ExtremismGermany’s Spy Chiefs Urge Court to Agree on Monitoring of Far-Right AfD
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says there’s sufficient evidence to warrant labeling the country’s main opposition party, the populist far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD, as “anti-constitutional” and an organization hostile to democracy.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency says there’s sufficient evidence to warrant labeling the country’s main opposition party, the populist far-right Alternative for Germany, AfD, as “anti-constitutional” and an organization hostile to democracy.
With nationwide elections just half a year away, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) wants a court to agree it can place the entire party under surveillance. On Friday, a court ordered the BfV to delay the surveillance until a ruling is made on a party challenge to the monitoring.
If the courts agree that designating the AfD a menace to democracy is warranted, the agency would be able to step up monitoring of the party and its members, allowing the BfV to eavesdrop on party communications and recruit informants.
AfD officials say the move is anti-democratic and a “scandalous” attempt to influence public opinion about the party ahead of multiple federal and regional elections and would undermine its ability to contest the polls on an equal footing with rivals.
But politicians from other parties say the surveillance is needed.
“The concept of a defensible democracy means naming and fighting the opponents of the free democratic basic order,” says Volker Ullrich, the interior affairs spokesman for the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.
Green party lawmaker Konstantin von Notz told broadcaster Deutsche Welle: “We know from our history that even in a democracy, enemies of the rule of law can be elected” and “then eliminate democracy and the rule of law.”
If the BfV manages to secure court approval, it would amount to a historic move. The AfD wouldn’t be the first German political party to come under a formal surveillance regime — that distinction goes to the left-wing party Die Linke, which was monitored from 2007 to 2014 over suspicions of extremism — but it would be the first time since the Second World War that Germany’s main parliamentary opposition was officially deemed extreme.
German intelligence officials say they have no choice but to target the AfD, arguing that since its founding in 2013 as a euro-skeptic and anti-immigrant party, it has moved further to the far-right.
Mounting influence of Flügel
Much of the BfV’s worry focuses on the mounting influence within the AfD of Flügel, a faction within the party that was formally disbanded last year but whose former adherents, government officials and analysts say, are continuing to operate and whose reach and clout are expanding.
The BfV’s decision to target
