Similarly, her spokesman Steffen Seibert at the beginning of the week defended these curious fictional statements after the Saxon Attorney General had declared that there had been no such incidents in Chemnitz.
Saxony’s prime minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU), also contradicted the federal government on Wednesday. In his policy statement in the Saxon state parliament, he affirmed: “There was no mob, there was no hunt, there was no pogrom.”
On Monday Merkel continued her fake allegations and urged Germans to stand up against the “far right message of hate and division”, denouncing “xenophobic” protests.
And the German leader did not stop there. Her spokesperson doubled down, accusing the marchers of being “neo-Nazis”, saying that “violence-prone right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis” were undermining the “city’s cohesion”.
He added the citizens of Dresden should be ignored. “We must make that clear to them,” he said, that they are “not the people”.
The AfD reacted with indignation. “An entire state and its people are vilified here in general because there is a distinct and understandable resentment about the circumstances,” Jörg Meuthen said.
Conservative demonstrators vastly outnumbered Antifa counter-protesters and calls have grown for violence against conservatives by leftwing officials. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas urged Germans to go out and protest against “xenophobia”.
On Monday, left-leaning and anti-fascist punk bands, staged a free concert under the motto “there are more of us”. But the AfD has won strong support in the region with surveys suggesting that it is poised to become Saxony’s second biggest party in next year’s regional elections.
According to official information, on Monday evening 65 000 participants from other federal states were bussed in to a free concert against “right-wing agitation” and “racism”.
Organisers also advertised free Coca-Cola and free ice cream paid for by “imperialist capitalists” but the participants expressed no guilty conscience in swallowing down the free stuff.
Money donated will flow into “anti-fascist and anti-racist projects in Saxony”. Slogans like “Say it loud, say it clear: refugees are welcome here” and “No borders, no nations: stop deportations” were heard.
The participants of the alliance “Keep Chemnitz Nazi-free”, boasted that they had participated without the slightest financial support from the city of Chemnitz.
The Antifa from North Rhine-Westphalia recently made headlines because they attacked police officers with Molotov cocktails. Instead, the German broadcaster ARD’s Morgenmagazin on Tuesday announced happily that numerous “young democracy tourists” had indeed come to the concert in Chemnitz to advertise “from the third largest city in Saxony, good pictures around the world”.
No mention was made of the free stuff.
German political scientist Werner J. Patzelt has asked the federal government to clarify contradictions between their statement that there had been witch hunts against foreigners in Chemnitz, and the opposite statement of the police. “If the federal government claims something has been the case that the police and Attorney General say it was not, then citizens have a legitimate interest in knowing what’s really true,” Patzelt told German weekly Junge Freiheit.
