2024 German anti-extremism protests

Since mid-January 2024, widespread protests against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have been taking place in Germany, after a report by investigative journalist group Correctiv revealed the presence of in-office party members at the meeting of right-wing extremists at Potsdam in 2023, centered on "remigration" proposals to organize mass deportations of foreign-born Germans, including those with German citizenship. Protesters have "sought", as declared by the organizers, to defend the German democracy from the AfD, with many protesters calling for the party to be investigated by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or banned altogether.

Background
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) was established in 2013 as a right-wing eurosceptic party. It began gaining political power following the 2015 European migrant crisis, in which around one million migrants fleeing military conflicts during the Arab Winter were resettled in Germany. The AfD first entered the Bundestag in the 2017 German federal election, becoming the third-largest party behind the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SPD). After a drop in the 2021 federal election, the AfD began to regain popularity after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, finding new appeal as the defender of the economically precarious class which struggled with the global energy crisis and cost inflation caused by the invasion. Political analysts saw the AfD as benefiting both from dissent within the ruling traffic light coalition about how to carry out the transformation of the country into a competitive digitized economy, and from attempts by the opposition party CDU/CSU to regain voters from the AfD themselves through adopting in particular a tougher stance on migration. By July 2023, the AfD was polling as the second-most popular political party in Germany at 20%, behind only the CDU. The same year, it also elected two officials for the first time in its history.

On 10 January 2024, investigative journalist group Correctiv published information revealing that members of the AfD had met Identitarian movement activists in the city of Potsdam, where plans to "remigrate" foreign-born Germans, including non-citizens as well as those with German citizenship, were proposed. The report gained massive traction in Germany, with critical comparisons being made to the 1940 Madagascar Plan to deport four million Jews; comparisons to the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was organized, were also circulating. The mentioning of the Wannsee Conference in the Correctiv report was criticized even though the report had not explicitly compared the two events. Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser said that the Correctiv revelations had evoked memories of the conference, but that she did not want to equate the two events.

AfD leader Alice Weidel defended the party, saying that she had removed those involved in the meeting, and lambasted Correctiv journalists as "left-wing activists using Stasi methods". Two members of the conservative Values Union, a faction of the CDU, also attended the event, and following the backlash, the group's leader Hans-Georg Maaßen announced the movement was severing its ties with the CDU. The Values Union announced on 20 January that it would establish itself as a political party.

Protests
After several smaller-scale protests, in the evening of 12 January 2024 around 2,000 protested against the AfD at its Hamburg headquarters. The next day, a rally in Duisburg against an AfD new year's reception attracted around 2,400 protesters according to police, far more than anticipated by organizers at the time of registering the rally with authorities, which was before the Correctiv revelations. Also on 13 January, around 650 protesters in Düsseldorf demanded the investigation of the AfD to examine the possibility of its prohibition. On 14 January, thousands protested in Potsdam and at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Among those present at the protests in Potsdam on 14 January were chancellor Olaf Scholz and Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock, both members of the Bundestag from the city. Interviewed by Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Baerbock said that the protesters were "for democracy and against old and new fascism," while Potsdam mayor Mike Schubert said that the remigration plans "are reminiscent of the darkest chapter of German history."

Protests continued to draw larger crowds throughout the week, including a protest in Cologne, in which around 30,000 people participated. Non-AfD politicians from across Germany's political spectrum expressed support for the protests, with Scholz writing on Twitter that "We won't allow anyone to distinguish the 'we' in our country based on whether someone has an immigration history or not," pro-business Free Democratic Party politician Christian Dürr directly comparing the AfD to the Nazi Party, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck from the Green Party describing the protests as "impressive" for democracy, and CDU leader Friedrich Merz expressing that it was "very encouraging that thousands of people are demonstrating peacefully against right-wing extremism."

Various churches throughout Germany called on people to protest the AfD, as did coaches of the Bundesliga. Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described the protests as restoring Jews' faith in German democracy after it having been damaged following antisemitism during the Israel–Hamas war. The AfD was also condemned by several businesses, including Siemens, Evonik Industries, Infineon Technologies, and Düsseldorf Airport. The size of the protests exceeded expectations by both police and the organizers; initial estimates of 50,000–80,000 people protesting in Hamburg on 19 January were increased in February 2024 by the city's interior authority to 180,000, after recalculation. Hamburg's mayor, Peter Tschentscher, spoke against the AfD at the protest, saying "We are the majority and we are strong, because we are united and we are determined not to let our country and our democracy be destroyed for a second time after 1945."

Between 19 and 21 January, protests reached a size of 1.4 million people, according to organizers Campact and Fridays for Future. A planned march in Munich was cancelled for safety concerns, as 100,000 people, four times the registered amount, had arrived for the protest, according to local police. Members of the German government urged protests to continue, with Scholz urging as many people as possible to come out for democracy.

The protest in Berlin on 3 February, attendance estimates of which ranged from 150,000 to 300,000 participants, was organized by a collective which included about 1,700 organizations from civil society, sports, and culture, as well as trade unions. The collective, which had formed before the Correctiv revelations, voiced its intent to continue the rallies for the longer term. As part of the protests, various proposals to ban the AfD have been advocated, including from 25 members of the Bundestag from the SPD. Among those calling for the AfD to be banned is Saskia Esken, co-leader of the SPD. These proposals have been pushed back upon by others, notably Habeck and Merz, who have expressed concerns about the potential risks such a move could pose if unsuccessful. Some of Habeck's comments, however, have been publicly interpreted as expressing support for a ban as protests escalated, saying that the AfD intended to replace German democracy with a system similar to Russia under Vladimir Putin. Others, such as constitutional scholar Horst Meier, have argued that a ban, while possible, would be ill-advised as a result of the AfD's popularity. The AfD would be only the third such party banned nationally, after the Socialist Reich Party and the Communist Party of Germany, both of which were banned during the 1950s, though its branches in the states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia have been declared as extremist. Minister of Interior Faeser has expressed support for a ban on the party, but only as a last resort.

List of protests
The following extendable table lists protests with at least 5,000 participants that occurred since 11 January 2024 following the report published by Correctiv. It also lists smaller protests that occurred on or before 19 January, on which day a protest in Hamburg attracted around 180,000 participants. The total number of protests was well over 1,000, which estimates for total attendance ranging from 3.7 to 4.9 million people.