of violence i would say. And i think that the f. D. A. It plays a ro