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 soaking seated protesters with a water cannon in freezing temperatures.
In the city itself, an AfD lawmaker was knocked to the floor by a group of masked men as he attempted to reach the venue on foot. He was left with bruising on his face. Meanwhile, protesters at the officially sanctioned anti-AfD protest were whipped up into a frenzy against journalists who they saw to be “on the wrong side.” Paul Ronzheimer, deputy editor of Bild Zeitung, was encircled by a crowd who shouted “Nazis out” and followed him through the streets. Ronzheimer said that a speaker on the stage recognised him and encouraged the crowd to go after him. Another TV crew was physically attacked.
Around 50 police officers were injured over the course of the day as protesters attacked them with bottles and fireworks.
When things did eventually get going inside the conference hall, the new AfD youth movement – named Generation Deutschland – elected Jean-Pascal Hohm as its leader. The AfD leadership disbanded the old youth movement and set up a new one in order to try to moderate it. But Hohm appears no less radical than his predecessors. He has close links to the Identitarian Movement – which advocates an ethnically pure Germany – and personally advocates “remigrating millions of people.”
The AfD proper has listed the Identitarian Movement as a group it refuses to cooperate with. But speakers at the youth assembly rejected such red lines. “A central principle must be: We do not distance ourselves from those who fight for the same goals as us outside the party structures,” one member of the new youth leadership cadre said on stage.
What has the reaction been?
Hessen’s state interior minister Roman Poseck (CDU) painted a dire scenario for what would have happened had the police not been deployed in such large numbers. Only the massive police deployment prevented “extremely violent acts and civil-war-like conditions,” he claimed.
“Violence is never a legitimate means of political debate. Regardless of who it is directed against, regardless of the motivation behind it, we must urgently return to non-violence in our debates,” he pleaded.
AfD leader Alice Weidel also used the words “civil war” to describe the scenes that faced her party. Left-wing extremists, she said, were “testing a seizure of power and a civil war by seeing whether they can arbitrarily decide who is allowed to live out their constitutional rights and who is not.”
On the other side, the protest movement said that such “civil disobedience” was forced upon them by a weak state.
“Today we saw once again that we cannot rely on the state in the fight against fascism,” Laura Wolf, a spokeswoman for the protest organisation Widersetzen, said. “The police punched the way free for the fascists.”
Left-wing daily Taz also cheered on the more radical elements of the protest movement. “Thank you, Antifa! If there is anything to criticise about this weekend’s protests, it is the completely excessive police violence and the state’s protection of right-wing extremists,” the newspaper claimed.
Meanwhile, reactions to the new AfD youth movement were largely unanimous across mainstream outlets. Die Welt, a conservative publication, noted that the youth movement “has been professionalised but it hasn’t been moderated.” Taz suggested its real name should be the Höcke Youth – a reference to AfD leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, a man notorious for using banned Nazi slogans in his speeches.
What happens next?
The protesters have promised to keep up their blockades of AfD events. Their next big target is the AfD national congress in the city of Erfurt next July. “We are growing in numbers every time, and the blockades are getting longer every time,” protest organiser Laura Wolf boasted, adding that “fascism is not an opinion, but a crime. We cannot wait until the AfD is banned.”
With the AfD set for large vote increases in four state elections next year, the potential for more unrest is considerable.
Among young voters, the AfD is the second most popular party behind the hard-left Die Linke. Both are skilled at using social media and will use footage from Gießen to reinforce their apocalyptic narratives of a country on the verge of either left- or right-wing totalitarianism.
Jörg’s take
Breaking the law to defend the law — that is the paradoxical justification of left-wing groups for their attempts to block AfD political events. Convinced that 1933 is on the verge of being repeated — and that the state is standing idly by and watching — they see themselves as the last line of defence against fascism.
The conviction that the state is quietly enabling fascism is leading to increasing radicalism on the left. As I reported in my last newsletter, a left-wing vigilante group called the “hammer gang” has brutally attacked people they believe to be far-right because they don’t think that the state is doing enough to clamp down on them.
In reality, the police in Gießen were upholding one of the most central tenets of a free society — the right to freedom of assembly. It is imperative that they keep applying this rule neutrally.
The simple fact is that a guardrail against a re-emergence of fascism already exists — and it’s not called Antifa. The Grundgesetz — Germany’s constitution — enshrines human dignity, democracy, and the separation of powers as unalterable foundations of the political system. The Constitutional Court — entrusted with interpreting the constitution — might move with the times on issues such as abortion or climate change, but it can never ignore the constitution’s most essential articles. Even if the AfD were to gain an absolute majority in the Bundestag (a highly unlikely scenario) they can’t rewrite the constitution.
The biggest risk to Germany isn’t a capture of the system from within — as happened in 1933 — it is a breakdown of the state’s control of the streets.
Last weeks poll: Are the AfD trying to rehabilitate the Nazis?
Yes - 59%
No - 40%
Picture of the week
News in Brief
🗳️ The Bundestag’s Election Review Committee is expected to reject a request by the BSW to have February’s federal election recounted. The party missed out on seats in the Bundestag by fewer than 10,000 votes — the tightest margin in the history of German elections. The BSW had alleged irregularities in the vote count, while party leader Sahra Wagenknecht fuelled suspicions of a “stop-the-steal” style effort to deny her pro-Russia party a mandate. Once the committee’s decision is confirmed, Wagenknecht’s party can appeal to the Constitutional Court.
👴 A conflict within the CDU over whether to back a pension reform that will cost taxpayers upwards of €100 billion is going down to the wire. The Bundestag will vote on the reform on Friday, with younger CDU legislators — who argue their generation will bear the cost — still refusing to say whether they will support it. Speaking to CDU MPs, Chancellor Friedrich Merz reportedly warned that “if we don’t stick together on Friday we will destabilise our country and Europe.” Merz commands a majority of just 12 seats. The chancellor has effectively staked the future of his coalition on the reform passing — a tactic that has angered backbenchers but may prove successful.
👮 The federal police are significantly expanding their capacity to counter hostile drones. Interior minister Alexander Dobrindt has formally launched a new specialist unit tasked with detecting, intercepting or shooting down unmanned aircraft. The force will be stationed at airports, across Berlin and near security-sensitive sites nationwide to ensure rapid deployment. According to the Interior Ministry, the unit will quickly grow to around 130 specialists. It is expected to use AI-supported jamming technology and automatic interceptor drones. After drone sights forced the closure of several airports in the autumn, Germany was accused of having slept on the development of drone warfare.
Members’ corner
The German vigilantes who made it onto Trump's terror list
When the US State Department added the German group Antifa Ost to its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations earlier this month, it prompted groans across Germany. Washington normally reserves that designation for actors such as Hezbollah or ISIS—groups that threaten US national interests. Placing a relatively obscure group of left-wing vigilantes on the same list appeared, to many Germans, to be yet another example of the Trump administration bending a serious foreign-policy tool to serve domestic political aims.
Is this Germany's 'Stop the Steal'?
Did you know the German election result is being challenged — and that the challenge could upend the balance of power in the Bundestag? In our latest members-only newsletter, we unpack how the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht is contesting the vote. Led by a charismatic culture-war crusader, the BSW has more than a little in common with the MAGA movement. Are they pushing a German-style “Stop the Steal” narrative to stay in the headlines — or do they genuinely have a case?
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Sincerely,
Jörg Luyken
One of the biggest dilemmas for radical or anti-establishment parties when they try to moderate and move toward the political centre is what to do with their original supporters — the ones who joined early and often hold views that are too extreme for moderates (like me) to stomach.
Striking the right balance between keeping the base energised and broadening appeal is incredibly tricky. The AfD faces this acutely because its strongest support is in eastern Germany, where voters are noticeably further to the right than in the west. It’s a common problem for any anti-establishment challenger: you see the same dynamic with Reform UK in Britain, National Rally in France, and of course the AfD in Germany.