Thousands of Germans have staged protests against the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) after the party\u2019s watershed victory in a state election, warning it posed a danger in two more polls this month.<\/p>\n
Demonstrators at Berlin\u2019s Brandenburg Gate held a peaceful pro-democracy rally denouncing the anti-immigrant, pro-Russian AfD, which has called for mass deportations of asylum seekers and a rollback of state support for renewable energy and public broadcasting.<\/p>\n
The party captured its best-ever state result<\/a> in the former communist eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, with clear momentum heading into regional elections in the capital and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, on the Baltic coast, on 20 September.<\/p>\n Police reported 5,000 protesters, while organisers said they drew more than 14,000 people in a campaign to mobilise voters against the AfD. Posters in the crowd read: \u201cFascism is no alternative\u201d, \u201cStop the Nazi AfD: end racism and cuts to social services\u201d and \u201cHistory has its eyes on us\u201d.<\/p>\n With less than two weeks to election day, demonstrators at the Berlin rally cautioned against resignation and cynicism after Sunday\u2019s shock result.<\/p>\n The AfD\u2019s nearly 44% vote in Saxony-Anhalt, the best for a nativist party since the Nazi period<\/a>, is a \u201cdisgrace that makes you furious and stunned\u201d, Jens-Christian Wagner, the director of the memorial at the former Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, said from the stage.<\/p>\n Protesters throng the roads around the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, on Monday after the AfD victory. Photograph: Dpa Picture Alliance\/Alamy<\/p>\n Wagner sounded the alarm that the AfD, although it fell just short of an absolute majority, was on the brink of taking power in Saxony-Anhalt, a first for the far right since the second world war. That \u201cshould not be accepted in silence\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n Max Schneller, 17, a member of the far-left Linke, from Saxony-Anhalt, said activists in the state would fight any attempts by an AfD government to target minorities. \u201cWe will not start categorising our neighbours according to their origin, religion or skin colour \u2013 we are too humane to hate,\u201d he said to loud applause.<\/p>\n The AfD is three votes short of the support necessary to form a government under its candidate, the media-savvy firebrand Ulrich Siegmund, who hopes to peel off dissenters from the remaining parties willing to play kingmaker.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency has since 2023 listed the state chapter of the party as rightwing extremist, saying it poses a threat to democratic norms.<\/p>\n Hundreds of anti-AfD protesters also gathered in Potsdam, near Berlin, with rallies also organised in M\u00fcnster, G\u00f6ttingen, Dresden, Aachen, Bamberg, Darmstadt, and Halberstadt, in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD captured nearly half the votes, local media reported.<\/p>\n A protester in Berlin on Monday. Photograph: Maryam Majd\/Reuters<\/p>\n In Halle, the region\u2019s second largest city, leftist groups and civil society organisations have been staging a protest camp since election day.<\/p>\n The AfD is leading in voter intent polls in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania<\/a>, with about 35%. However, the centre-left Social Democratic party (SPD) of the state premier, Manuela Schwesig, mounted a remarkable comeback over the summer and is now scoring above 30%.<\/p>\n In Berlin, one of Germany\u2019s 16 federal states, the picture is more mixed, with several parties jockeying for first place<\/a>. It is governed by a coalition of conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the SPD.<\/p>\n The CDU, the party of chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose record unpopularity is reported to have weighed heavily with voters in Saxony-Anhalt<\/a>, holds a wafer-thin lead in the capital, with about 20%.<\/p>\n Hot on its heels is the Linke, which has focused on soaring housing costs in its campaign, and the AfD, followed by the SPD and the ecologist Greens, both polling in the mid-teens.<\/p>\n