German police officers may face expulsion if they are found to be members of the populist AfD party after a spy agency classified the party as being “right-wing extremist”.
Leaders in the states of Hesse and Bavaria have announced that they will examine whether to ban civil servants, including members of the police, for being members of the anti-mass migration Alternative für Deutschland party, the Bild newspaper reports.
It comes after the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) intelligence agency on Friday officially classified the party as being a “right-wing extremist” organisation over its stance against the open borders agenda of the Berlin establishment and against mass migration from Muslim nations, which it found was “not compatible with the free democratic basic order” of Germany.
The move will allow the state to step up its surveillance of the AfD, including the use of informants and wiretapping of party communications. The government was already spying on the party after the BfV previously branded it as “suspected” extremists.
The upgrade in classification has been taken as justification by establishment politicians to go after AfD members who serve as government employees.
Hesse Interior Minister Roman Poseck, of the supposedly centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said: “We will examine the extent to which the classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has an impact on AfD members and officials in the public service. Our employees in the police and administration must guarantee that they will support our free, democratic basic order at all times.”
Poseck said he would push for a nationwide ban on AfD members serving as police officers or civil servants at the meeting of state interior ministers next month in Bremerhaven.
This has been backed by the Minister-President of Bavaria and head of the Christian Social Union (CSU) party Markus Söder, who said: “We also have to examine what consequences this classification must have for the activities of AfD members in the public service.”
Others have called for the government to withdraw public financing for the AfD, which all parties with over half a per cent of support in Germany are entitled to. Currently, the AfD is the most popular party in the country, with around 26 per cent.
The chairman of the CDU state parliamentary group in Lower Saxony said: “The Conference of Interior Ministers should now carefully examine a request to withdraw party financing. I find it unbearable to finance right-wing extremist and anti-constitutional propaganda from tax revenue.”
There have also been suggestions that initiatives to ban the AfD outright should be undertaken in the wake of the BfV’s ruling, with Social Democrat Thuringia Interior Minister Georg Maier saying that a “prohibition procedure is the logical consequence of this decision.” A ban would require the approval of either the Bundestag or Bundesrat legislative bodies or the Federal Constitutional Court.
AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said that “anti-democratic interior ministers want to harass police officers with AfD membership under the pretext” of the BfV’s ruling, adding: “This is an attack on the rule of law and internal security. We stand in front of our police officers and will not abandon them!”