Have you ever wondered why Germany maintains what is called the ‘firewall’—a systematic refusal to cooperate with the AfD—at a moment when the party is the second-largest parliamentary group in the Bundestag, the strongest party in opinion polls, when the German economy stands on the brink of collapse, when German streets and public spaces are visibly eroding, and when schools across the nation are increasingly made of shipping containers because classrooms are broken, while thousands of jobs are being eliminated across every key industry?

The answer to that question requires understanding what happened on 29 November 2025, when a political party dared to organize a youth congress to establish its youth organization. What occurred that weekend was a demonstration of power. It was a message. And most tellingly, it revealed who holds power in Germany and who does not.

How the State Shifts Its Constitutional Duty

Just days after those events, on Monday, 1 December, the Familienunternehmer, the Association of Family Entrepreneurs, a pillar of German business respectability, was forced into a humiliating retreat. The association had dared to suggest, quietly and carefully, that businesspeople might engage with the AfD as a normal political party rather than treating it as a pariah. For this modest suggestion of normality, the association was set upon. Pressure mounted. Within days, the leadership capitulated. They issued an apology. They reaffirmed the ‘firewall’. We shall return to this episode at the end of this article.

What is already clear, however, is this. The timing was deliberate. The message was clear. Challenge the established order, and consequences will follow. Even businessmen, especially businessmen, must understand that there are boundaries they cannot cross.

To understand how Germany arrived at this moment, we must examine what transpired in the city of Giessen, for it was there, on that weekend of violence and state complicity, that the true nature of German power revealed itself.

The NGO Complex and Its Financing

Let us begin with a factual observation. The blockades in Giessen were not the product of a spontaneous outburst. They were the work of organized structures with established institutional affiliation.

Verdi, the service sector trade union, covered the bus costs for its members from North Rhine-Westphalia. Membership fees, money taken from the pockets of nurses and bus drivers, were converted into the logistical infrastructure of the blockade. IG Metall called for participation. The German Trade Union Confederation issued an official mobilization.

These are not private associations in the classical sense. They are institutions that are in part publicly funded, that fall within the sphere of indirect state administration. They are, in a certain way, paid for by the general public. This is the crucial point for international observers to grasp: Germany’s most powerful institutions, its unions, its NGOs, its civil society organizations, have become instruments of a particular political order. They do not represent a spontaneous uprising. They represent organized power.

And then there is the alliance known as Widersetzen (Resistance). A network of far-left groups, activist collectives, NGOs. Many of these groups subsist on subsidies, on funds provided by taxpayers, including AfD voters, including those whose freedom of assembly was being blocked. The constitutional quality of this funding is central. When the state uses subsidized private groups to realize its own objectives, it departs from the realm of facilitation and enters the realm of control.

This is not a conspiracy theory. This is how the German state now functions. And the Familienunternehmer incident revealed that it extends far beyond street politics into the highest reaches of business and society.

The result of this control was a coordinated campaign of violence.

The Violence in the Streets

By 5:08 in the morning, photographers associated with Antifa, which is classified as a terrorist organization by the United States administration, had positioned themselves at the entrances to the halls. Under the eyes of the police, they photographed delegates and journalists. The images then appeared on far-left platforms where calls for violence against the individuals depicted were issued.

This is systematic. Faces are recorded. Names are gathered. And later, consequences follow. Ask the Familienunternehmer.

The documented incidents of that day read like a criminal record.

The AfD member of the Bundestag, Julian Schmidt, was physically attacked by several individuals. He sustained blue and red bruises on his nose and cheekbone. The suspected perpetrator was arrested.

Berlin AfD politician Martin Kohler attempted to pass through a blockade by following an ambulance. Demonstrators struck the bonnet and shattered the rear window of his vehicle.

Journalist Vadim Derksen of Junge Freiheit was stopped in the middle of the street by unidentified individuals. They approached the driver’s side and demanded that he identify himself. Civilians checking journalists.

The team of Tichys Einblick, a conservative German news outlet, was targeted near the DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund) gathering, the DGB being Germany’s main trade union confederation, after organizers used loudspeakers to call on participants to locate them, drag them out, and refuse any interaction. Moments later, masked agitators surrounded the team as they attempted to document those who had been filming them. The escalation is captured on video, including the moment in which one attacker punches the cameraman in the face.

A private mob enforcing political discipline. Journalists hunted on command. The parallels to SA and Rotfrontkämpferbund style intimidation are unmistakable. The ghosts of the 1930s walk German streets once more, only now they march under the banner of progressivism.

When the state is no longer able, or no longer willing, to control the streets itself, others assume that control. A space emerges in which violence is carried out by private groups, yet with the silent approval of the state.

This is not anarchy. It is the most pernicious form of order: the rule of private violence with state connivance.

The Comparison with the Pandemic

Here, the hypocrisy reveals itself in full.

During the COVID pandemic, there were demonstrations. Walks. Assemblies protesting against the government’s measures. The state acted against these demonstrators. With full force. Water cannons. Pepper spray. Mounted police. Fines amounting to millions. Convictions. Arrests.

In Hamburg, a police car drove through a public park to pursue a teenager who had embraced someone. The Hamburg police declared at the time: ‘It was not an option for us to let him go.’ That was state power in action. That was the rule of law confronting the gravest threat to public order: a teenager who had breached distancing rules.

‘Hypocrisy reveals itself in full’

The state argued that these measures were necessary. To protect public order. To preserve security. The police were everywhere. Unyielding. Rigorous. People were reported for sitting on park benches. People were arrested for going on walks. The state bared its teeth.

Fast forward to November 2025. It is no longer ordinary demonstrators who take to the streets. It is an armed mob. People in masks. People with flares and torches. People throwing objects at police officers. People attacking cars. People attempting to break through a police cordon at an electrical substation.

And the state responds less rigorously. The police are present, but the blockades are not cleared with force. The streets are not fully liberated. The assembly technically takes place, yet it does not truly take place.

The difference lies in who is being blocked. The demonstrators protesting against the pandemic measures were seen as a threat to order. The blockers in Giessen are seen as defenders of order. An order that is to be preserved. An order imposed from above.

That is the true scandal.

The Surface Appearance and the Deeper Logic

On the surface, it appears as though the state protected the AfD. 6000 police officers were present. The event took place, albeit delayed. The founding congress of Generation Deutschland was not fully prevented.

But that is only the superficial view.

The deeper logic is this: the state had a choice. It could have not only cleared the blockades. It should have done so. With the same rigidity with which it had acted against the COVID-19 protesters. The streets should have been cleared. The barricades should have been removed. Those individuals who attempted to break through a police cordon should have been arrested.

But all of this was done only half-heartedly. Why? The answer lies in the refinement of the system itself.

The Refinement of the System

A certain spirit pervades the institutions, a spirit that did not wish to prevent this blockade. The state could not prohibit the event, for that would have made the mask slip.

Yet the same spirit did not want the assembly to take place unimpeded. So, it chose a third route. The blockades were allowed to form while the state simultaneously pretended to be protecting the event.

That is the symbol of Giessen. A fundamental right that was exercised and not exercised. An assembly that took place and did not take place.

What occurs here is a displacement of fundamental rights violations onto the level of legal doctrine. Classical German constitutional doctrine understood fundamental rights as defensive rights against the state, a vertical relationship: the state above, the citizen below, fundamental rights as a shield.

Giessen reveals something altogether different. The violation of fundamental rights does not occur vertically. It occurs horizontally, from citizen against citizen. The state issued no prohibition. Instead, the state finances and organizes groups that produce precisely this effect. The state becomes an indirect actor without moving its own hand.

In the language of German criminal law, this is known as indirect perpetration. The state uses others as instruments. It does not control the act itself, but the will of those who perform it. The financing through public funds is not incidental. It is the very foundation of this dominion over the will.

That is the refinement. The state does not violate fundamental rights directly, which means that the classical constitutional complaint does not apply. The state enables the violation through others, which makes it difficult to characterize the conduct as state action at all. The categories of prohibition and permission, of state and citizen, are dissolved. The perpetrator is everywhere and nowhere.

Giessen Reveals the Structure

Giessen thus reveals a constitutional problem for which there is as yet no legal answer. Not because the solution is too difficult. Rather, because the question is not yet being asked, at least not in the corridors of power.

‘The ghosts of Weimar…are marching under the banner of democracy, progressivism, and the defence of constitutional order’

The state no longer finances its own opposition in order to control it. The state finances it in order to realize its negation. And the Constitution possesses no instrument to prevent this.

The ghosts of Weimar walk German streets once more. But this time they are marching under the banner of democracy, progressivism, and the defence of constitutional order. They control the unions. They control the NGOs. They control the streets. And when someone dares to step out of line, whether it is a youth organization or a business association, they demonstrate with ruthless efficiency what the price of dissent will be.

The Familienunternehmer learned this lesson. Others will follow.

This is how the ‘firewall’ is maintained. Not through law. Not through democratic argument. But through a coordinated system of coercion that involves the state, unions, business associations, media, and organized street movements working in concert, each playing their part, each providing plausible deniability to the others.

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