Chaos In Germany, Frankfurt In Flames: Anti-Austerity Rally Turns Violent

Barricades and cars were set on fire, almost 100 cops were injured, and fire-fighters, a police station and the Old Opera House were attacked by aggressive anti-austerity protesters in Germany. Police used water cannons to disperse the angry protesters near the new headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, arrested five for violent acts against police and detained another 500 for questioning.

Thousands of anti-capitalist protesters, marching under the banner of leftist alliance Blockupy (named after the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011), a coalition of more than 90 groups from across Europe, were targeting ECB headquarters, the newly built billion-dollar 185-meter skyscraper, as a symbol of capitalism and for its role in restrictive austerity measures, like lowering government spending and other debt-reduction methods, in financially-troubled countries that has resulted in increasing unemployment and stunting economic growth.

Well.. #18M #Blockupy pic.twitter.com/jqWWMNsAHW

— Tina (@TnaKng) March 18, 2015

The protest comes as Greece’s new government, led by the anti-austerity party Syriza, struggles to negotiate a reform deal with the rest of the eurozone, which is a prerequisite to unlocking further financial aid to the country. The activists in Frankfurt blamed ECB for enforcing policies that are impoverishing parts of Europe, including Greece.

Organizers accused the police of sparking the violence saying they set up a “civil war type scenario” to provoke protesters. “This is not what Blockupy planned,”spokesman Hendrik Wester said. “Blockupy is clearly against violence. Obviously, there are people that go against what we intended for this day. It is not what we planned, but it shows people are very angry about the austerity policies,” Frauke Distelrath, a Blockupy spokeswoman, added. ECB President Mario Draghi addressed the demonstrators in his speech at the opening ceremony. “European unity is being strained. People are going through very difficult times. There are some, like many of the protesters outside today, who believe the problem is that Europe is doing too little. But the euro area is not a political union of the sort where some countries permanently pay for others. It has always been understood that countries have to be able to stand on their own two feet – that each is responsible for its own policies. The fact that some had to go through a difficult period of adjustment was therefore not a choice that was imposed on them. It was a consequence of their past decisions”. According to noted Economist Thomas Piketty, European countries tried to get rid of their deficits too quickly, resulting in a situation where “their citizens have suffered the consequences in the shape of austerity policies. It’s good to reduce deficits, but at a rate that’s commensurate with growth and economic recovery, but here growth has been killed off”.

He pointed out that at the end of the Second World War, France and Germany’s debt was 200% of GDP, “when there was no such thing as public debt”. “It’s incredible. It’s an act of historical amnesia to tell southern European countries that they have to pay all their debt, down to the last cent, with zero inflation,” Piketty added.

Economist Richard D. Wolff has stated that instead of cutting government programs and raising taxes, austerity should be attained by collecting from non-profit multinational corporations, churches, and private tax-exempt institutions such as universities, which currently pay no taxes at all.

“They want capitalism without democracy; we want democracy without capitalism.” #Blockupy #BlockupyFrankfurt #ECB pic.twitter.com/P4QMwhIkKU — Jerome Roos (@JeromeRoos) March 18, 2015

The more powerful the financial firm, the more invisible they are. ‘Vampire Squid’ @GoldmanSachs Fleet St. #Blockupy pic.twitter.com/wkMIKDj61f

— Debt Resistance UK (@DebtResistUK) March 18, 2015

Powerful message. #blockupy pic.twitter.com/rKra2deZ8J (v @bruckmiller) — Stop The Wars (@sickjew) March 18, 2015