Some 5,000 supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) marched through Berlin yesterday, but they were heavily outnumbered by anti-AfD demonstrations, including one from the city’s club scene which blasted techno music across the capital.
The AfD’s anti-immigration, anti-European Union and anti-Muslim messages helped it become the third largest party in the German Bundestag in last September’s vote but it has had little impact on parliamentary debate since then.
The AfD demonstrators, bussed in from around Germany, marched from Berlin’s main station, down the banks of the Spree river to the Brandenburg Gate near the German parliament.
However, there were around 20,000 anti-AfD protesters – according to police estimates – most of them younger people, highlighting the divisions that have emerged in Germany since the 2015 refugee crisis.
The main demo was staged by the “Stop the hatred, stop the AfD” alliance, which included political parties, unions, student bodies, migrant advocates and civil society organisations.
Walking in the strong Berlin heat, supporters waved rainbow flags, blew bubbles and carried signs that said “Racism is not the alternative”, while chanting “Go away, Nazis” and “the whole of Berlin hates the AfD”.
“The AfD is not trying to solve problems, but to divide society,” said 48-year-old Knut Haemmerling.
“It’s scary to think what will happen if the party gets bigger,” added 76-year-old, Syrian-born Yesra Zubaidi.
“Our children, our country, our future: that is why we are here and we are the only party with this programme,” AfD leader Alexander Gauland, speaking to supporters at a rally near the Brandenburg Gate, where the march ended.
“We love our country. And we want to pass it on to our children the way our grandfathers did for us,” he added.
AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of Adolf Hitler’s finance minister, told demonstrators that Germany is “a prime example of failed integration”.
“The rule of this Islam in Germany is nothing other than evil,” she added.
Just this month, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel earned herself a formal rebuke from the parliamentary speaker for describing immigrants as “headscarf girls, welfare-claiming, knife-wielding men and other good-for-nothings”.
Party co-leader Joerg Meuthen referred to Merkel in his speech in front of approximately 5,000 supporters as the “high priestess of the cynicism of power”.
Merkel’s left-right coalition government has responded to the AfD’s rise by tightening asylum policies, but the party continues to climb in opinion polls.
Organisers of the far-right rally had initially predicted a turnout of 10,000, before saying they would be happy with some 5,000 people.
Berlin AfD chief Georg Pazderski said that many still feared being “stigmatised” for showing their AfD colours, even after the party took nearly 13% of the vote and won its first seats in the national parliament in last year’s elections.
The party, founded as an anti-EU party in 2013, reinvented itself with an anti-immigration stance after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the Germany’s borders to more than 1mn refugees in 2015.
The AfD supporters, mostly older, waved German and AfD flags and carried placards demanding “Democracy not Merkelatorship”.
Berliners responded with at least 13 registered counter-demonstrations.
These included one by the city’s club scene, which put on a techno music party, aiming to “bass the AfD away” with music blasting from speakers on 20 public address trucks.
“The Berlin club culture is everything that Nazis are not,” they said in a statement. “We are progressive, queer, feminist, anti-racist, inclusive, colourful and we have unicorns.”
Ahead of the demos, members of the far-left extremist Antifa movement had on their website called for “chaos”, urging sympathisers “to sabotage the AfD rally using all necessary means”.
“We want to be loud enough to drown out the racist speeches,” an activist named Rosa told RBB public television.
The thudding techno beat echoed across the city centre yesterday afternoon.
Another group of anti-AfD protesters were on a boat on the Spree river holding up placards reading “You stink!”
The AfD is now the largest opposition party following the deal between Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats to renew their grand coalition.
As a result, the AfD has a host of powerful committee chairmanships.
Yesterday’s protests were broadly peaceful, with only one minor injury reported amid a heavy police presence.
Berlin police said on Twitter that they had to use pepper spray to stop “demonstrators from trying to break down barriers” at one square.
Elsewhere, two dumpsters were set alight with fireworks and rolled onto the street, injuring a female demonstrator, they wrote.
Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democrat (CDU) party, criticised the AfD in a guest article in the Bild am Sonntag newspaper yesterday.
“The AfD is bringing anti-Semitism into parliament,” she wrote. “Old Nazis, neo-Nazis and right-wing populists. They don’t see people as dignified, as individuals. These people are threat to Jewish culture in Germany.”
AfD demonstrators holding placards, party and German flags march in the streets of Berlin.
