ExtremismGermany’s AfD Party Placed under Surveillance as “Extremism Suspect”

Germany’s interior intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has classified the entire Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as an “extremism suspected case.” The two largest parties in Germany, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party are members of the governing coalition, making the populist, far-right AfD the leader of the opposition in the Bundestag.

Tagesspiegel reports that in a Wednesday video conference with the heads of the state authorities for the protection of the constitution in Germany’s sixteen states BfV Director Thomas Haldenwang said that the decision to designate the AfD as an extremism suspect was taken on 25 February. The designation allows the BfV to use additional surveillance powers given to it by the Bundestag last year, including monitoring email communications and recruiting party members as informants.

Observers note that this is the first time in the 71-year history of the Federal Republic that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has used the designation “extremism suspect” to refer to a party which sits in the Bundestag — and in several state parliaments.

Two years, the BfV used a lesser designation for AfD – an extremism “test case,” which allwed the service limited surveillance of the party and its officials. The monitoring revealed a significant increase in radicalization and extremism in party ranks.

The BfV says it now sees significant indications that the AfD has been transformed from an organization which welcomes extremists to a far-right extremist movement.

In January 2019 there were only “the first actual indications of a policy [by AfD] directed against the free democratic basic order [of Germany,” the BfV says. The influence of right-wing extremists in the party, however, has reached a threatening extent. For example, the moderate party leader Jörg Meuthen can assert himself only with great difficulty in efforts to reign in the Holocaust-denier and anti-Semitic Björn Höcke and “Der Flügel,” the small band of thuggish and violent extremists he employs to intimidate more moderate elements within the party.

The BfV’s detailed report focuses on three aspects of AfD: the increased influence of the far-right extremist wing within the party; the increasingly antidemocratic agitation by a growing number of party activists; and the connection to anti-democratic actors and organizations outside the party, such as the far-right extremist Identitarian Movement Germany (IBD); the “One Percent”; the “Institute for State Policy”; the extremist demagogue Götz Kubitschek; and for to the “ Compact” magazine, which spreads conspiracy theories about the coronavirus, Muslim immigrants, and Jews.

The BfV had already designated “One Percent,” the Institute for State Policy, and “Compact” as extremism suspected cases. The IBD has already been designated as a far-right extremist organization, and is under tight surveillance.

Observers note that the decision by the BfV – its application to the Interior Ministry for approval of the decision was accompanied by dossier of more than 1,000 pages – was expected, ss the agency has begun to monitor various factions of AfD in early 2020.

Efforts by the AfD to block the designation in court have so far failed.

Germany will hold its parliamentary election in September, and it remains to be seen whether the BfV investigation, and the result of this investigation, will hurt the party’s chances at the polls.