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Leipzig has also proved once again: the impotence of the police fills deniers of the crown with a feeling of self-empowerment. Neo-Nazis are in the front row.
By Olaf Sundermeyer, rbb
Shortly before the breakthrough, Patrick Wieschke stands at Willy-Brandt-Platz, grinning in front of the chain of some policemen. The masses huddle behind him. You can guess what will happen a few minutes later in view of this numerical superiority. Eisenach’s well-known neo-Nazi is one of hundreds of right-wing extremists at this crucial point, including numerous hooligans. Across Germany, they accepted the invitation of “lateral thinking” to come to Leipzig.
At the height of the refugee crisis, hooligans and right-wing extremists tried in vain as “Legida” to create precisely this “Leipzig moment” that is now imminent: that tens of thousands are marching through the ring, a crowd in their peaceful majority, many with candles in their hands. .
Take possession of Leipzig for one night
On this November night, here in the east, they want to return to the turning point of 1989, exactly 31 years after the resignation of the GDR Council of Ministers. They want to do it despite the fact that this mass demonstration is prohibited for reasons of protection against infections. In a pinch, they force it. With the strength of tens of thousands of “lateral thinkers” you must succeed. The Antifa counter-protest and the left-wing extremist scene have long since retreated to the trendy Connewitz district. You can now take over Leipzig for one night. Magdeburg sociologist David Anbich later describes this production as a “political recreation”.
First the hooligans keep shouting: “No to violence!” As always, it is the signal to attack. Then bottles, barricades and signs fly, the crowd pushes. Police officers briefly defend themselves with pepper spray, journalists are nervously pushed back. Media activists from the movement stream via smartphones and comment on “police violence against peaceful citizens.” This reversal of facts in the resonance-free space of the Internet is also part of the movement’s strategy. Finally the police withdraw, they are very few. It’s over. The crowd is pushing into the ring from two directions, chanting “Oh how beautiful it is!” and Korea: “Peace, freedom, not dictatorship!”
Help from faded heroes of a bygone age
A few hours earlier, the “side thinkers” had already struck the blow of putting former civil rights activist Christoph Wonneberger as a speaker on their stage. In 1989, the Lutheran pastor coordinated prayers for peace in Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche. In each city of their demo network, the “side thinkers” bring a local celebrity to the stage: former Bavarian radio television pastor Jürgen Fliege in Munich, world soccer champion and former VfB player Thomas Berthold in Stuttgart. Heroes of a bygone age gain new recognition from “lateral thinkers.”
What started as a peaceful protest in Stuttgart in the spring has gradually turned into a movement over the big demonstrations in Berlin in the summer. Your degree of professionalism is enormous. “Lateral thinking” works in a division of labor, divided into planning, organizing, IT, logistics, marketing, your own merchandising, as well as the essential tasks of fundraising and legal advice for disputes with assembly authorities and administrative courts.
“The mask requirement does not apply to the water cannon”
This is one of the reasons why right-wing extremists and hooligans have joined this cause since August 1. They have long recognized the general impotence of the police in dealing with protests over the pandemic. Before that, many of them had already attended other smaller “hygiene demonstrations”, which were often subject to strict requirements: distance rules, mask requirement, depending on time and state. But the police acted on the defensive in most cases, since the objective was to avoid images of police violence against peaceful demonstrators, precisely so as not to confirm the claim of the “dictatorship of the Crown” that the rulers had been making through of his critics on the street ever since. Spring exposed. Berlin Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) himself acknowledged that “the mask requirement cannot be enforced with the water cannon.”
Loss of state control
That’s what the Saxon police think during their operation in Leipzig on Saturday, although the water cannons are on standby. Leipzig Police Chairman Thorsten Schultze said a politically significant phrase after the deployment: “You don’t fight a pandemic with police means, but only with the common sense of the people.” Again, the state cannot enforce its own infection protection rules. Leipzig experienced the loss of state control that night, which was accepted with approval.
For months, the interior authorities nationwide could not find any means against the crown deniers, who manifested their resistance mainly by refusing to wear a mask and a minimum distance. At the same time, their sense of self-empowerment and hence the effectiveness of a movement that is still nothing more than the well-organized protest of a noisy minority, but which is becoming increasingly radical, has grown. Many in the movement now hope that, amid the state and social crisis, a momentum will emerge to apply influence to the foundations of the state.
