The children came colourfully dressed to the family festival. They tumbled around an inflatable bounce house and in neon-coloured sacks, wearing face paint and bright smiles.
Scattered amid the children’s games and guitar-strumming folk singers, though, were unwelcoming messages.
“Stop the asylum flood” on a brochure. “Asylum traitors not welcome” on a T-shirt. “White Power” on an album.
This was the eighth annual Eichsfeld Day, a gathering of the National Democratic Party, which is a political party of avowed neo-Nazis better known as the NPD.
Recent violent demonstrations in the eastern German city of Chemnitz drew worldwide attention.
September 2018: Members of the right-wing populist movement 'Pro Chemnitz' march through the city. Source: AAP
In Germany, they set off a new round of soul-searching over identity, immigration and an emboldened far right.
But the festival here in Leinefelde, in the centre of the country, is telling of the quieter inroads being made by right-wing enthusiasts who preach an anti-immigrant, pro-white gospel.
As Germany has taken in more than a million refugees since 2015, German right-wing extremists are holding more open-air events, mostly rock concerts, in small towns throughout the country.
They hope to spread their message, recruit supporters and show their power.
Vendors sell souvenirs at booths during the eighth annual Eichsfeld Day, organised by the National Democratic Party. Source: Mauricio Lima/The New York Times
“It’s spreading an ideological message through music and speeches,” said Katharina König-Preuss, a left-wing member of the Parliament in Thuringia, the German state that contains Leinefelde and that has seen most of the events. “At the very least, the music and the speeches indirectly encourage hate and contempt for certain people.”
As a black man, I would be among those people.
Covering race for The New York Times, I was curious what the far-right events were trying to accomplish and what the openness with which they were occurring might tell us about German society.
Leinefelde, with 9,000 residents who saw better days before the local textile factory shut down after the reunification of East and West Germany, has been torn over how to handle the festival.
Some people avoid it.
“I’m just scared,” said Margit, a 68-year-old resident, explaining that she wanted nothing to do with the festival because of the seeming menace of a gathering of Nazi sympathisers in her small community. She declined to give her last name for that very reason.
In past years, Eichsfeld Day, named after the district where it takes place, attracted as many as 800 people.
This year, only about 200 came, in part because many far-right sympathisers instead went to a huge demonstration in Chemnitz on the same day. And unlike previous years, there was no rock concert this time, just a family festival.
“We wanted to be closer to the people,” said Rene Schneemann, the deputy head of the NPD in Eichsfeld. “The people don’t necessarily like this far-right rock music. So it is better to do something that appeals to families.”
Schneemann stood behind a table of leaflets. One of them argued that most asylum-seekers brought crime and wanted to live off taxpayer money, an argument heard frequently around Germany.
CDs and books on sale at a booth during the eighth annual Eichsfeld Day. Source: Mauricio Lima/The New York Times
Closer in, you could find more radical views.
The police, as is customary, briefly escorted reporters around the festival. Walking around, I felt like a zoo animal. All eyes on me. Smirks, whispers and gawks through cellphone cameras.
Amid the albums by neo-Nazi bands for sale was one with a cover depicting a cartoon of a black man with his arms around a white woman, and three white men glaring menacingly. “Guess who’s staying for breakfast,” it read.
Then I spotted a man wearing a Confederate battle flag T-shirt. Why the flag, I asked.
“That’s to show our solidarity with the American South,” he said.
Supporting the Confederacy is about standing in unity with the South’s desire for independence, said another man at the record stand, who gave only his first name, Stephan.
The music and the speeches indirectly encourage hate and contempt for certain people. Katharina König-Preuss
“Not that we are all against” black people, he said, using an anti-black slur. “That was also a free state that was invaded by the North.”
But, in fact, Stephan, 37, later told me that he thought negatively of black people.
“Whenever someone says to me, ‘You are racist,’ I say, ‘Yeah, I am racist,'” he said. “Do I have something against black people? At the moment, yes, I have to, unfortunately, say, even though you are black.”
Racism was not about the individual person, said Stephan, who withheld his last name for fear of the consequences that come with his beliefs. It stemmed, rather, from letting refugees into the country.
“Right now, it’s like this for me: When I drive through the city, I see black people and immediately — pooh,” he said, spitting on the ground. “I’m filled with hate because there’s always more and more coming. I am not at home when everyone looks different than me.”
There were at least 289 far-right events in Germany last year, the most since 2005, and a continuation of a steady increase since 2014, according to an analysis of government data by the news magazine Der Spiegel.
Demonstrators gather in front of an apartment building just outside the eighth annual Eichsfeld Day. Source: Mauricio Lima/The New York Times
Germans seem in general agreement that people are entitled to radical opinions. But what causes those opinions, and what to do in response, is a point of contention.
“As a foreigner, I would say that we can’t let ourselves be provoked,” said Yasar Gunduz, 39, a Turkish immigrant, from the kebab restaurant he owns a few hundred yards from where the festival was held.
Organisers of far-right events typically register them as political gatherings, making it almost impossible for public officials to prevent them because of Germany’s laws on freedom of assembly.
Yet to Georg Maier, Thuringia’s domestic minister, local officials should use every tool available, including noise ordinances and child protection regulations, to try to stop far-right events.
“Much more important is that there are protests, that the German people stand up, resist and say, ‘We do not want this,'” said Maier, a member of the centre-left Social Democrat party, as he marched with counterprotesters during the NPD event.
