Speech given at the rally "No AfD pub in Johannisstraße", organized by the anti-fascist participatory campaign "Take away the spaces from the right-wingers" on August 21, 2026. Approximately 200 people participated in the rally. ---- We are standing here today in front of the Johannisbierstube and protesting against the fact that the landlord, Markus Kemper, gladly makes his pub available to the AfD for networking evenings and regular meetings.
There are certainly nicer things to do on a Friday evening. And there are definitely better pubs where you can drink your beer. Because Markus Kemper not only likes to host staunch patriots, he's himself a member of the AfD and is running for city council for them.That many Osnabrück residents are fed up with having a right-wing pub in their neighborhood is evident not only from our rally today. Over the past few years, our campaign, and thanks to the efforts of numerous anti-fascists, has repeatedly succeeded in forcing the AfD to lose its meeting venues and ensuring their pathetic information booths around town were met with loud counter-protests. We can be proud of this, but it doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels. The fact that Kemper hasn't learned from the experiences of other pub owners and is throwing the AfD out demonstrates just that. Now he's a member of this far-right party himself. This might make it harder to explain to him that the other pub owners also had bad experiences by providing their premises to the AfD, but it doesn't change our commitment. Convincing someone who gets worked up about "queer pedestrian crossing symbols" on Telegram might not be so easy after all...
Our focus shouldn't be solely on the pub and the landlord, however. Antifascist practice must also involve informing many more people about the right-wing activities at the Johannisbierstube, further politicizing the often-expressed discontent, and encouraging each other to take action. While it's right to personally oppose the AfD, this stance must also be visibly expressed. The more present, noticeable, and approachable we become-for ourselves and for large segments of Osnabrück's society-the narrower the space the AfD tries to claim for itself. Opposition is needed in everyday life, at work, at the bar. It is our duty, the duty of each and every one of us, to always and everywhere contradict right-wing slogans, to confront the right wing directly, to deprive them of spaces and thus the opportunity to organize, and to stand up for a free, emancipatory society.
Because if this doesn't happen, the fascists will feel emboldened, become more dominant and self-assured, and put their ideology into practice. We can, indeed we must, intervene. We all need to make it clear to them that their actions have consequences - and we need to do so early on. We cannot afford the supposed luxury of believing that we have no right-wing extremists in Osnabrück and resting on our laurels. Relying on the state or the police is simply negligent, short-sighted, and shifts our own responsibility to society onto a state and its executive branch, which is itself part of the problem, not the solution.
This weekend marks the 34th anniversary of the Rostock-Lichtenhagen pogrom. Many of those standing here protesting today were too young to have witnessed what happened there. For several days in August 1992, organized and unorganized fascists, as well as citizens swept up in the nationalistic fervor of reunification, attacked the Sonnenblumenhaus (Sunflower House) in Rostock-Lichtenhagen. This housed Vietnamese contract workers and their families. Many people who sought asylum in Germany in the early 1990s were not adequately housed, were left to fend for themselves by cities, municipalities, and the state, and were forced to sleep outdoors because they were not provided with permanent, dignified accommodation.
Right-wing parties and inflammatory media coverage fueled racism in German society during those years, including in Rostock. The hate speech and articles culminated between August 22nd and 26th, targeting the people in and around the Sunflower House. Molotov cocktails were thrown, and people were driven onto the roof by flames and stones thrown at the building. It was only by a miracle that no one died in this pogrom, unlike in the right-wing extremist, racist attacks in the West German cities of Mölln, Lübeck, and Solingen in 1992/93, in which a total of 18 people died and many were seriously injured.
The police made no attempt to prevent worse events in Rostock-Lichtenhagen; they retreated before the right-wing mob and the 3,000 citizens who applauded them. Antifa activists traveled to Rostock from Hamburg and Berlin, among other places, positioned themselves in front of the building, repeatedly pushing back the fascists, only to be subsequently chased and imprisoned by the police.
The situation in the early 1990s cannot simply be equated with today's; in some respects, it even looks worse. With the AfD, we have a fascist party that has established itself, and worldwide we are dealing with a rise in right-wing politics and reactionary movements.
Then as now, it is not enough to focus solely on the pogroms, arson attacks, and fascist assaults; the circumstances and conditions in which they occurred and continue to occur must not be ignored. The Rostock-Lichtenhagen attacks were preceded by massive media propaganda; the right to asylum, which in West Germany as the successor state to the Nazi regime was still quite liberal, was no longer desired. Fordism was over, and people were increasingly migrating out of abject poverty. Above all, with the end of real socialism, the primary justification for the right to asylum simply disappeared. West Germany no longer had to present itself as progressive, nor did it have to accept perceived or actual opponents of the systemic rivalry; that system was history.
The strictest restrictions on asylum law to date were also a reaction by the state to right-wing extremist pogroms and arson attacks. These tightened restrictions were deliberate decisions; the center-right coalition knowingly and effectively complied with the demands of the right wing and patriots. The acts themselves, then as now, did not occur in a vacuum. Besides actual crises, which hit our class, the wage earners, the hardest, it is also the social climate-the shifting of what can be said, the turning a blind eye and normalizing right-wing statements and policies-that paves the way for attacks on people. Attacks and pogroms are the consequences of all this.
To see the AfD solely as a problem of the existing order would mean adopting precisely this narrow perspective. The AfD is an expression of the conditions and crises we face. It is no coincidence that the global economic crisis of 2007/2008 occurred five years before the AfD's founding. The promises of happiness made by neoliberalism were exposed, and everyone was reminded how bourgeois parties and governments shift the burden of the crisis onto our class. The founding of the AfD, which initially presented itself primarily as critical of the EU and the Euros, was not a break with the existing order. Rather, from the outset, the AfD's founders were concerned with strengthening "their nation," with implementing the cutthroat, cutthroat approach inherent in capitalism, regardless of how many people were crushed in the process. Incidentally, this does not place them outside the so-called democratic center. The current policies of the federal government are quite adept at implementing precisely this approach today, be it attacks on people who work part-time, those seeking protection and asylum, or pensioners and future pensioners. To justify all these attacks on our class by claiming that the CDU, SPD, or whichever party is currently in government is driven to this action by the AfD merely shifts responsibility away from political decision-makers and makes the AfD appear as the only opposition. The world wasn't a good place, Germany wasn't a good nation without the AfD - that's simplistic ideology, and yet it's right and necessary to stand up against the AfD. Because, 1. it should be clear to everyone that things will get even worse for queer people, migrants, the poor, and the homeless with the AfD in government. Both the government and the AfD are currently using the leverage of attacking marginalized groups to effectively undermine something like class solidarity. No one here is worse off because people receive pensions or an asylum shelter is opened somewhere. 2. Precisely because the AfD's platform politicizes abstract anger at these conditions, the AfD must be exposed as a false, sham opposition to them. The AfD's offer to people is not material improvement, but rather the widening of the social divide. "There are people below you you can trample all over," one could say, in a simplified way. If that's the case, then it's a completely wrong strategy for the left to demonize anger and hatred per se; rather, the goal should be to undermine the AfD. This is best achieved through concrete social struggles: strikes, housing disputes, and thus through political organizing along class lines and along interest lines. The AfD, with its "people versus elite" program, wants nothing to do with this. For them, classes don't exist.
To appeal to the state and ask it to ban the AfD only reveals a blindness to the realities of capitalism and bourgeois governments that ultimately underlie the AfD, its role in isolation, the erosion of solidarity, reactionary forces, and the rightward shift. In other words: the AfD cannot be explained in isolation and therefore cannot be combated solely on its own.
Therefore, for our own good, the good of our communities, the good of our colleagues and friends, we must take action ourselves. This commitment cannot be a one-off attendance at a rally, however much we are happy to see you all here. Only collectively, only consistently, with resistance and organization, can we put an end to the current situation and the AfD in the long run. Not voting for the AfD in three weeks does not guarantee a good life for everyone. Join the campaign and organize yourselves, show solidarity and compassion for one another. Fighting the AfD also means getting involved in networks, groups, and structures where, together, we not only resolutely push back and try to prevent right-wing echo chambers, but also counteract isolation and a lack of solidarity. That is why we are here today and every other day. Even at the bar.
Let's grow in numbers, let's raise our voices, and let's fight with determination! Antifa on the offensive! Down with the AfD! For a good life for all!
https://likos.noblogs.org/2026/08/22/die-afd-laesst-sich-nicht-aus-sich-selbst-erklaeren-redebeitrag/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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