The SPD's social reform package ("Hartz IV") is really stirring up opposition. For the last several weeks, crowds have marched in various East German cities to register their dissatisfaction with the government's plans.
According to Deutsche Welle (in English), some 30 cities took part and the total numbers were in the tens of thousands; Reuter's story (also English) reports ten thousand in Magdeburg alone.
Wolfgang Thierse, the president of the German parliament, is supporting the protests, saying that the East Germans "have had good experience with this kind of protest in the past" and that "people in the East have a stronger sense of justice than those in the West." But there is some discussion about the use of the term "Montagsdemo" to describe these protests. The word is borrowed from the grass-roots movements of 1989 that eventually brought down the Wall, and some people feel that taking the term out of that specific original context diminishes the struggle against the Honnecker regime and the efforts of that movement.
And there's more that's making people nervous: some of these demos have been supported by neoNazi groups. I can't find any specifics on this yet, mostly it's just politicians speculating that the NPD and similar parties will profit from the public's general dissatisfaction. But the various websites that have been hastily launched to organize the marches give me the feeling that there are lots of groups working on the protests, and that these all just meet up together at a given time to form a more or less cohesive group. And since this is all about protesting the government, among these are "extreme" groups on both the right and the left.
Posted by Heather at August 9, 2004 04:48 PM
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