The AfD’s ‘extremist’ label is a long time coming

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has been classified as ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Until now, the party – which came second in federal elections in February – had been considered ‘suspected right-wing extremist’. After this upgrade, in the eyes of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (known by its German acronym BfV), the AfD and the values it holds stand in violation of Germany’s constitution.

The BfV had been investigating the party for many months, finally submitting a lengthy report to the Ministry of the Interior this week. They had reportedly wanted to submit their findings to the government at the end of last year, but following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s decision to call an early election, the intelligence service felt compelled to wait until after the February vote to change the AfD’s classification. 

Explaining their decision, the BfV listed a number of the party’s actions which they claimed breached Germany’s constitutional values. The party’s ‘ethnic-based understanding of the people’ is ‘incompatible with the free democratic basic order’, they wrote. The AfD, for example, does not consider Germans ‘with a migration history from predominantly Muslim countries’ to be equal members of German society, the agency stated. The propensity of AfD politicians to ‘continuously’ rail against refugees and migrants also contributed to the agency’s decision.

The upgrade from ‘suspected’ to ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ lowers the bar for the BfV to justify any surveillance of the AfD it now wishes to conduct. It will now be much easier for them to tap phones, monitor meetings and recruit informants from within the party to feed them intelligence. 

While there has been some surprise in Berlin that the BfV’s decision has come less than a week before February’s election winner Friedrich Merz, leader of the CDU party, prepares to take over the reigns as chancellor form Scholz, it is hardly a true shock. The BfV’s classification upgrade has, in reality, been a long time coming. Three of the AfD’s regional branches – Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt – have been classed by the agency as ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ in the past few years, with a couple of the party’s factions (most notably the nationalistic Der Flügel group) under surveillance since at least 2020. Following the BfV’s decision to classify the national party as ‘suspected’ extremists, the AfD has been trying to challenge it in court – with little success. The party’s co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla have blasted today’s BfV decision as a ‘politically motivated’ one that ‘endangers democracy’. 

And yet, there is undisputable evidence that the AfD has done things which chime with the intelligence agency’s justification. Several of its most prominent politicians, including Thuringian regional leader Björn Höcke and the MEP Maximilian Krah, have repeatedly flirted with Nazi imagery and rhetoric. Höcke has been fined thousands of euros on more than one occasion for the use of the banned SS slogan ‘Alles für Deutschland’ – subsequently tweaked by the party during the federal election campaign in a play on words with Weidel’s name to read ‘Alice für Deutschland’. Krah, meanwhile, had attracted scandal for trivialising the crimes of the SS and denying he knew his grandfather had himself been a Nazi, a claim he later walked back. 

Meanwhile, the party at large has increasingly lent into racist, inflammatory language and rhetoric to promote their political platform. Ahead of February’s vote, Weidel controversially embraced the term ‘remigration’ – used as a euphemism in far-right circles for the mass deportation of anyone with a migrant background, legal resident of Germany or not. She also claimed, during a bizarre fireside chat with the US tech billionaire Elon Musk, that Hitler was a Communist. The party printed leaflets depicting people posing with what suspiciously looked like Nazi salutes during the campaign, while some regional branches fundraised using ‘deportation’- themed 2025 calendars.

Today’s upgraded classification will add fuel to the fire for those of the AfD’s political opponents wishing the ban the party altogether. To do so would require the Bundestag, or Bundesrat – the German parliament’s upper house – to submit a request to the country’s constitutional court. The debate around whether or not to do so has existed for some time, gathering pace in the wake of the revelation in January 2024 that members of the party had attended a meeting of right-wing extremists in Potsdam late the previous year at which a ‘remigration’ plan for the country had been discussed. This triggered mass popular protests throughout the country, with nearly 1.5 million Germans taking to the streets on consequtive weekends.

The problem the AfD’s political opponents face is this, however: the party is extremely popular and to even take concrete steps towards banning it would simply amplify its cries of political persecution and push more voters into its arms. In February, the party came second with just over 20 per cent of the vote, giving it 152 MPs in the new parliament. The past few months have only seen its popularity grow to a membership of over 50,000, in part due to Merz’s efforts to bypass the new parliament’s powers by having the old Bundestag pass key legislation on relaxing the country’s economic spending rules. Currently the party still stands second, now with 24 per cent in the polls – although there were points last month when it was beating Merz’s CDU, leading the polls with 26 per cent. Voting intention surveys over the coming days and weeks will determine whether today’s BfV decision will help drive that trend.

Merz may not officially be chancellor for another four days, but his in-tray is already heaving. The problem of how to deal with the AfD – both within the Bundestag, where together with the left-wing Linke they have the power to form a blocking majority on any constitutional legislation, and now outside it – has just got bigger. The calls to ban the AfD will in all likelihood now only grow louder. Whether Merz chooses to endorse the calls could have significant consequences, not only for his own rule, but for Germany’s next federal election in 2029 – and with it the country’s future.