Tens of thousands of Germans braved the elements to attend the Uprising for Peace, a massive rally organized by Die Linke (Left Party) politician Sahra Wagenknecht and author Alice Schwarzer on Saturday.
The demonstrators massed at the Brandenburg Gate, calling for peace talks to end the conflict in Ukraine and demanding Berlin cease supplying Kiev with weapons.
Wagenknecht slammed the German government for trying to "ruin Russia," urging leaders to make Moscow an "offer" so that peace talks could begin. The rally, she said, represented the "start of a citizens’ initiative" and the launch of a "new, strong peace movement in Germany."
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For context: Sahra Wagenknecht is a red-brown alliance socdem who used to LARP as an ML but "mellowed out" after marrying a former leading SPD member, Oscar Lafontaine. They've been trying to wreck Die Linke for years, which has resulted in their steady decline in elections. Alice Schwarzer is Germany's most prominent terf. They've also openly welcomed far-right protesters to the rally, Wagenknechts husband Oscar Lafontaine announced that even MPs from the neofash AfD party would be welcome. The organizers are as toxic as can be. When i say on here that i cannot attend red-brown rallies because i have to fear for my safety there, this is what i mean.
Also their initiative has been all over the news cricuit for weeks whereas left wing protests distancing themselves from right wing attendants were met with almost complete radio silence. This is ... something like the opposite of consent manufacturing. The media actively scandalizing and playing up the worst elements in the anti-war movement to make it look bad in its entirity.
Yeah that whole quote from her about "ruining Russia" came off pretty dodgy. I was hoping she was just shitty at rhetoric but it's too bad the party is so dysfunctional that this person was actually allowed to have power...
Apparently they at least tried to remove Jürgen Elsässer (prominent sovereign citizen podcaster) from the rally, a move led by Linke member Sevim Dagdelen (i regard her as an actual principled anti-imperialist, btw, in spite of her dubiously close ties to Wagenknecht. She's a woman of her word, has just recently visited Cuba again, had consistently good takes in the past, it's a pity she's now cooperating with a bunch of terfs).
Reactions to the presence of Elsässer, several prominent AfD members, anti-lockdown protesters and other right wingers (including hardcore nazi skins from Freie Sachsen) where met with mixed reactions. There were leftists, including Linke members, who opposed them (Elsässer was circled by a group of protesters after the cops refused to remove him from the rally), there were also protesters who didn't want to exclude anybody, mirroring Lafontaine's mixed signals sent in advance of the protest. Leftists present were mostly from Linke, but also from the DKP party and from some unions, although the union members attended privately instead of as an offical delegation.
National flags where not allowed due to optics, which was enforced several times when people tried to unroll Russian flags.
Attendance was higher than the expected 10,000 people. According to police (who always undercount these numbers), there were 13,000 protesters present. According to Wagenknecht herself, there were 50,000.
At that point, it seems that the leftists still were able to push back at least against the most obvious fascists, but idk how this will look during the next protest. When you give nazis a space were they aren't kicked out immediately, they come back with more nazis next time, it's always been central to their strategy regardless if we're talking bars or websites or protests. AfD has already bragged about how many of its members attended (without being able to prove it, ofc, nobody has a reliable over-under for how that rally broke down along political lines, it's just clear that both left and right wingers were present).
There's definitely some signals towards negotiation, it's good that China is pushing for this and i'm glad that France (with its history of being less under the US thumb than the rest of Europe, although often just because it wants to do imperialism on its own) is joining in on this. It's a door opener at least. People in Europe are definitely getting tired of the war, CIA control over the narrative seems less crushing and absolute than at the start as well. But most libs still don't get how dangerous it is to throw unlimited amounts of weapons at a bunch of nazis, or which blood toll it will take when this war gets prolonged indefinitely, or that prolonging it indefinitely is the only expectable outcome when there's no peace talks.
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This horseshoe is fucking confusing.
It's also telling that there is zero mention of material conditions. Germany is getting crushed by inflation largely caused by energy prices. Their industrial sector is collapsing and people can't afford energy (even though it was a mild winter).
I know nothing about the demographics of this protest, but most people are able to go: "Hey, why does Ukraine get all this shit while I don't. And it's my tax money??!?!?"
Die Linke is relevant in all of the eastern states (where their electorate is either socially conservative boomers nostalgic for the DDR, or all of the millenials and zoomers that are sick of being hunted by nazi skinheads) and has some success in almost all major cities (where their electorate is young radlibs that find the Greens to neoliberal). Unfortunately, they're in decline as there's an unending struggle session between a more moderate, socially progressive wing and a more openly anti-imperialist, but socially reactionary wing (headed by Wagenknecht). Instead of doing the cool thing and settling on being a progressive anti-imperialist party, or doing the sensible thing and throwing out the wreckers around Wagenknecht, or ideally both, the party leadership has decided to let the struggle session simmer on low heat for years, which has proven disastrous for the party's overall popularity as they're losing votes on both sides at once.
