Alternative for Germany (AFD), is officially an “right -wing” organization. This is the opinion of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German interior intelligence services, after a three -year investigation that has led them to conclude that some postulates of this party and statements of their leaders against immigrants and Muslims go against the fundamental law. The “Righting Extremista” qualification will allow surveillance, by the authorities, meetings and communications of this party. And you can revive attempts, so far frustrated, to ban it.
The decision of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution arrives four days before the investiture of the new Foreign Minister, the democristian Friedrich Merz, in a Bundestag in which AFD leads the opposition with 152 deputies,.
The opinion is a reflection the “defensive” character of German democracy. The fundamental law of 1949, extracting lessons from the 12 years of national socialism, allows us to prohibit parties that “tend to distort or eliminate the fundamental regime of freedom and democracy, or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
AFD, founded in 2013 with 51,000 militants, was already considered a “suspect of the right -wing extremist” since May 2024, after a decision of the Superior Administrative Court of the State of North Westphalia. The sections of the party in the eastern federated states of Turingia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt already received, from the authorities, the qualifier of “extremist of rights”. Now this description is extended to the whole formation throughout the country.
Beyond the legal consequences, the political impact is enormous, in a context, in addition, in which other parties of the same sphere, such as French national regrouping (RN), denounce the persecution by the authorities. AFD, which, unlike Marine Le Pen’s party, has hardened her speech and rhetoric against immigration, is an increasingly central party in Germany, and has massive and growing support: some polls indicate that, if the elections were held today, it would be the most voted force. Now it is seen again as a political outcast, on the margins of society.
“For our assessment, the idea of the people of the AFD is decisive, based on ethnic origins, which devalues entire population groups in Germany and violates their human dignity,” the vice presidents of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Sinan Selen and Silke Willems, have declared in a statement. “This idea of the people,” they add, “it is concretized in an attitude of the party contrary to migrants and Muslims.”
This ethnic-racial conception of the people “is not compatible with the fundamental democratic and liberal order,” according to the statement. Those responsible for German intelligence have specifically observed the recent electoral campaigns (regional in September and federal in February), and have consisted of the process of training the formation led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, which has not prevented their growing popularity.
