The AfD is a proven right-wing extremist group - What now?
By Anna-Magdalena Glockzin, 4 minutes.
The AfD was the second-largest party in the recent German national elections (20.8% of the vote) and formed the strongest political group in East Germany. It has 15 members in the European Parliament and is even too radical for French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Moreover, the party has been linked to the far-right scene meeting in Potsdam on “remigration”, several scandals about foreign influence from Russia and China (take Maximilian Krah as an example), and recurring instances of trivialising the holocaust and the Nazi regime. Now Germany’s domestic intelligence service has officially classified the AfD as a right-wing extremist group. But why has this classification taken so long, and what does it mean for the party and German politics?
On May 2, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) announced that the AfD is a “proven right-wing extremist organisation”, based on a report of over 1.000 pages filled with material. With this report, the Federal Office took another step to demonstrate the danger the political party poses to the German democracy. In particular, substantial violations of human dignity, the rule of law and the principle of democracy have been cited. The domestic intelligence agency stated in a press release: “The ethnicity- and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order.” For the first time in German recent history, a party with broad representation in the national parliament has received that label. The state-level AfD in Thuringia, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt were already designated as proven extremist groups.
AfD demonstration in Berlin, 2022
”Our country first!” 18/18 (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) by Matthias Berg Fotograf Berlin
What’s the process?
Before classifying AfD as a right-wing extremist organisation beyond doubt, the German domestic intelligence service had to initiate two prior steps. First, in 2019, the Federal Office considered the federal AfD a so-called test case (Prüffall), where it could only collect and assess publicly available data on the AfD, such as statements by AfD functionaries or the party programme. In February 2021, the party was categorised as a suspected case (Verdachtsfall) when the authority concluded that there were indications for extremist tendencies. At that point, the Federal Office is allowed to observe the group with intelligence resources and has to inform the public.
After identifying beyond doubt that the group in question is extremist in its nature, it is now officially classified as “proven extremist”, which happened on May 2. This result must be communicated to the public, and the domestic intelligence agency can observe the organisation and its members, with the same means as in the step before, but potentially with lower thresholds. The classification of the AfD as a right-wing extremist organisation was already expected at the end of last year. However, to evade the accusation of interfering in elections, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution waited until after the elections.
What were the reactions?
AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla criticised the classification, calling it a “heavy blow to German democracy”. They vowed to legally challenge the label, as it was “clearly politically motivated” in their opinion. AfD deputy chairman Stephan Brandner described it as “complete nonsense” and said that it “has nothing to do with law and order”. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser countered that the Federal Office made that decision with “no political influence whatsoever”. But also, actors from abroad felt compelled to express their opinions. U.S. Vice President JD Vance stated on X that “the AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the process a “tyranny in disguise”, where the agency got “new powers to surveil the opposition”. In a rare instance, the German Federal Office replied directly on X that “this is democracy” and that “we have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.”
Is there going to be a ban on the AfD?
With this step taken by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, a debate on the potential ban of the AfD has been reignited. Yet, a party ban does not automatically follow from the agency’s decision. It is rather a political decision, as only the Bundestag, the Bundesrat, and the Federal Government can submit such a request. The addressee is the Federal Constitutional Court, which then decides on the matter and potentially prohibits the political party. However, an attempt to initiate such proceedings in January failed because there were not enough supporters in the Bundestag.
