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The decision by Germany’s domestic spy agency to call the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party “extremist” amounts to the starkest move yet by authorities to try to stop the advance of the populist political force.
Friday’s classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) will open up the possibility for the security services to monitor the country’s largest opposition party, including by recruiting people to inform against it and enabling interception of its communications.
AfD leaders denounced it as a “blow against democracy”, and nothing short of an attempt to disfranchise the more than 10 million people who voted for it in February’s election.
Its leaders vowed to take legal action against what they called “defamatory” and “politically motivated attacks”.
According to the experts who compiled the BfV’s 1,100-page report, the AfD is “a racist and anti-Muslim organisation”, which, through its strict, ethnically and ancestrally defined version of who is German and who is not, “deprecates whole sections of the population in Germany and infringes their human dignity”.
It has also “incited irrational fears and hostility” in society, steering the blame towards individuals and groups, the report read.
In itself, the step is not much of a surprise, although the timing is. The outgoing interior minister, Nancy Faeser, made the bombshell announcement on what is effectively her last day in office.
Faeser said that “there was no political influence on the assessment”, despite the AfD’s insistence to the contrary. But the move puts the incoming conservative-led government of Friedrich Merz under great pressure, as well as Faeser’s Social Democrat colleagues, who will be the junior partners in the new coalition which gets to work next Tuesday.
On the back of the decision, Merz will now be responsible – on top of the myriad other challenges in his in-tray – for deciding whether and how to ban the AfD, a decision which will involve the most precarious of political tightrope walks.
Migration, Ukraine, Trump and an ailing economy are among the burgeoning issues that he will also have to tackle with urgency. The growing mood of dissatisfaction over these and other issues, exacerbated by the six months of political deadlock that followed the premature collapse of the previous government – which induced an added layer of nationwide ennui – has already caused the AfD to creep up in the polls.
Having won second place in February’s election – doubling its previous result and making it the strongest opposition party, second only to the conservative CDU/CSU – in recent days, the AfD has come top of the polls for the first time ever.
The ruling by the BfV is unlikely to put people off supporting the AfD.
Finding a way to reduce the AfD has been at top of the agenda among all of the political parties since it emerged as a protest force of professors and academics in 2013 on the back of anger over the Euro bailouts. The challenge has only grown in importance, as the populists – morphing from anti-Euro to anti-migrant over time – have grown their success at the ballot box.
Merz would like to be seen as a pragmatic rationalist, aiming to reduce the AfD to what he refers to as the “marginal phenomenon” it once was by addressing the nation’s concerns, taking the wind out of the sails of the AfD’s successful modus operandi of inciting fear and insecurity.
Tackling “irregular” immigration is therefore at the top of his domestic agenda, as he seeks to address the topic viewed as having added the most fuel to the AfD’s fire.
But many others believe it is too late for that, arguing that an extremist classification, followed by a ban, would be the only way to stop the flourishing party.
Others say such a move would be grave danger of backfiring, arguing that the AfD would turn such a branding by the state into their own “seal of approval”, which will serve to enhance its already strong sense of victimhood or martyrdom.
Merz’s party, the CDU, has been torn over how to deal with the AfD. Merz tacitly cooperated with the party earlier this year – despite insisting he would not – to push migration policies through parliament. And on the local level, his party and the AfD have cooperated on issues such as a ruling that the German flag should be hoisted in schools.
Jens Spahn, Merz’s close ally, recently prompted scorn by suggesting the AfD should be treated as a “normal opposition party”, arguing that excluding the party from parliamentary procedures only boosted its popularity.
Those who reject that approach say Friday’s ruling will now give them more justification to block the party at every opportunity – but they argue that this will only work if a cross-party consensus prevails.
