ALLIANCE FO§ DEMOCRACY

Easter 2015

Easter is actually a peaceful celebration. However, while some look for sweets, others look for trouble. On Easter Sunday, for example, someone set the upper floor of a home for asylum seekers alight in the town of Tröglitz in southern Saxony-Anhalt. Some 40 people are supposed to live there starting in early May. For months, people of the extreme-right type had been protesting against it.
No one was injured in the arson attack. Tröglitz organized a demonstration against racism that even Minister-President Reiner Haseloff (CDU) took part in. The public prosecutor is investigating the case. “The number of such assaults around country has significantly increased,” Haseloff told the German daily “Die Welt”. According to the German daily “Der Tagesspiegel,” the number of such attacks tripled in 2014, quoting statistics provided by the federal government at the request of the Left Party. According to these statistics, there were about 150 such attacks in 2014, 67 of them occurring in the last three months of the year. These figures were confirmed by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation (in collaboration with the human rights organization Pro Asyl). “Asylum seekers are currently the targets of racist and right-wing propaganda,” the organizations noted. The worst part is that it is happening in all of the German states. In 2014, more asylum seekers came to Germany than ever before.
Extreme-right groups have existed in Germany for a very long time. Those who deny the Holocaust and long for a system that divides people into races have their opinion. Germany also has people who want to ban the pill, or who believe in life after death and other things. A government like Merkel’s who is driving Germany further into crisis instead of leading us out of it has to hold on as the euro loses value and a once powerful alliance in Europe collapses. In short, politically motivated or other opinions must be permitted in a democracy, including those with opinions that are to the right of the CDU. Violence, however, is no solution, and will not lead to any sensible changes in Germany.
If the Right wants to make a meaningful contribution to democracy, then it is time it proposed a plan for solving some of Germany’s real problems. These are just a few asylum seekers who had to flee their homes in a country where the government lies to its people as a matter of course. To address this problem, the politically minded could do something other than tear each other apart, thus supporting the failed policies of Berlin which seek to cover up problems and celebrate them instead, even though there has long been nothing more to celebrate.
For Christians, Easter is the annual commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who overcame death as the son of God, according to the New Testament. It would be nice if this country would finally move beyond the trench warfare of democracy and take aim at those who are committing the real crimes. In the name of the people – and in the name of the Christian ethos. It doesn't add up. And that instils fear. Those who destroy, show their impotence, which frightens us all equally, but also equally affects us.