Tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets of Germany again on Sunday to protest against the far-right AfD party and its radical ideology, which mobilized on an unprecedented scale across the country last week, AFP reported.

Rallies have been announced in about forty cities (Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Cologne, etc.), as well as in much smaller cities. A demonstration is also planned in Dresden, the capital of the state of Saxony, a stronghold of the anti-migrant and anti-government Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

More than 100,000 people have already taken to the streets on Saturday in dozens of cities, and the public television channel ARD estimated the number of demonstrators from all over the country at 250,000.

The mobilization reflects the shock caused by the revelation on January 10 by the German media investigator Correctiv of a meeting of extremists in Potsdam, near Berlin, where a mass deportation of foreigners or people of foreign origin was planned in November. .

Home Secretary Nancy Feather went so far as to tell the press that the meeting was reminiscent of the “horrific Wannsee Conference” at which the Nazis planned to exterminate European Jewry in 1942.

Among the participants were the figure of the radical self-identity movement Austrian Martin Zellner and members of the AfD.

According to Correctiv, Martin Zellner presented a plan to send up to 2 million people – asylum seekers, foreigners and unassimilated German citizens – back to North Africa.

The revelation shook Germany at a time when the AfD is steadily gaining ground in opinion polls, just months before three key regional elections in the country’s east, where the desire to vote for the far-right party is even higher than in the rest of the country.

They mobilized football and the church

The anti-immigration movement confirmed the presence of its members at the meeting, but denied that they signed up to the “remigration” project presented by Martin Sellner.

Several political leaders, including Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended a demonstration late last week, stressed that any project to deport people of foreign origin is an attack on democracy.

Scholz urged “everyone to stand up for unity, for tolerance, for our democratic Germany.”

“The Republic is rising,” commented the Spiegel weekly on its website after Saturday’s demonstrations. Demonstrations against the AfD have taken place every day for the past week. About a hundred rallies were planned from Friday to Sunday.

“Down with Nazis” and “No place for Nazis” were the words on the placards of demonstrators in Frankfurt, Germany’s financial capital, where some 35,000 people took to the streets on Saturday.

Politicians, religious representatives and coaches of the Bundesliga, Germany’s soccer championship, have called on the population to mobilize against the party, which is currently leading the polls.

The AfD continues to grow

In recent months, the AfD has benefited from public discontent caused by a new influx of immigrants into the country and the ongoing disputes between the three parties in the ruling coalition amid an economic recession and high inflation.

The far-right party, which entered parliament in 2017, is firmly entrenched in second place in the polls (around 22%) behind the conservatives, while Olaf Scholz’s government coalition with environmentalists and liberals faces a record low in confidence.

In its strongholds in the former GDR, the AfD tops opinion polls with more than 30%.

Six months before the European elections, several EU countries faced a wave of far-right voters, which could upset the balance of power in the European Parliament.