Article:Far-Right AfD Is Labeled Extremist by Germany’s Intelligence Agency
Reporting from Berlin
5–6 minutes
The designation is certain to inflame debates over whether the party should be banned, though some polls show it to be the most popular in the country [actually they are just close behind the leading CDU]. Alice Weidel stands near a stage on which several German flags are displayed. Alice Weidel, an Alternative for Germany leader, speaking at a party conference in Riesa, Germany, in January. Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Germany’s domestic intelligence service has classified the far-right Alternative for Germany, which some polls show as the most popular in the country, as an extremist party, the German authorities announced on Friday.
The classification, which allows the agency to use more powerful surveillance tools to monitor the party and its leadership, is certain to inflame a long-running debate over whether German lawmakers should move to ban the party, which is known by its Germany initials, AfD.
“The AfD advocates an ethnic concept of the people that discriminates against entire population groups and treats citizens with a migrant background as second-class Germans,” Nancy Faeser, Germany’s departing interior minister, said in a statement, noting that such discrimination runs afoul of Germany’s Constitution.
The intelligence agency made its determination after a thorough monitoring and is based on the findings of a 1,100-page report compiled by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The office was specifically created in 1950 to monitor domestic threats to Germany’s democracy and prevent any takeover of Parliament and government by extremist actors. It was an attempt by modern Germany’s founders to prevent the kind of takeover that took place in 1933, when the Nazis seized control of Parliament and government in short order.
The AfD dismissed the agency’s classification as a political move to undermine the party.
“This decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is complete nonsense in terms of substance, has nothing to do with law and justice, and is purely political in the fight between the cartel parties against the AfD,” Stephan Brandner, an AfD leader, told D.P.A., a German news wire, referring to the mainstream parties.
Leaders of the AfD have trivialized the Holocaust and denigrated foreigners. Alice Weidel, the party’s most visible leader, once railed against “headscarf-wearing girls” and “knife-wielding men on welfare,” in a speech to lawmakers.
Alexander Gauland, who once led the party, described the Holocaust as a speck of “bird poop” — he used a more vulgar word — on 1,000 years of successful German history. Another lawmaker, Maximilian Krah, told an Italian newspaper interview last year that members of the S.S., the notorious Nazi paramilitary storm troopers who, among other things, ran Nazi concentration camps, were not criminal per se.
Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia State, was twice convicted and fined last year for using a banned Nazi slogan during a campaign stop.
Party members have also been implicated in a plot to overthrow the state by a group that does not recognize the legitimacy of the modern German Republic. That case is still going through the courts.
Despite the party’s extremist views, during Germany’s campaign before elections in February, the party received an endorsement by Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Trump.
The domestic intelligence service started intensive monitoring of the AfD in 2021, when it labeled the party “suspected” right-wing extremist. The party tried to block that determination, and the surveillance that comes with it, in court, but a higher court decision upheld an initial ruling allowing the classification last year.
The new classification gives domestic intelligence more tools to monitor the AfD. It also opens a legal avenue to have the constitutional court ban the party, a step that Germany’s top court has taken only twice in the 76-year history of Germany’s modern Constitution, both times with parties far less poplar than the AfD.
A debate over whether to ban the party has been ongoing since a German news site last year reported that some party leaders had met with a well-known far-right activist to discuss deportations, not only of migrants, but also of Germans from immigrant backgrounds.
The new designation for the AfD comes just days before Friedrich Merz, a conservative Christian Democrat, is expected to be sworn in as chancellor on Tuesday. Though the AfD finished second in the election in February, Mr. Merz and his party have joined with the Social Democrats to form a coalition, having vowed to exclude the AfD from government.
That has left many AfD backers feeling disenfranchised. The party has gained support since the elections because of an early souring on Mr. Merz and his coalition, and because of increasing concerns about global affairs. Some polls show more than a quarter of voters supporting the party.
Christopher F. Schuetze is a reporter for The Times based in Berlin, covering politics, society and culture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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