Fireworks, water cannon and flying fists outside the AfD youth congress

Dear Reader,

At the weekend, the AfD gathered at a conference centre in the town of Gießen in Hessen to found a new youth organisation after the domestic intelligence service classified their previous one as “confirmed right-wing extremist.”

However, the event began hours late after thousands of demonstrators tried to prevent it from taking place. Protesters turned up in the early hours to block the roads into the town in an effort to stop AfD delegates from reaching the congress hall. According to some reports, they even set up their own checkpoints to try to ensure that delegates couldn’t reach the venue on foot.

A huge police operation was organised to deal with the protests. Some 6,000 officers were brought in from across the country to secure the venue and break up attempts to block people’s entry. And the police came down hard on the blockaders. Video shows police units charging down the autobahn at a wall of protesters before striking them with batons; other footage shows police s…