Several thousand protesters gathered at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate Monday to decry the far-right Alterantive for Germany (AfD) after the party scored a breakthrough victory in a regional election the previous day.<\/p>\n
Berlin police estimated the number of participants at around 5,000 at 7:00 pm (1700GMT), an hour after the rally began, while co-organiser Campact reported 14,000 demonstrators.<\/p>\n
An earlier wave of anti-AfD protests in early 2025 drew hundreds of thousands of demonstrators across the country, including massive crowds in the German capital.<\/p>\n
The far more modest turnout this Monday evening is “not a sign that people are rising up, ready to act, and aware that it is already the eleventh hour,” protester Marie-Therese Hattendorf told AFP.<\/p>\n
“I see that democracy in our country is currently under serious threat,” she said.<\/p>\n
The AfD is already the second-largest party in Germany’s parliament and for months has led national opinion polls.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the AfD dealt a crushing blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right CDU and took nearly 44 percent of the vote in the eastern German state of Saxony Anhalt, an economically struggling region of about 2.1 million residents.<\/p>\n
The AfD’s victory has been seen as a political earthquake in the country, putting a far-right party on the cusp of leading a state government for the first time since the Nazi era.<\/p>\n
Another protester, who gave her name only as Alice, told AFP that the result has left her feeling “depressed”.<\/p>\n
She attended Monday’s demonstration with her son and dog, advocating for “an open society where everyone feels welcome and understood”.<\/p>\n
“We’re afraid our democracy is falling apart,” another 68-year-old protester named Ellen told AFP while standing beneath the Berlin landmark.<\/p>\n
Her husband, Michael, called the election “deeply unsettling”.<\/p>\n
Several protesters blamed Merz’s government for failing to address discontent.<\/p>\n
Merz on Monday said he was “deeply shocked” by the vote but vowed to press ahead with a slate of reforms.<\/p>\n
Two more regional elections, in Berlin and the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, are scheduled for September 20.<\/p>\n
bur-bst\/pdw<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several thousand protesters gathered at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate Monday to decry the far-right Alterantive for Germany (AfD) after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":161478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[29533,688,112,8873,190,10822,75558,7557,58819,75711,75710],"class_list":["post-161477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-afd","tag-afp","tag-berlin","tag-german","tag-germany","tag-john-macdougall","tag-merzs","tag-monday","tag-saxony-anhalt","tag-several-thousand","tag-thousands"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117231507528346316","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}