by EuroNews
It’s published
A scheduled live television interview with co-leaders of Alice Weidel, co-leaders of the German (AFD) party’s far-right alternative party, was owned by raucous protesters on Sunday.
The protesters positioned themselves across the river from the TV setup in the Berlin government district, singing songs, blew whi and yelling anti-AFD slogans.
Weidel and her host, Markus Preiß of the public broadcaster Ard, had to move forward many times to understand the other questions.
Both Weidel and Place acknowledged “difficult situations” and stated that sometimes it is almost impossible to understand each other.
“I have an ultrasound in my ear. I can’t hear anything now,” Weidel said at one point that he would remove the ear plug from his ear and continue the interview.
The Centre of Politics, an activist group, claimed responsibility for the rally and explained that on the occasion they equipped the bus with extremely powerful speakers.
The group has a history of planning devastating protests, including a recent hanging banner at the Maxim Golki Theatre in Berlin, which depicts the kiss between Weidel and Prime Minister Friedrich Merz.
Twenty-five people were involved in the protest, and it happened without arrest.
Weidel later posted a clip of an interview with X, claiming that the protest was organized by an NGO.
“By the way, this looks like when the Tagesschau program conducted a summer interview with AFD at Cdu-Governed Berlin,” Weidel wrote in X.
ARD, a spokesman for the station that organized the interview, said it would “draw conclusions and “prevent future” from the incident.
“The uninterrupted course of interviews is within our interests and more than anything, it is in the interest of our audience,” the spokesperson said in response to the DPA’s investigation.
Politician Karsten Linneman, a member of Meltz’s Christian Democrat Union (CDU), criticised the action, claiming that the protests had attracted positive attention to the AFD.
“If you want to make AFD strong, you need to get in the way of such interviews,” Linnemann told domestic media, recommending that you counter AFD in terms of policy and content, rather than arranging protests.
Weidel’s interviews were part of a series of “summer interviews” that the leaders of Germany’s biggest political party usually gave to public broadcaster ARD.
The AFD is currently the second largest political force in German parliament and polls, with the latest figures showing its 25% just behind the 27% CDU.
