Germany's secret service declares AfD extremist

“Alternative for Germany” calls for the deportation of citizens of foreign origin, is accused of holding openly pro-Russian positions, of opposing the expansion of the European Union, and of actually demanding Germany’s departure from the transatlantic alliance and concentration on the nation-state. AfD leader Tino Chrupalla has visited Belgrade and met with exponents of the regime there. Senior AfD representatives have called Kosovo a “failed state”

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Germany, as the country's domestic intelligence agency is called, announced on Friday that it has decided to declare the right-wing party "Alternative für Deutschland" (AfD) as a "confirmed right-wing extremist organization."

Until now, only a few AfD branches in individual German states had been classified as such, while the party at the national level had a lower status, as “suspect.” Now the entire party is considered far-right. 

Spiegel magazine reported that this changes the approach of the security authorities towards the party. The new classification allows the authorities to monitor the party's activities, including tapping the phones of party officials, observing meetings and recruiting informants. The report by the Domestic Intelligence Agency contains 1100 pages of evidence on the AfD's extremism.

“The concept of the people based on ethnicity and descent, which prevails within the party, is incompatible with the free democratic order,” the agency said in a statement, according to Reuters. That concept “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, subject them to treatment that is contrary to the constitution, and thereby give them a subordinate legal status,” Reuters further quoted it as saying. According to the report, the AfD does not consider German citizens with origins in predominantly Muslim countries to be equal members of the German people.

German public broadcaster ARD noted that classifying the AfD as a purely extremist party could "reignite the debate about banning the AfD" - although this is not an automatic process, as it requires parliament, the state chamber and the government to start a process asking the federal constitutional court to ban the AfD.

In the last parliamentary elections, the AfD came in second, receiving the highest number of votes in its history. After the elections, the AfD even led in some polls.

Initially, according to “Spiegel,” the Domestic Intelligence Agency had planned to announce at the end of last year whether suspicions against the party had strengthened and whether it would be classified as a “confirmed” far-right organization. However, the collapse of the government coalition in Germany and the early parliamentary elections changed the timeline. In order not to interfere with the elections and to guarantee equal opportunities for all parties, the Intelligence Agency postponed the publication of the report until after the elections.

The AfD is accused of holding openly pro-Russian positions, opposing the expansion of the European Union, and effectively demanding Germany's departure from the transatlantic alliance and concentration on the nation-state.

AfD leader Tino Chrupalla has visited Belgrade and met with exponents of the regime there. Senior AfD representatives have called Kosovo a “failed state.” The AfD has also “inquired” several times about German projects to support civil society activities in Albania and Kosovo. 

As Spiegel reports, last year in the election campaigns for the state parliaments of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony in eastern Germany, the AfD made no attempt to hide its stance. The Brandenburg state branch published ethnic propaganda ads, in which the lives of fair-skinned white people were shown being destroyed by dark-skinned, stern-looking individuals. The ads - with images created with the help of artificial intelligence - suggested that these individuals would turn squares into drug markets and train stations into crime scenes.

In the campaign for the German parliamentary elections, the AfD has intensified its rhetoric. AfD leader Alice Weidel has used the bellicose term “remigration,” which refers to the mass expulsion of foreigners from Germany. Weidel has also said that Adolf Hitler was a communist, grossly manipulating history. The AfD office printed blue hearts with the slogan “Alice für Deutschland,” which was based on the Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” (Everything for Germany). Despite this campaign, the AfD has achieved great success in the elections, coming in second. In the new German parliament, the AfD has 152 deputies, twice as many as in the previous legislature.