A children’s news programme on Germany’s public broadcaster is under fire for presenting left-wing extremist blockades against an AfD youth congress in a sympathetic light. The segment featured a masked Antifa activist chained beneath a car and offered no opportunity for AfD representatives to respond.
In the report on the show logo!, the activist told viewers she and others were physically blocking access to the venue, boasting that they had chained themselves in place to stop the event from going ahead. Moments later, the programme reassured its young audience that “the vast majority” of demonstrators had acted peacefully—a claim starkly at odds with the violent scenes documented throughout the weekend.
The program then featured ZDF correspondent Nicole Diekmann, who appeared to justify the blockades by claiming demonstrators had “a pretty big problem” with the AfD and suggesting that the now-defunct Young Alternative was “too radical” and close to being banned—a claim for which no public evidence exists.
Meanwhile, events on the ground told a different story. Between 10 and 20 police officers were injured in Giessen after left-wing extremists repeatedly attacked them with stones, bottles, and pyrotechnics. Vehicles were damaged, and thousands attempted to obstruct the AfD event.
Hesse’s minister-president Boris Rhein (CDU) condemned the unrest as a new “low point for the left,” stressing that “anyone who tries to prevent and attack assemblies with violence, threats, and aggressive marches is not protecting our democracy, but attacking it.” Police union official Thorsten Schleheider went further, describing the rioters as “hypocritical, self-righteous, undemocratic, contemptuous of humanity, and violent.”
