Tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Germany today, calling on citizens to vote against the far right in this weekend's European Parliament elections, AFP reported.
Carrying placards reading "Stop Hate" and "Down with Racism", around 30.000 people joined the demonstration in central Berlin.
Polls show the anti-immigration party AfD could win up to 15 percent of the vote in Germany on Sunday, potentially its biggest success to date despite a string of scandals.
That would put the AfD in second place with Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party and behind the center-right Christian Democrats.
Some protesters in Berlin held banners reading "Go Vote" along with yellow stars like those found on the flag of the European Union.
"There is no better way to defend democracy than to go and vote tomorrow," activist Tarek Alaovs of refugee rights group ProAsil told the crowd, AFP reported.
Thousands of people joined similar rallies in Stuttgart, Leipzig, Dresden, Munich and Frankfurt.
The AfD was expelled from the far-right group in the European Parliament after the statements of its main candidate, Maximilian Krach, in which he downplayed the crimes of members of the Nazi SS unit.
Krah is also under investigation for his relationship with China after one of his aides was arrested on suspicion of spying for Beijing.
At the beginning of the year, the media announced that members of the party attended discussions on plans for the mass expulsion of foreigners from Germany. The report sparked weeks of mass protests.
At his last election campaign rally in Duisburg, western Germany, on June 8, Scholz urged people to vote on Sunday "to defend democracy and the rule of law."
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