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Tens of thousands of people marched across Germany to protest against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) after the far-right party secured a landslide victory in a state election.
Roughly 150,000 demonstrators turned out in roughly 20 cities on Saturday, including Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich, at rallies organized by Pruef, a campaign group pushing for a ban on the AfD.
Protesters carried signs reading “Ban the AfD now” and “Democracy needs no alternatives.”
“A broad cross-section of civil society is taking to the streets to prevent the enemies of the constitution … from gaining government power,” said Christoph Bautz, head of Campact, another campaign group involved in the protests, which estimated turnouts at about 25,000 in Hamburg and 12,000 in Munich.
The demonstrations followed a stunning result for the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in eastern Germany, where the party took nearly 44% of the vote on Sept. 6, far ahead of the roughly 17% won by Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has long dominated German politics.
The AfD, known for its anti-immigration stance and friendly posture towards Russia, fell just short of an outright majority and is now negotiating with other parties to try to form a government, a move that would make it the first far-right party to lead a German state since the Nazi era ended in 1945.
Projections show the party winning 39 of 83 seats in the state parliament, 3 short of a majority. It now needs a coalition partner, though all mainstream parties have so far refused to govern with the AfD under a longstanding policy known as the “firewall.”
The far-right party has never joined a governing coalition anywhere in Germany, at either state or national level.
Growing unease has fueled calls to ban the AfD altogether, though that would be legally difficult in Germany, and Merz has been reluctant to pursue it.
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