Germany’s extreme right targets gay pride

BERLIN — Extreme-right groups in Germany are increasingly targeting LGBTQ+ people as part of a systematic effort to gain popularity and win new recruits.

Right-wing extremists have mobilized against Pride events scheduled for this summer, planning counter demonstrations that purport to celebrate traditional, heterosexual relationships. It’s a message, experts say, that is drawing a growing number of young Germans to the extreme right.

In the eastern German town of Bautzen, organizers of a local Pride parade set to take place in August are preparing for a large counter demonstration of right-wing extremists, many of them teenagers. “Man and woman. The true foundation of life,” reads an online post advertising one of the protests.

Organizers of the Pride event, which celebrates Christopher Street Day (CSD) — a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City that became a catalyst for the international gay rights movement — say participants face threats and intimidation.

 “The threats are much harsher online because of the supposed anonymity,” said Lea Krause, one of the CSD parade organizers in Bautzen. “But it’s tough on the street too, simply because you’re face to face with people. And they know exactly who you are, and you also know who they are.”

German federal police say CSD events — of which there are some 200 scheduled across Germany during the spring and summer — are increasingly targeted by neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups. Since the middle of last year, “new youth groups have emerged in the right-wing scene” that target the CSD events, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office said in an emailed statement.

A CSD parade in the Bavarian city of Regensburg planned for July had to be rescheduled due to threats against its organizers. In the small eastern German city of Wernigerode, a 20-year-old man allegedly threatened to open fire on the local CSD event. Police later found ammunition at the suspect’s house, according to media reports. At a CSD parade in June on the outskirts of Berlin, police said they prevented a violent attack on participants amid a counter-demonstration planned by a right-wing extremist group.

During last year’s CSD parade in Bautzen, nearly 700 right-wing extremists gathered to disrupt the celebration, which drew about 1,000 people amid a heavy police presence. Many of the counter-demonstrators were minors, according to a report from regional domestic intelligence authorities.

“I’ve had enough, enough of this Pride month, enough of all the rainbow flags hanging everywhere: on schools, town halls, even in the German armed forces,” Dan-Odin Wölfer, a member of the extreme-right group organizing the counter-demonstration in Bautzen this year, said in an online video. The month, he went on, “doesn’t belong to the rainbow. It belongs to us. It belongs to the people who built this country, who stand up, work and fight every day for their families, for their homeland. We are proud of our country.”

Krause, the CSD event organizer in Bautzen, said she’s confident the police will be able to protect this year’s march, but feared extreme-right violence on the sidelines. Traveling to and from the event alone or in small groups, she said, “is of course dangerous.”

The extreme right’s alternative pride

The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say.

Extreme-right crimes surged by nearly 50 percent last year, according to police figures. “We have to realize that in society as a whole, and among a share of young people, we see a shift to the right and an increase in the acceptance of violence,” Holger Münch, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, told reporters when presenting the crime statistics in May.

At the same time, Germany’s far right is increasingly turning its focus to gay pride, rebranding Pride month as Stolzmonat, with a focus on the traditional family and national pride.

“Stolzmonat is an alternative that seeks to consciously counter the forced change … setting an example of traditional values, family ties and stability in uncertain times,” reads a statement on the website of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Domestic intelligence authorities there classify the party branch as extremist.

The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say. | Clemens Bilan/EPA

“For a long time, the German far right focused on migration, Islam, EU skepticism and the coronavirus,” said Sabine Volk, a researcher at the Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism at the University of Tübingen. “But in the aftermath of the pandemic, we have seen an increased focus on queer-phobia, anti-LGBTQ+ discourse and, since last year, protest activities.”

Such discourse is particularly effective at radicalizing young men who don’t start out identifying with right-wing extremist ideology, Volk said. Recruiting often happens within seemingly apolitical organizations, including at combat sports and mixed martial arts clubs.

“If organizations are not clearly attributable to the far-right spectrum, that seems to make them more attractive to young people who are not necessarily attracted to a party, but to a shared experience,” Volk said.

In those settings, extreme-right activists often begin radicalizing young people by promoting what they portray as traditional values.

Organizers of the extreme-right counter-demonstration in the eastern German town of Bautzen, for instance, say the event is about upholding “the family as the core of our community” and “respect for the natural order.”

Krause, Bautzen’s CSD event organizer, said she expected the counter-demonstration to be bigger this year. At the same time, she believes the CSD parade itself will draw many more participants.

“It is very nice to see that some people in Bautzen really want to go through with this,” Krause said. “We are very, very brave and empowered to keep on going.”