Germany Protests

Thousands of enraged demonstrators flocked to the western city of Giessen, where the hard-right AfD party held its founding convention on Saturday, as the party unveiled its new youth organisation.

Many delegates were delayed in arriving because demonstrators stopped or attempted to block highways entering the city, causing the conference to start more than two hours late.

Dramatic images show protesters clashing with police, who were forced to use pepper spray after stones were thrown at officers in one location, authorities said. 

Police also deployed water cannons to clear a blockade of about 2,000 protesters who ignored calls to disperse.

On Saturday afternoon, they made use of them once more when a group tried to breach barriers surrounding the city’s conference centre.

Up to 5,000 officers were deployed, police said. They estimated more than 25,000 demonstrators had gathered, noting that much of the protest remained peaceful. Ten officers were reported slightly injured. 

When the meeting eventually got underway, AfD officials denounced the protests.

‘What is being done out there – dear left-wingers, dear extremists, you need to look at yourselves – is something that is deeply undemocratic,’ party co-leader Alice Weidel said.

She added that one AfD lawmaker had been attacked. Police confirmed a lawmaker was injured near Giessen but gave no details.

The new youth organisation, named Generation Germany, replaces the Young Alternative – a primarily autonomous group with loose ties to the party – which was formally disbanded in March after AfD cut ties with it.

The party says it wants much tighter oversight of the new body, which will be open to all AfD members under 36. Its statute was approved on Saturday.

AfD finished second in Germany’s national election in February with more than 20 per cent of the vote and is now the largest opposition party.

As Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition fails to gain public trust, the AfD has continued to surge in opinion surveys despite the refusal of mainstream parties to cooperate with it.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency had previously designated the Young Alternative a proven right-wing extremist group. 

Later, it gave AfD the same designation; however, following a court challenge, that designation was revoked.

A Cologne court ruling last year found that the Young Alternative promoted preserving an ‘ethnically defined German people’ and banning the ‘ethnically foreign’, and pointed to agitation against migrants and ties to extremist movements such as the Identitarian Movement.

Following the dissolution of the Young Alternative, a higher court terminated the appeal procedure in June.

AfD’s other co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, told delegates the party must learn from past mistakes.

‘Some benefited from the young and their ability to mobilise, but didn’t have the future of this youth sufficiently in sight,’ he said.

‘We should have taken more care of the young new hopes in our party; it will be different in future.’

He added that young activists must ‘put themselves at the party’s service’.

In German politics, youth wings are prevalent and frequently more radical than their parent parties. Although much consistency is anticipated, it remains uncertain whether AfD’s new organisation will be more moderate than its predecessor.

These young demonstrators have every right to voice their opposition to the resurgence of fascism in Germany.

But mass migration is intentional, and its prevalence is comparable across all Western nations. The purpose is to wreck the economies; therefore, why in the UK we have seen both placed administrations prove to be totally inept while fleecing the people.

Can you really blame these young individuals, though? No, since nothing will be done about it by our governments.

Countries with mass migration are now deprived because our governments and rich corporations have manipulated us, but now, when we make a stand because we are worried about our future, we are branded ‘extremists’, and young people are now rising because governments are not listening.

People are genuinely frightened, and we are sick of our wives and girlfriends being scared and not being able to walk the streets in case they are attacked by these migrants who have no control over their urges, but this is what happens when our government lays down the welcome mat for everybody to turn up.