German vice chancellor Sigmar Gabriel was attending an election campaign event in Salzgitter, Lower Saxony last Friday (Aug. 12) when a group of far-right protestors began heckling him, calling him a “race traitor”, among other things.
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His party has confirmed the authenticity of the video posted on Facebook by a youth group linked to the neo-Nazi NPD.
In a video of the incident published on Tuesday (17 August) one of the protesters goads Gabriel, who is also leader of the centre-left Social Democrat Party (SPD), about his father’s Nazi past: “Your father loved his country and what you are doing?”
After his father’s death, Gabriel openly condemned his actions and his Nazi ideology. Gabriel opened up about the relationship in an interview with Die Zeit (link in German) in 2013, saying he felt “almost unbridled anger” about the time in his life. “When I see something unfair, when injustice is being done to people, I can get properly worked up”.
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Gabriel’s party has become a strong target for far-right activists, following its support for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “open-door” response to the migration crisis. “You are destroying it”, a protester is heard shouting while referring to the late Walter Gabriel, a committed Nazi until his death in 2012.
