With past and ongoing attempts by Germany’s political establishment to diminish the support base of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) having failed, Germany’s highly politicized domestic intelligence agency is stepping up its efforts to deal a death blow to the country’s second-largest party.
Plans to stamp the entire AfD party with the ‘extremist’ label come ahead of critical elections in East Germany and at the European level, where the AfD is poised to place first—by a large margin—in Saxony, Brandenburg, and Thuringia, and second in EU parliamentary elections.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)—which operates under the supervision and direction of Nancy Faeser, Germany’s activist interior minister who’s written for Antifa magazines with links to extremism—is preparing a dossier to use as a basis for which to justify the classification of the entire AfD as a “verified extremist effort” (gesichert extremistische Bestrebung), Süddetsche Zeitung reports, citing internal documents from the BfV.
According to the report, the BfV, led by Thomas Haldenwang (CDU), intends to wait until the verdict on the AfD lawsuit against its categorization as a “suspected case” is delivered before it releases the new classification. The Higher Administrative Court in Münster is expected to submit its ruling in that case sometime in March.
For MP Petr Bystron, the AfD’s foreign policy spokesman, the classification, like previous ‘extremist’ classifications of AfD at the state level, will not affect the party’s standing in the eyes of the German public.
“At this stage, the people clearly understand that the ‘extremist’ classification is only a tool used by the ruling parties to oppress the opposition,” Bystron said, noting that Stephan Kramer, the boss of Thuringia’s state domestic intelligence agency, who called AfD supporters “brown dregs,” wanted to be a “candidate for the Social Democratic Party (SPD).”
Kramer, Bystron said, is “in fact a politician of a party that is competing against the AfD for votes.” If you take a look at the polls in Thuringia, he continued, “Kramer’s SPD is now under 5%. Thus, the AfD makes people like him jobless.”
The latest report from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution on extremism within the AfD is from the spring of 2021. Internal emails and documents from the BfV which Süddetsche Zeitung refers to in its report indicate that preparations for an “AfD follow-up report 2023” have been ongoing since March 2023.
In April of last year, an initial draft outline emerged which encompassed typical charges leveled against the AfD by the Office for the Protection of Constitution—like racism and authoritarianism. Additionally, the new draft is said to contain a new point concerning the AfD’s “relationship with Russia.”
The newspaper reports that high-ranking employees at the BfV have indicated that no additional information is required to reach a new assessment of the anti-globalist opposition party.
Responding to the information contained within Süddetsche Zeitung’s report, AfD MEP Joachim Kuhs, who leads the party’s delegation in the European Parliament, told The European Conservative:
The Minister of the Interior, Ms. Faeser (SPD), and her official, Mr. Haldenwang (CDU), are obviously not moving fast enough in the ‘fight against the right.’ Now that the concerted campaign to turn the so-called Potsdam secret meeting into a ‘Wannsee Conference 2.0’ has failed, these ‘constitutional protectors’ are losing their sense of proportion and are taking the next step in their desperate battle against the strongest true opposition force in the republic.
The fact that this fight is doomed to failure is being whistled from the rooftops [a German expression meaning “widely known”]. It would be so good for our people and our country if the government would finally listen to the voices of its citizens and turn its attention to Germany’s pressing problems
AfD MP Norbert Kleinwächter agreed with MEP Kuhs’s appraisal that BfV’s planned assessment of the party is politically motivated but shared a less optimistic outlook in comments to The European Conservative,.
The Constitutional Protection Agency (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) is subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior. While it pretends to be a neutral agency, it is, in fact, highly political. Its political nature became very obvious to the public when the Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser, the Minister of Family Affairs, Lisa Paus, and the president of the Agency, Thomas Haldenwang, gave a joint press conference on the necessity to pass a “Democracy Promotion Act,” which would allow spying on political opponents, removing people said to have used “hate speech” from public office, and having local authorities withdraw the licenses for restaurant and hotel owners that allow “hate speakers” to gather. Needless to say, these proposals are all entirely anti-constitutional.
It is not surprising that the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz is now planning to consider the AfD an extremist organization. This will happen, not because the AfD is actually extremist, but because there is the political will to do so. The established parties hope to shy away voters, and it is willing to pay any price, including the destruction of democracy, for this. They may even experience disadvantages in the private sector. Some state chapters of the AfD have already been considered extremist, which resulted in civil servants, policemen, and teachers leaving the party because they could not afford to lose their positions and pensions. It would even affect me personally. I am a teacher by profession, and if I don’t leave the party, I won’t be able to return to my position after my political office has been terminated.
In conclusion, this development will harm the AfD because it will force many members to leave, and ban others from joining the party. This may result in an actual radicalization of the party and a loss of administrative skills. The major desired effect, namely reducing the number of voters, will not be achieved as this had not occurred either in the States where the AfD had already been classified as extremist.