East German City Dresden Declares ‘Nazi Emergency’
Saxony is a stronghold of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
The city council of Dresden, the capital of the German state of Saxony, has declared a state of a “Nazi emergency”.
The Nazi emergency (“Nazinotstand”) resolution has been over what is deemed an increased intensity of neo-Nazi acts in the city of more than half a million inhabitants.
“Anti-democratic, anti-pluralist, misanthropic and right-wing-extremist attitudes and actions, including violence in Dresden, are occurring with increasing frequency,” reads the Dresden city council policy statement on the “Nazi emergency”, as cited by DW.
Dresden’s “Nazi emergency” resolution calls on the city and civil society organizations to strengthen a democratic culture, protect minority and human rights, and help the victims of right-wing violence.
“[We must] fight the causes of far-right attitudes and their consequences, such as anti-Semitism, racism and Islamophobia, and on restoring the trust in democratic institutions and the appreciation of diversity and respectful solidarity,” the document states.
The local politician who initiated the resolution, Max Aschenbach, a councilor for Die Partei, a satirical political party, claimed the city had a real problem that needed tackling.
“We have a Nazi problem in Dresden and have to do something about it,” Aschenbach said,
“Politics must finally begin to ostracize that and say: No, that’s unacceptable,” he told local public broadcaster MDR.
Dresden is known, among other things, for being the birthplace of the movement PEGIDA (“Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident” in German) usually described as Islamophobic and xenophobic.
Since its establishment back in 2014, PEGIDA has been holding rallies in Dresden quite often.
Dresden and the German state of Saxony are deemed to be a stronghold of the far-right political party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD)
AfD recently came in second in the elections in the German states of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, all of which used to be part of the former communist German Democratic Republic, or East Germany.
(Banner image: Pixabay)
