Thousands of demonstrators marched on Sunday in Berlin, in protest against the far-right Alternative for Germany’s debut in parliament next week.
Bearing posters with slogans like “Stop AfD,” “My voice against incitement” or “My heart beats for diversity,” the demonstrators rallied two days before AfD lawmakers will join other MPs at the first sitting of Germany’s newly elected parliament.
The anti-Muslim and anti-migrant AfD garnered 12.6 percent of the vote in the watershed general election in September and became the country’s third-biggest party.
Its arrival in the Bundestag is a political earthquake for post-war Germany, as the AfD’s top figures have repeatedly smashed taboos with their claims on German identity or by challenging Germany’s culture of atonement over the Second World War.
Calling on people to join the protest on Sunday, the popular movement Campact urged Germans to “steal the show from the AfD.”
“When the AfD sits in the Bundestag for the first time on October 24, it needs to know that our parliament is not a stage for racism, discrimination and falsifying history!” said Campact.
