Up to 400 people with right-wing extremist views gathered in the eastern German city to protest against the much larger LGBTQ+ parade. The police spoke of “partly aggressive or militant behavior” and the protest was broken up.

17 August 2024 | Deutsche Welle

Right-wing extremist demonstrators gathered at Leipzig Central Station on Saturday | Image: Sebastian Willnow/dpa/picture alliance

Neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists held a short demonstration near a Pride event in Germany’s eastern city of Leipzig on Saturday, the second such counter-demonstrator within a week.

The march was organized to be within earshot of the 19,000-strong Pride Parade in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) community.

According to police, around 300 to 400 people took part in the rally of right-wing extremist politicians at the main train station. The motto was: “Proud, German, national.”

Several violations of the criminal code and the right of assembly were identified, the Saxon police wrote in a thread on X (formerly Twitter).

The participants of the right-wing extremist rally showed “behavior typical of a rally and in some cases aggressive or militant” upon their arrival, it said.

The neo-Nazi march was broken up after a short time. Several hundred participants were temporarily taken into custody “in order to carry out all criminal procedural measures,” the Saxon police said.

The demonstrators were subjected to identity checks and searched for dangerous objects.

Meanwhile, Saturday’s Pride event in Leipzig attracted a crowd of up to 19,000 people, police wrote on X. Participants gathered at Augustusplatz, a large square in the east of the city.

High-ranking German politicians and leaders of the LGBT+ community showed their support, including Vice President of the Bundestag Katrin Göring-Eckardt and the Federal Government’s Queer Commissioner Sven Lehmann.

Known in Germany as Christopher Street Day, Pride rallies are held in several cities each year to commemorate the civil rights movement that began a decades-long process of improving LGBTQ rights.

In 1969, a civil rights uprising against police discrimination in New York took place in the gay bar Stonewall on Christopher Street.

The alliance “Leipzig shows attitude” had also registered several counter-demonstrations under the motto “No place for Nazis”.

Last Saturday, August 10, nearly 700 far-right demonstrators organized a march during a Pride rally in Bautzen, a city in the state of Saxony like Leipzig, which led to a large police presence.

The counter-protest was entitled “Against gender propaganda and identity confusion!” The small right-wing extremist party Free Saxony also protested.

The demonstrations took place without major incidents or arrests, police said.

The rights of LGBTQ people are seen as being under threat from the rise of the far right, particularly in three eastern German states that will hold elections next month to elect their regional parliamentarians.

The extreme right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is well on its way to making significant gains in the state elections on 1 September in Thuringia and Saxony and on 22 September in Brandenburg.

Sahra Wagenknecht’s new far-left party, named after the populist MP and breakaway from the Left Party, will make its electoral debut and a good result is also expected.