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Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke)
Photo: Martin Schutt / dpa
In the face of rising energy costs and inflation, the left is calling for protests on the streets - but is not entirely agreed on what this should look like.
Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow has now warned his party against making common cause with right-wing extremists.
He was referring to statements made by the parliamentary group's Eastern Commissioner, Sören Pellmann, who had called for "Monday demos in the East like back then against Hartz IV."
"The left fights for an effective protective shield over all options, in the Bundestag and Bundesrat," Ramelow told the editorial network Germany.
»In the case of social protests, please observe the rule of distance to right-wing extremist organizers.
The right-wingers were rightly criticized for usurping the symbolism of the Monday demonstrations.«
On Monday, Pellmann described the gas levy as a "blow against the East" and the "sharpest social cuts for citizens since the Hartz reforms of the 2000s".
He sits in the Bundestag as a member of parliament for the Leipzig II constituency and is the Eastern Commissioner for the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The East is particularly vulnerable to exploding energy prices due to lower income and reserves.
“For hundreds of thousands of East Germans, the gas levy is a slide into an existential crisis,” said Pellmann.
"People should fight back."
From GDR protest to Corona anger
The protests that took place during the Peaceful Revolution in the GDR are known as the Monday demonstrations.
From the fall of 1989, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Leipzig, among other places, every Monday.
They demanded an end to the SED rule and a democratic reorganization.
From 2004 there were also “Monday demonstrations” throughout Germany against Agenda 2010, which was decided by the SPD-led government at the time and included far-reaching state cuts in social services.
However, the name was already controversial at the time because of the reference to the GDR protests.
Especially since the refugee summer of 2015, the AfD and right-wing extremist groups have increasingly used the "Monday demos" for protests against immigration and, most recently, corona measures.
In addition to Pellmann, party leader Martin Schirdewan had called for protests against the planned gas levy.
Concerns that this could divide society, he rejected in the ARD "Tagesthemen": "Those who divide society are the parties represented in the federal government by implementing anti-social policies that are primarily at the expense of the majority of the population .
That there is displeasure among the population is quite natural.
We on the left are striving to organize a hot autumn against the social indifference of the federal government.«
mrc/dpa/AFP