The Berlin police union chastised Antifa “extremists” who attempted to violently shut down an Alternative for Germany conference for displaying the very fascist tendencies they claim to be fighting.
Some 25,000 far-leftists descended upon the college town of Giessen on Saturday, clashing with police and attacking people, including an MP, who were attending the establishment of the AfD’s youth branch, Generation Germany.
According to the local Hesse Interior Ministry, over 50 police officers were injured, with radicals punching, kicking, and shooting fireworks at police. The Antifa organised demonstrators also sought to “overrun officers” who created police lines, NTV reported.
Meanwhile, the leftists had attempted to create 15 blockades of roads to block AfD supporters from entering the conference. Police, in turn, used water cannons and pepper spray to push back the radicals. In total, there were approximately 1,000 demonstrators who were seen engaging in violence, yet just three people have been arrested so far.
It comes shortly after the Trump administration designated multiple Antifa cells in Europe as terrorist organisations, including Germany’s “hammer gang”.
Berlin police union deputy chairman, Thorsten Schleheider, lamented that “left-wing extremism has once again shown its ugly face,” while revealing that nearly 30 of his colleagues were injured during the violence.
Schleheider said on X that the far-leftists were “hypocritical, self-righteous, undemocratic, contemptuous of humanity, and violent.”
AfD party leader Alice Weidel said that the violence from the left “cannot continue”. She also turned her ire on the media and political establishment for inciting political violence against the populist party, which they consistently liken to Adolph Hitler’s Nazis.
In an address on Tuesday, Weidel said: “The danger of sliding into a left-totalitarian mindset dictatorship, in which a left-wing mob displaces state power and organised left-wing extremism hollows out the rule of law and the Basic Law and in fact renders them null and void, has come much closer with the events in Giessen.”
In addition to injuries to police, multiple attendees were assaulted outside of the conference, including AfD parliamentarian Julian Schmidt, who was surrounded by around 20 masked Antifa militants, who chanted “fascists out” as they beat him and his companions.
Before the demonstration on Saturday, a post on the far-left Indymedia site called on Antifa supporters to take “any means necessary” to shut down the AfD youth conference.
“Our aim is not only to send a message against the rise of the right, but to concretely sabotage and prevent the work of neo-Nazis and right-wing extremists,” the post said.
Despite being constantly maligned by the legacy media and Berlin political elites, the AfD has continued to gain ground among the German electorate, reaching a record high of 27 per cent this week, according to the latest polling from Insa. In comparison, the governing neo-liberal CDU/CSU bloc of Chancellor Friedrich Merz fell to 24.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, a separate survey from RTL/ntv found that satisfaction with Chancellor Merz has fallen to a new low of 22 per cent. This puts Merz, just six months into office, on the same level as his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, shortly before his disastrous electoral defeat earlier this year.