On Saturday afternoon, the Berlin AfD wants to found the regional association of “Generation Germany”. The party announced this in a press release a few days ago. However, the AfD Berlin is still keeping a low profile about the venue for the planned founding of the Berlin branch, probably also out of concern about planned counter-protests. For “organizational and security policy reasons,” this will only be communicated to registered participants “in good time before the event,” according to the press release.
The predecessor organization, the Junge Alternative (JA), which was classified as definitely right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, dissolved in March last year. The successor organization was founded at the end of November last year in Gießen, Hesse Generation Germany (GD). Now the AfD youth is also regrouping at the state level. The first regional associations already exist in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia.
So far, everything indicates that Generation Germany will seamlessly follow the nationalistic course of the self-dissolved JA – and thus further points for one threatened AfD ban proceedings collects.
Also the one published a few days ago Home Office assessment confirms this tendency: With regard to the founding event of the GD in Giessen, it is said that statements were made there “which can be seen as actual indications of efforts against the free democratic basic order”. The letter also states that the federal government recognizes both “personal” and “content-related continuities” with the dissolved JA and that connections between members of the AfD youth and “other extremist organizations are known”.
Two old acquaintances
Something similar can also be expected for the AfD youth in Berlin. The party did not comment in advance on possible candidacies for the board of the Berlin AfD Youth. However, no big surprises are to be expected. Two old acquaintances are promoting the founding on Saturday: Martin Kohler and Christopher Wiedenhaupt.
Wiedenhaupt sat as a deputy on the board of the Berliner JA until the end. In November he was elected as secretary to the federal executive board of the GD in Giessen. Kohler was head of the Berliner JA until the end. He is chairman of the AfD parliamentary group in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district council and likes to appear on social media in the relevant outfit Berlin fraternity Gothia and shares posts from right-wing extremist platforms such as “One Percent” and that Federal spokesman for the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movementwhose AfD membership was recently announced.
With a view to possible counter-protests on Saturday, Kohler recently said grandly on social media that they would not be stopped, “not in Giessen and certainly not in our capital”. Despite the cold, tens of thousands protested in Giessen last November against the re-establishment of the extreme right-wing party’s youth organization.
We will not allow the founding of the AfD Youth Berlin to go ahead undisturbed
Mila, spokesperson for the Berlin local group Resist
Protests can also be expected in Berlin on Saturday. The local groups of the Alliance opposition and the Students Against the Right are currently planning protests against the re-establishment of the Berlin AfD youth. Since Friday afternoon, a corresponding call with the title “Disturb the founding of the AfD youth in Berlin” has been making the rounds online. Only the location for the protest is not yet clear.
“We will be broadly prepared here in Berlin and will not let the founding of the AfD Youth Berlin go ahead undisturbed,” says spokeswoman Mila from the Berlin local group Widerstellen (she does not want to be mentioned by her full name), to the taz. The AfD Youth is a “fascist youth association” that takes “the Hitler Youth as a model,” said the spokeswoman. “They want to destroy the very thing we all need, the joy and strength of differences.”