This designation allows domestic intelligence agencies to adopt the highest level of domestic intelligence agencies.
The German (AFD) Party’s right-wing populist alternative, which came in second in the recent federal election, is now trapped in a legal battle with the state to avoid being branded with the “extremist” right-wing movement.
The controversial label was imposed by Germany’s national intelligence reporting agency on May 2, but has now come to a pause amid the transition to a new power-sharing government following legal challenges.
Here we know about the social and political implications that have been forced after the war to protect against this particular aspect of German law: its return to fascism.
What is a legal battle?
In Germany after World War II, the Fundamental Law of 1949 was adopted to prevent the return of National Socialism, and the Federal Bureau for the Protection of the Constitution (BFV) was established to protect the country’s democratic orders from internal threats.
The BFV accuses the party of “ignoring human dignity” through “continuous upset” over illegal immigration, claiming it poses a threat to the country’s democratic order.
The agency compiled the 1,100-page report, which is not made public.
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The BFV states that the AFD’s approach to ethnicity is “incompatible with a free democratic basic order,” and that the party does not consider German citizens, who are primarily immigrant backgrounds from Muslim countries, as equal members of the German people.
If AFD loses the lawsuit, the label can be re-iterated.
What does the “extremist” label mean?
This label means that AFD has been promoted to the highest level of domestic intelligence monitoring for BFVs.
“They can be researched across Germany. The whole organization. This is the sharpest sword this country’s intelligence agency has against AFD,” a political analyst at Richard Schenk of the conservative think tank MCC Brussels told the Epoch Times.
However, surveillance does not automatically cause criminal charges. It remains within police scope and does not imply harassment, he said.
But it brings results. Many banks are “really skeptical of the organisation under surveillance,” he says, and venues and employers may be embarrassed.
There is also career risk as citizen services applicants, teachers, police and soldiers must disclose AFD relationships.
“You’re afraid of losing your job or you’re afraid of getting the job you want because you’re a member of AFD. So it puts a lot of pressure on them. It already brings outcomes,” he added.
How does monitoring work?
BFV deals with a variety of threats, including anti-intellectuality, extremism, Islamism, left and right radicalism.
“Every time they identify a political group that may be a threat, they are legally required to disclose to some extent that this organization or individual person has been under surveillance,” Schenk said.
How is this related to the new government?
Since February, the AFD has been restricted by the “Cordon Sanitéa,” a partisan agreement between the dominant central Christian Democrats in the Center-left Social Democrats (SPD) and their coalition partners.
On May 6th, Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz became prime minister, and party Alexander Dobrinz took over as Minister of Home Affairs and overseeing the BFV.
Schenk has a more practical view of Christian Democrats hoping to bring AFD votes back to their fold, but he said that Germany’s mainstream political left, along with the Social Democrats, also views all sorts of compromises on policy with the AFD and its voters as “hestique.”
Mertz’s thin coalition is vulnerable and Schenk said nuclear selection could be used to bypass the prime minister and implement the AFD ban.
What is AFD?
Originally a protest movement, AFD It has risen sharply It ruled in Turing and Saxony last September, winning a third of the votes in both countries, and emerged as the dominant political force of East Germany, which was behind the Soviet iron curtain until 1989.
The policies include strong support for traditional marriages between men and women and family lives, preserving national independence in the face of increasing European Union power, German culture in the face of “European integration” and Islamization, and border security, including the expulsion of illegal immigrants.
AFD co-leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel have repeatedly denied that the party is an extremist.
Can AFD be banned?
Under Article 21(2) of the Basic Law, the Federal Constitutional Court outlawed only two political parties: Sozialistische Reichspartei (SRP), a neo-Nazi-style party banned in 1952. Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party, KPD) was banned in 1956.
In Noughts there were two major attempts to ban the German National Democrats (NDP) to the extreme right-handed supranational party (NDP). However, it was shot down by the Constitutional Court in 2017.
Political scientist Werner J. Patzelt, who visited a research professor at MCC Brussels, said that bars were expensive to ban the party during the Epoch era.
He said that even those who oppose certain constitutional principles, such as seeking monarchy, are not qualified as extremist parties.
And the proportional principle prevents the prohibition when the parties simply “are too insignificant to present concrete dangers due to the existence of the liberal order of the state itself.”
If a prohibition occurs, such parties will be forbidden, dissolved, and property will be expropriated. “It’s illegal to entertain follow-up organizations like that,” Patzelt said.
He says that it’s not easy to designate extremists.
Patzelt suggested that those compiled into BFV contain evidence that many AFD politicians are “radical.”
However, he warned that banning AFD would not erase their underlying complaints, often tied to working-class voters but not solidified.
“Even if it was successful in banning AFD, the problems, ideas, beliefs and those German feelings would also disappear,” he said.
James Baersel and Guy Burchard contributed to this report.
