Far-left Antifa radicals descended upon the annual conference of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany in Erfurt on Saturday, clashing with police and journalists.
While AfD delegates gathered at the Erfurt Exhibition Centre in the central German state of Thuringia to select party leadership, an estimated 20,000 leftist protesters demonstrated outside of the event, police told Die Welt.
Leftists, among them black bloc-clad Antifa radicals, staged blockades of the roads leading to the conference, including the A71 motorway near Gottstedt, which they brought to a standstill with a sit-in protest.
Agitators were also seen attacking police, including with fireworks as makeshift missiles, while demonstrators shouted: “Police are murderers and fascists” “Hey, put that camera away.”
Journalists were also targeted during the chaotic scenes, with protesters frequently warning photographers to “put that camera away!”
According to the editor-in-chief of the right-wing online platform Apollo News, Max Mannhart, three of his reporters were “hunted down and beaten up” by Antifa militants. Mannhart published video footage purporting to capture the alleged attacks, and police have confirmed that an incident occurred, but did not confirm any further details.
The protests also drew left-wing politicians, including the government’s Environment Minister, Carsten Schneider of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The Erfurt native said, “This is a topic that threatens all of Germany. And that’s why it’s good that we stand together here today.”
Meanwhile, Luke Hoß, an MP for the Left Party (Die Linke), the descendant party of the former communist governing party of East Germany, said that the demonstrations were a “huge success” as they had shown that the left “can put a stop to a fascist party.”
AfD leader Alice Weidel, who was re-elected as the party’s co-chair during the meeting on Saturday, said of the protests: “You won’t break us! On the contrary, we will only grow stronger and bigger!”
Weidel claimed that under her leadership, the party has grown from 50,000 paid members at the end of 2024 to 75,000 today. She said that she expects this number to continue to grow and that 100,000 paid members would soon be a reality.
“We are the new people’s party in Germany,” Weidel said in reference to the national polls, which have for months put the AfD as the undisputed largest party in the country at around 29 per cent.
“The AfD is ready to take responsibility because we, because the Germans, because Germany deserves to be well governed.”
In contrast, she said that the supposedly centre-right Christian Democratic Union party of Chancellor Merz was “pursuing policies against the German people, against Germany, against the interests of our country.” While coalition partner Social Democrats previously stood as a “once so proud workers’ party,” they are quicily “disappearing without a trace from German party history” given their betrayals of the working-class, Weidel remarked.