German cake in face
© Marie Bauer / YouTube Political opinion being addressed to Beatrix von Storch, leader of right-wing party Alternative for Germany
Two activists in clown costumes have disrupted a meeting of the German anti-migrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) by throwing a cake into the face of Beatrix von Storch, one of the party's leaders and a European Parliament member. The men approached von Storch while she was presiding over a closed-door AfD party meeting held in Kassel on February 28. They sang "Happy Birthday" as one of them threw a cake into von Storch's face and the other filmed the incident.

Von Storch's fellow party members seized the attackers and called police. The Peng Collective, a culture activism group from Berlin, claimed responsibility for the 'sweet attack' and said the 'clowns' were "beaten, kicked, arrested and handed over to the police."


The activists said they were protesting in response to von Storch suggesting police should be allowed to shoot migrant women and children entering Germany illegally. A statement posted on the group's website entitled "Tortenbefehl" (Pie order) after the attack says: "Who[ever] wants to prevent the crossing of a moral border, must, if necessary, make use of a cream pie," in apparent reference to von Storch's recent comments.

"No activist wants to throw pies at politicians. I do not want that. But cream pies are the last resort. And at the moment, the usage of cakes is the moral dictate of our time. Cake-throwing is the final tool at the border crossing to inhumanity and an urgent expression of direct democracy," said one of the activists explaining the motives behind the attack.

Von Storch denounced the protestors' actions, referring to them as people who resort to violence as they lack an agenda.
"People with no arguments tear down posters, burn cars and disrupt meetings with pies," said von Storch, as cited by Deutsche Welle.

Alternative for Germany was founded in 2013 as a Euroskeptic party. The group failed to get into the Bundestag in the 2013 parliamentary elections, but gained two seats in the European Parliament a year later. Since the beginning of the refugee crisis in Europe, the party has made extensive use of anti-migrant rhetoric to win popular opinion.