It’s an innovative solution to keeping neo-Nazis at bay: buy up all the beer.

Local activists in Ostritz, a German town near the border with Poland, took the measure ahead of last Friday's Shield and Sword Festival, a white nationalist rock music event held near the town.

A court had already banned alcohol from the festival, saying its availability could increase the risk of violence.

Following the ruling, police confiscated alcohol from the event, but locals also bought up more than 200 crates of beer from a local grocery store.

“The plan was devised a week in advance,” local activist Georg Salditt told the newspaper Bild. “We wanted to dry the Nazis out. We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we’ll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket].”

“For us it’s important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won’t tolerate this, who say ‘we have different values here, we’re setting an example, which is not the image of a far-right concert, which dominates the media coverage,’” a local woman explained to the TV station ZDF.

According to local reports, around 500-600 people attended the festival, fewer than the 1,200 who came the year before.