As of: January 23, 2024, 5:16 a.m
By: Bettina Menzel
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View of the crowd on Friday (January 19) in Hamburg: Around 80,000 demonstrators gathered to protest against the AfD's views, which were perceived as anti-human.
© IMAGO/Milad J. Panah/Middle East Images
Over a million demonstrators against the right: That doesn't fit into the narrative of AfD politician Björn Höcke.
He therefore spreads “fake news” online – and is promptly corrected.
Hamburg – According to organizers, over a million people took to the streets against right-wing extremism in Germany over the weekend.
The reason was the revelations about a secret meeting between AfD officials and Nazis last November.
The AfD is facing headwinds, but right-wing extremist AfD politician Björn Höcke apparently doesn't want to believe that.
On the platform
Right-wing extremist AfD politician Björn Höcke spreads fake news – and is corrected by X
The photo taken by the German Press Agency (dpa) shows demonstrators in Hamburg walking across a bridge.
“Ordered masses are demonstrating against the AfD,” Höcke commented on the event, insinuating that the protesters had no beliefs of their own, but were simply carrying out a “commissioned job”.
“But there are now numerous cases of image manipulation in the images published in the media,” the politician continues.
In the contribution by the chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Thuringian state parliament, a white-framed rectangle can be seen that is supposed to show demonstrators standing “in the Alster”.
This should indicate image editing.
“Where is the fact check?” demands Höcke on X.
The online correction followed promptly.
Because everything is just a question of perspective: “The picture in the post above shows no evidence of manipulation.
“It was shot from a lower angle, obscuring the body of water from the crowd,” the context for the shot provided by X reads.
The image was an original dpa photo, “which of course has not been manipulated,” the dpa also confirmed in a statement.
“Mr. Höcke discovers the secrets of perspective.
That's a little more difficult for him because so far he only knew his own," commented one user ironically under the news agency's counter-statement.
Björn Höcke is apparently trying to take advantage of growing media skepticism
With his populist statements on
In 2022, the German population's trust in the media fell slightly, as shown by the long-term study on media trust by the University of Mainz.
Trust in public broadcasting in particular has fallen and is at its lowest level since the study began in 2015, it said.
But facts are facts: the crowds can be clearly seen in numerous drone videos from various sources, such as the blog
Volksverpetzer
on X shows.
In Hamburg the crowds were so large that the protests had to be stopped for security reasons.
Including the demonstrations on Friday and Saturday, organizers calculated a total of 1.4 million participants.
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a video message about the demonstrations: “These people give us all courage.” They defend “our republic and our basic law against its enemies.”
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