The German national intelligence agency classifies German far-right alternatives. Germany has suggested that some public opinion is the most popular extremist party, German authorities announced Friday.
The decision has intensified Germany's confusion as to what to do about the party known as the AFD, while leaders revive the smallest of the Holocaust, reviving Nazi slogans, slandering foreigners and expanding their political foundations.
The designation is sure to inflam the long-term debate about whether German lawmakers should move to ban the party entirely. Such a step could put Germany in a political crisis without necessarily solving the way that would bring an estimated 25% of voters who support the AFD in the mainstream political fold.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was labelled Germany's “fatal open border immigration policy” as an extremist rather than AFD in a statement released on X.
“Germany has just given spy agencies new authority to monitor the opposition. It's not democracy. It's a disguised tyranny,” he said in the post.
The issue now threatens to be a distraction for Friedrich Merz, who has declined as AFD's recent rise, even before he was sworn as the expected prime minister on Tuesday.
The AFD finished second in the February election, with 20.8% of the vote, and Merz and his conservative Christian Democrats joined other mainstream parties with a pledge to avoid governing the AFD too extreme. Instead, Merz turned his attention to the Social Democrats on the centre left as a partner in the coalition, increasing the sense of disenfranchising AFD voters.
AFD leaders on Friday denounced the announcement as a politically motivated attempt, and they said they would challenge it in court. The AFD is now forming the biggest threat to Germany's founding party. This has erod decades of control over politics as the country's political landscape was destroyed.
Among other things, the AFD pointed out the timing of the decision and characterized it as a farewell shot by left-wing Social Democrat Home Minister Nancy Pheaser.
“This decision to protect the constitution is entirely nonsense in terms of substance, has nothing to do with law and justice, and is purely political in the battle between the cartel parties with the AFD,” AFD leader Stephen Brandner told the German news agency DPA.
Nevertheless, the national intelligence reporting agency took the decision after years of thorough monitoring of the AFD and based on the findings of a 1,100-page report compiled by the office for the protection of the constitution.
The office was specially created in 1950 to monitor domestic threats to German democracy and to prevent the acquisition of parliamentary and government by extremist actors. It was an attempt by modern German founders to avoid the kind of rupture that took place in 1933, when the Nazis seized control of parliament and government.
The office is under the support of the Ministry of Home Affairs, which is responsible for domestic security, but is designed to operate independently of the government, sequestering it from political pressures that the AFD claims are behind the decision.
“The AFD advocates the ethnic concept of people who discriminate against all population groups and treat citizens with immigrant backgrounds as second-rate Germans,” the deported home minister Pheaser said in a statement, saying such discrimination violates the German constitution.
Much of the evidence of the designation was obvious and visible.
Alice Weidel, the party's most visible leader, has taken on Muslims to “girl wearing a scarf” and “men wielding a knife in welfare.”
Alexander Go-round, who once led the party, described the Holocaust as a spot of “bird poop” – he used more vulgar words – a thousand years of successful German history.
Another MP, Maximilian Kura, said in an interview with an Italian newspaper last year that he was the infamous Nazi paramilitary storm troopers who ran Nazi concentration camps, a member of the SS.
Thuringia State leader Björn Höcke was convicted twice last year for using a Nazi slogan banned at campaign stops and was fined.
“The AFD is a magnet for extremists in the country, poses a threat to democracy from within,” says Matthias Quento, a professor of sociology who has spent years studying the extreme right, in an email exchange.
Party members are also involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the state by groups that do not recognize the legitimacy of the modern German Republic. The case is still passing through the court.
The party has ousted several members for particularly bad violations, but rarely punishes leaders with controversial speeches. Instead, it demonstrates its status as a victim of mainstream political parties and liberal media.
The AFD political allies from overseas did the same. Despite the long and public history of extreme statements by AFD leaders, the party received approval in its final election campaign from President Trump's billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
In February, Vice President JD Vance challenged his commitment to democracy, denounced European leaders for trying to isolate far-right parties.
Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference surprised the German host, angered him, and caused harsh responsibilities from Prime Minister Olaf Scholz. German officials accused him of interfering with domestic politics and not understanding the source of Germany's strict restrictions on extremists, given his disastrous Nazi past.
Prior to Friday's announcement, the national intelligence agency had classified AFD's youth wing as extremists in 2023. The party disbanded it.
The new classification will increase the number of tools to monitor AFD with domestic intelligence. It also opens legal measures to ban the party in the Constitutional Court. This is a step that Germany's top courts have only been taken twice in the 76-year history of Germany's modern constitution, both of which are far less popular than the AFD.
The German Foreign Ministry responded to Rubio's statement later on Friday, asserting that “the decision is the result of a thorough and independent investigation to protect our constitution and the rule of law.”
“We learned from history that we need to stop right-wing extremism,” the ministry wrote in its post.
