GIESSEN, Germany — Huge protests marred the opening of the new youth wing of the far right political party Alternative for Germany in this central German city on Saturday as more than 25,000 people sought to prevent the first meeting of the organization named “Generation Germany,” even as police used water cannons and pepper spray and mobilized thousands of officers to maintain open streets and passage into a convention center here, Saturday Nov. 29, 2025.
Largest protest yet after AfD launches youth wing
Trade unionists, church groups, student collectives, and left-wing alliances took to Giessen’s streets across the trade fair grounds; their activists blocked access roads to the site and brought traffic on a nearby highway to a standstill as the AfD youth wing congress began inside the Hessenhallen complex. Police said they sent as many as 5,000 officers and deployed water cannons to break a blockade of several thousand protesters who did not obey their warnings to leave, numbers that correspond with those in an Associated Press account of the clashes.
The majority of rallies passed peacefully, but several small groups wearing masks pelted police with stones and bottles, police said. Officers reported at least a dozen of their number injured, while some detentions were made. A group of organizers gathered around the banner “Nie wieder HJ” (“never again Hitler Youth”), cautioning that the AfD youth wing was a dangerous echo of ethnic nationalism in politics. The protest was one of the largest anti-far-right mobilizations in Germany this year, according to French broadcaster France 24.
Inside the convention center, AfD leaders presented the creation of an AfD youth wing as a smart investment in “Generation Germany.” The party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, described the protesters outside as “deeply undemocratic” at a rally reported by Arab News and said left-wing extremists were seeking to crush opposition street protests with violence.
AfD youth offshoot born out of a controversial mother group.
Replacing the Young Alternative (Junge Alternative, JA), which voluntarily dissolved itself in March following years of investigation by Germany’s domestic security services. In 2023, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially classified the old AfD youth wing as an extremist group intent on pursuing anti-constitutional aims, allowing senior levels of surveillance to be applied and deepening worries about the radicalization of younger party activists.
Generation Germany’s first chairman, 28-year-old Brandenburg state legislator Jean-Pascal Hohm, was chosen nearly unopposed after delegates approved a new statute that binds the AfD youth wing much more closely to the party leadership. Hohm has previously been identified by local intelligence services as a right-wing extremist, a description which he denies and claims is politically motivated. His election just shows how very little personal and ideological continuity there really is between the banned predecessor and the AfD youth wing now being relaunched in Giessen.
The relaunch is also taking place amid increasing legal and political pressure on the AfD itself. The party went from what Germany’s domestic intelligence service called a “suspected case” to what is now considered an overtly right-wing extremist project that can be fenced in through greater surveillance and has provoked lawsuits from AfD leaders. The creation of a tightly controlled AfD youth wing is part of the effort to reduce the legal risk faced by another semi-autonomous youth group that has gravitated toward more extreme forms of activism, analysts say.
The protests in Giessen are part of a broader anti-extremist wave.
For opponents of the far right, the showdown over the AfD youth wing is the latest in nearly two years of mass protests against extremism and racism that have swept Germany. Protests of tens of thousands have also been seen in other cities earlier this year after revelations about far-right “remigration” plans, while thousands also assembled to meet AfD delegates at a party convention in Essen, as covered by Euronews (link to 2024 Essen protests).
In Giessen, the size of the police presence and that of the crowds underscored how central those ranks have become in a broader fight here over Germany’s political future, as the AfD youth wing increasingly takes point. For AfD supporters, Generation Germany is to be a disciplined cadre of under-36 activists preparing the party for regional and national power. For critics, the scenes around the convention center — with appreciative honks for uniformed police officers on one side of large black blocs protesting all sides inside it, water cannons and blockades and “never again” placards — are a warning that new far-right guns to organize are not only going to get into gear in the streets, but also in the courts and at voting stations.
