As Martin Kohler strolled down Sonnenallee, the main drag of the Berlin borough of Neukölln, he could not contain his dismay. Along the street, kebab shops sizzled, sending the aroma of roasting meat drifting through the cold winter air. Shoppers in heavy coats browsed clothing outlets that advertised headscarves and perused grocery stores that boasted halal meat. Letting loose a grim laugh, Kohler’s conclusion was blunt: “No integration.”
Speaking to the camera held by his companion on the street, Kohler spoke about how immigrant-populated neighborhoods like the one in Neukölln were cropping up across the city. “First,” he said, “it’s one kebab shop. And then on the opposite side there opens a shisha bar, [then] a shop for halal meat. And even more, you have a street where Muslims are feeling quite well. And then more are coming.” His colleague, an up-and-coming conservative YouTuber from England, asked him in a concerned tone whether the average German wanted this expansion in a city like Berlin. Without missing a beat, Kohler replied, “No. Absolutely not. That’s why so many Germans [are] leaving Berlin.”
The video that the YouTuber published from his tour with Kohler, titled “Germany is Out of Control,” garnered more than 270,000 views. In it, Kohler, a rising voice in Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, claimed that Berlin was under attack from a hostile population of Muslim migrants that chose to reproduce their own culture in Germany rather than assimilating into the existing society.
Kohler has made it his mission to reverse this trend. So have his colleagues in AfD Berlin. They face headwinds: Berlin is Germany’s most progressive, multicultural, and migrant-friendly city, after all. But that challenge just makes Kohler more determined. “As a patriot,” he told me, “if you give up the capital city, you can give up the whole project of getting in power and conquering your country back.” With an election coming later next year, can their far-right project have a shot in Berlin?
***
The AfD has been on the rise since 2013, when the party burst onto Germany’s political scene with a populist conservative program. Its founders lashed out against Angela Merkel’s government for bailing out southern European countries during the Eurozone crisis. Then, when Merkel opened Germany’s borders to Syrians fleeing civil war in 2015, uttering her famous phrase “Wir schaffen das” (“we can do this”), AfD rebutted, suggesting Germany couldn’t—and shouldn’t. Soon, it unveiled its vehement opposition to migrants from Muslim countries.
Since its founding, AfD has evolved with the times, fanning flames of animosity against whatever coalition was in power. When Covid hit Germany, party leaders adopted an anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine position, allying themselves with the far-right group PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West). When energy prices began to soar after the Russia-Ukraine war, AfD turned its ire on renewable energy, blaming climate policies that incentivized wind and solar energy installations. Party members even began to attack proposals to put speed limits on the Autobahn to save on gas. “They are really strategically clever crisis entrepreneurs,” said Manès Wiesskircher, a political scientist at the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), “rejecting all government policies in order to benefit from the dismay among significant parts of the population.”
With these strategies, the party has surged in popularity to become one of the largest and most energetic political movements in the country. It shocked the country with its performance in the 2025 federal elections, winning over 20 percent of the vote share. “There’s only three parties in all of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany who made it above 20% in a federal election,” said Robert Eschricht, a state representative for Neukölln. “We really are up and coming.” The AfD now tops opinion polls as the most favored party nationwide.
But what is true for the country has not yet become a reality in Berlin. At the state level, a center-right coalition is firmly in power, a large left-wing bloc wields influence, and people are skeptical of the AfD’s restrictive approach to migration. Internally, the state party has faced difficulties, too. Plagued by a history of infighting and candidate controversy, its leaders have tried to improve the party’s professional appearance and break ground among new voter groups. [potential TK about intra-party conflict]
“They think we are the devil,” said Berlin party chair Kristin Brinker. As the 2026 federal elections approach, their mission is to convince the public otherwise.
***
After the lights came on in a crowded AfD field office, Ronald Gläser took the stage in front of a muted audience. A dozen rows of people had come to the office in Pankow, an hour’s train ride from downtown Berlin, on a cold October evening. Sitting on folding chairs facing Gläser, their faces were sober. They had just watched two hours of alarming documentary footage: protestors getting beaten up by police in body armor, diagrams of needles entering arms and injecting black particles into bodies, men in lab coats speaking in assured tones about the dangers of government-sponsored vaccinations.
Gläser, an unassuming man with a prominent scar on his nose and a red cravat tucked beneath his collar, was the host for the evening’s event: a screening of a Covid vaccine-skeptic documentary called “Just a Prick: In the Shadow of Vaccination,” followed by a Q&A with its director. Now, it was time for Gläser, an AfD representative for Berlin in Germany’s federal parliament, to field questions and comments from the audience to the director.
The room had the feel of a group therapy session, as individuals within the crowd of mostly older people stood up to share stories of how their lives were disrupted by Germany’s pandemic lockdown. Some lamented that they could not travel across state borders during the lockdown, while others spoke of health complications they experienced after receiving a Covid vaccine dose.
Gläser nodded at each testimony in sympathy, interjecting every now and then to provide his own perspective as a member of the Bundestag. He channeled frustration at Germany’s response to the pandemic into a generalized attack on the current governing coalition and its civil service. “They are so cheeky. They come up with all kinds of lies,” he said, his voice rising in outrage.
Gläser is not new to this game. A journalist by trade, he cut his teeth in politics while organizing against Germany’s adoption of the Euro during the 1990s. By 2010, when Germany prepared to bail out Greece to prevent a financial crisis in the country, he had gained experience in holding protests. That year, Gläser organized a “Berlin Tea Party,” where about 20 people emptied jars of Greek olives into Berlin’s Spree river in imitation of America’s infamous Boston Tea Party and its contemporary Republican-party revival. Three years later, the AfD was founded with a similar anti-establishment purpose. Gläser joined the party and was elected to Berlin’s state parliament on its roster in 2016.
Since then, he has worked to package AfD’s messaging in a politically palatable format. As AfD’s representative on media issues, he hosts movie nights biweekly and other community events.
[TO EXPAND HERE!!! With more events, grassroots activities.]
This kind of grassroots work distinguishes AfD from its mainstream counterparts, according to Jan-Werner Müller, a Politics professor at Princeton University. “That party has had a very strong local, on-the ground-presence,” he said, contrasting AfD’s approach with that of more its more mainstream counterparts.
To people worried about associating with far-right extremists, social events with listening sessions can be a way to feel more welcome into the party. People who may be deterred by the prospect of engaging with fringe actors or “neo-Nazis” on the right “if it turns out they’re all nice—they’re your nice neighbors who are helping you address a real-world issue—that changes the perception,” Müller said.
Toward the night’s close, a woman who helped produce the documentary stood up to thank Gläser for his work. “This event, close to the citizens,” she said, “is so important because you do your job to educate, to process and above all to bring people together.”
“The AfD is the only party that is involved for us people,” she added. After she finished speaking, the room burst into applause.
***
Where I’m going from here:
- Section about engagement with voters with a migrant background — quotes from Kohler and Eschricht
- Section about youth voters
- End with youth org forming in November
- I also need to sprinkle in information about AfD’s difficulties actually governing in parliament — being blocked from committees, etc.
