Hundreds of protesters gathered on Saturday in the northeastern German city of Jüterborg, just outside Berlin, ahead of a regional party conference of the Berlin branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
During the meeting in Jüterborg, the anti-immigration party will draw up its list of candidates for the 2025 national elections.
Protesters gathered at Jüterborg station in the morning and marched to the conference venue, the Wiesenhalle, carrying banners reading ‘No room for the AfD. No room for right-wing agitation’ and ‘Together against fascism’.
Protesters also chanted slogans such as “Jüterbog likes to be colorful, the AfD shuts up.”
The rally’s organizers, an alliance of citizens’ initiatives, trade unions, party youth organizations and far-left groups based in Berlin, estimated the number of participants at between 500 and 600, while police initially did not provide an estimate.
The AfD was forced to move its membership conference to Jüterborg, about 50 kilometers south of Berlin, after being unable to find a venue in the German capital, where opposition to the far-right party is much more vocal than in the surrounding state. of Brandenburg.
The regional branch plans to determine its candidates for the upcoming federal elections on September 28, 2025.
AfD parliamentarian Beatrix von Storch is expected to run for the position of party leader, after already leading the party’s Berlin branch in the previous elections in 2017 and 2021.
The AfD, founded in 2013 as a Eurosceptic party that has since shifted its focus to immigration, currently appears well placed to achieve its best result yet in national elections, having secured around 30% of the vote in recent elections for three state parliaments.
The AfD is currently under surveillance by the federal domestic intelligence service for suspected extreme political activities, and certain state-level AfD associations are assessed as extremist by the relevant state intelligence services.
