I joined thousands of people blockading the AfD’s Erfurt congress. A civil disobedience movement is showing how to beat the far right

At 5am on Saturday morning, I found myself jogging across a field with a few hundred strangers, on my way to block a highway. We were just outside the east German city of Erfurt, one of several groups setting up roadblocks to try to stop delegates from reaching the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party conference. We set up facing a row of police in riot gear – helmets on, batons ready – filming us with cameras on monopods.

A few years ago, I would have been covering an action like this as a reporter, from behind the police lines. In journalism school, I was taught to be objective. But I can’t pretend to be impartial when it comes to the AfD – and so instead I chose to join the demonstrators, most decades younger than me, chanting together: “Siamo tutti antifascisti (We are all antifascists)!” As a foreigner who has called Germany home for nearly 30 years, as the father of two daughters growing up in this country, I have skin in the game.

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