Germany’s pride month celebrations were accompanied by alt-right backlash and lack of support from the country’s leaders this year. In late June, German parliament president Julia Klöckner banned rainbow flags from being raised atop the legislature’s building during pride. Lawmakers have also been directed to remove rainbow flags and stickers from office doors.
Klöckner has also banned parliamentary public servants from attending Pride in any official capacity, according to reports from NPR. She has justified her policy changes with her goal of remaining “neutral” even “if that sometimes hurts,” Tagesschau reports. Chancellor Friedrich Merz backed Klöckner’s decision not to raise the Pride flag at parliament saying “The Bundestag is not a circus tent.”
In Germany, Pride is celebrated in big cities and small towns between June 28 and July 27. This year, Pride marches and parties saw ample opposition from alt-right groups pushing traditional family values. Already this year, 17 far-right anti-Pride demonstrations have taken place in Germany, according to the extremist-monitoring organization the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy.
Threats in some cities were so severe, pride events were canceled. According to WDR, residents in the town of Gelsenkirchen were organizing to stage a peaceful Pride parade in May, with 600 expected participants when it was canceled citing safety concerns. Eventually, the parade went on but only saw a 100-person turnout.
A researcher from the Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism at the University of Tübingen, Sabine Volk, told NPR that far-right groups lure in young men who support “traditional family values.” Plus, a federal police report finds that anti-LGBTQ hate crimes have increased tenfold since 2010, though the majority of cases are still believed to go unreported.
On Christopher Street Day, a name which nods to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, cities like Berlin still showed out for Pride this year. Tens of thousands of LGBTQ+ people, families and allies attended this year’s march in the capital.
