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Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Is the AfD Too Extreme for Democracy?
In the year leading up to Germany's February elections, the far-right party Alternative for Germany was rising fast in the polls. It would ultimately increase its seats in the Bundestag from 76 to 152. But when I talked with supporters, I found that they were cynical. One of the most consistent messages I heard when I visited Germany was that the government had rigged the game against them. 'It's not just the opposing parties that don't want us; the system itself doesn't want us,' said a member of the crowd at a rally in Thuringia. Now that claim seems undeniable. Last week, the German domestic spy agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz declared the AfD an 'extremist' organization, which makes it eligible for surveillance, infiltration, and a potential outright ban. Other groups previously singled out for attention and investigation by the agency include the Islamic State, various unruly Marxist-Leninists, and the Church of Scientology. These others can boast a ragged caliphate, closets full of Che T-shirts, and an upcoming Mission: Impossible movie, respectively. But they do not have what the AfD has: nearly a quarter of the seats in the German Parliament. The AfD has already challenged the 'extremist' label in court, and the BfV has withdrawn its finding until the court rules on it. The case is expected to take months, possibly years, and in the meantime will throw German politics into disarray. The AfD hates immigration, and some of its leaders, such as Björn Höcke, have a disturbing tendency to say things that sound, if not outright Nazi, then at least Nazi-curious. If loathing immigrants and swiping right on the Third Reich is extremism, then the label does seem to fit at least part of the AfD's leadership. The election results suggest that most Germans find these views, or the impulse to base a political party on them, repugnant. But the BfV's actions would remove that judgment from the ballot, leaving AfD supporters unable to vote for the party and other voters unable to vote against it. Germans remember their authoritarian past, and they remember, too, that authoritarianism arrived by democratic means. These memories have led to ambivalence about democracy. Declaring a quarter of the country so extreme that the other three-quarters cannot be trusted to defeat it reflects this insecurity. The BfV is roughly analogous to the FBI in the United States. But the FBI spies mostly to catch criminals, and it does so with, in theory, a certain amount of independence while being run by the executive branch and overseen by Congress. The BfV is not a law-enforcement agency—it does not arrest; it does not charge—and it is run and overseen by whichever party or coalition wins the latest election. Its mandate is not limited to or guided by a quest for violations of the law, but represented by the vaguer standard of 'protection of the constitution.' [Graeme Wood: Germany's anti-extremist firewall is collapsing] Both Democrats and Republicans think, sometimes with justification, that the FBI and other agencies have been used by the party in power to investigate political opponents. In Germany, there is no doubt, because the BfV is run this way by design, and it has openly declared its finding: that the country's main opposition party can be spied upon using aggressive and invasive measures. Hans-Georg Maassen, who ran the BfV from 2012 to 2018 and is now head of the Values Union party, told me that the agency has gotten out of control. 'Germany and Austria are the only countries in the Western world who use a domestic intelligence service to observe political opponents,' he said. 'It is unthinkable in other democracies. But in Germany, it's standard political practice.' He said that as the agency's leader, he'd tried to end the practice, but his successors had instead expanded it. 'To observe parties is a task for other parties, not for an intelligence service,' he told me. The AfD is strongest in the former East Germany, where economic development has lagged and where older folks in particular remember the invasive investigations of the Stasi. Although the BfV is not the Stasi, the allegations it has lodged against the AfD do suggest that it is enforcing a political orthodoxy. Last year, it issued a report that accused AfD leaders of promoting an 'understanding of the nation that is racist' and 'based on ancestry.' It said they held 'views hostile to foreigners and Muslims' and that they 'accused asylum-seekers and migrants from Muslim countries of origin of cultural incompatibility and a strong propensity for crime.' In the report, the BfV cited a 2022 court case that upheld the finding that the AfD is 'suspected' of extremism—one step away from the 'confirmed' extremist declaration of last week—because its anti-immigrant views violate the German Basic Law's protections of 'human dignity' and equality before the law. AfD members would welcome at least some of these accusations. The belief that Germanness has something to do with ancestry, and that recent immigrants are bad for Germany, is very much the point of the AfD. The belief that recent immigrants commit more crimes than the general population is uncontroversial; the reasons for those disparities are not. In Article 116, the German Basic Law itself refers to the concept of Germanness-by-descent. (After the Second World War, the German state included this provision to recognize the citizenship of ethnic Germans outside of Germany, especially in Soviet Bloc areas.) Until recently, no German would have been shocked by the idea that German ancestry has something to do with being German. [Peter Wehner: MAGA has found a new model] A quirk in the interpretation of German law about banning political parties states that a party can't be banned unless it is actually strong enough to threaten German democracy. Parties that are unpopular or followed by just a few yahoos, such as the odious right-wing National Democratic Party, do not rise to the level of banning. This provision contains within it the tension underlying the whole project of banning parties: Once they are big enough to ban, they are also so large that to ban them would entail undermining the will of many Germans, and the value of subjecting difficult questions to the democratic process. At this point, the AfD is a force of that magnitude: too big to ban, and too big not to. The proper solution was political all along. The other German parties delayed their reckoning with popular discontent over immigration, and instead let the AfD dominate that issue, which heated up politically until it could not be ignored. Now a harder task will fall to the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He has already stumbled in efforts to show that he will reform immigration. He will have to show that his own spy agency is not just playing politics as it goes after the party that cared about immigration long before his own did—the party that is either too German, or not German enough. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Germany Can't Ban Its Way to Democracy
In the year leading up to Germany's February elections, the far-right party Alternative for Germany was rising fast in the polls. It would ultimately increase its seats in the Bundestag from 76 to 152. But when I talked with supporters, I found that they were cynical. One of the most consistent messages I heard when I visited Germany was that the government had rigged the game against them. 'It's not just the opposing parties that don't want us; the system itself doesn't want us,' said a member of the crowd at a rally in Thuringia. Now that claim seems undeniable. Last week, the German domestic spy agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutzdeclared the AfD an 'extremist' organization, which makes it eligible for surveillance, infiltration, and a potential outright ban. Other groups previously singled out for attention and investigation by the agency include the Islamic State, various unruly Marxist-Leninists, and the Church of Scientology. These others can boast a ragged caliphate, closets full of Che T-shirts, and an upcoming Mission: Impossible movie, respectively. But they do not have what the AfD has: nearly a quarter of the seats in the German Parliament. The AfD has already challenged the 'extremist' label in court, and the BfV has withdrawn its finding until the court rules on it. The case is expected to take months, possibly years, and in the meantime will throw German politics into disarray. The AfD hates immigration, and some of its leaders, such as Björn Höcke, have a disturbing tendency to say things that sound, if not outright Nazi, then at least Nazi-curious. If loathing immigrants and swiping right on the Third Reich is extremism, then the label does seem to fit at least part of the AfD's leadership. The election results suggest that most Germans find these views, or the impulse to base a political party on them, repugnant. But the BfV's actions would remove that judgment from the ballot, leaving AfD supporters unable to vote for the party and other voters unable to vote against it. Germans remember their authoritarian past, and they remember, too, that authoritarianism arrived by democratic means. These memories have led to ambivalence about democracy. Declaring a quarter of the country so extreme that the other three-quarters cannot be trusted to defeat it reflects this insecurity. The BfV is roughly analogous to the FBI in the United States. But the FBI spies mostly to catch criminals, and it does so with, in theory, a certain amount of independence while being run by the executive branch and overseen by Congress. The BfV is not a law-enforcement agency—it does not arrest; it does not charge—and it is run and overseen by whichever party or coalition wins the latest election. Its mandate is not limited to or guided by a quest for violations of the law, but represented by the vaguer standard of 'protection of the constitution.' Graeme Wood: Germany's anti-extremist firewall is collapsing Both Democrats and Republicans think, sometimes with justification, that the FBI and other agencies have been used by the party in power to investigate political opponents. In Germany, there is no doubt, because the BfV is run this way by design, and it has openly declared its finding: that the country's main opposition party can be spied upon using aggressive and invasive measures. Hans-Georg Maassen, who ran the BfV from 2012 to 2018 and is now head of the Values Union party, told me that the agency has gotten out of control. 'Germany and Austria are the only countries in the Western world who use a domestic intelligence service to observe political opponents,' he said. 'It is unthinkable in other democracies. But in Germany, it's standard political practice.' He said that as the agency's leader, he'd tried to end the practice, but his successors had instead expanded it. 'To observe parties is a task for other parties, not for an intelligence service,' he told me. The AfD is strongest in the former East Germany, where economic development has lagged and where older folks in particular remember the invasive investigations of the Stasi. Although the BfV is not the Stasi, the allegations it has lodged against the AfD do suggest that it is enforcing a political orthodoxy. Last year, it issued a report that accused AfD leaders of promoting an 'understanding of the nation that is racist' and 'based on ancestry.' It said they held 'views hostile to foreigners and Muslims' and that they 'accused asylum-seekers and migrants from Muslim countries of origin of cultural incompatibility and a strong propensity for crime.' In the report, the BfV cited a 2022 court case that upheld the finding that the AfD is 'suspected' of extremism—one step away from the 'confirmed' extremist declaration of last week—because its anti-immigrant views violate the German Basic Law's protections of 'human dignity' and equality before the law. AfD members would welcome at least some of these accusations. The belief that Germanness has something to do with ancestry, and that recent immigrants are bad for Germany, is very much the point of the AfD. The belief that recent immigrants commit more crimes than the general population is uncontroversial; the reasons for those disparities are not. In Article 116, the German Basic Law itself refers to the concept of Germanness-by-descent. (After the Second World War, the German state included this provision to recognize the citizenship of ethnic Germans outside of Germany, especially in Soviet Bloc areas.) Until recently, no German would have been shocked by the idea that German ancestry has something to do with being German. Peter Wehner: MAGA has found a new model A quirk in the interpretation of German law about banning political parties states that a party can't be banned unless it is actually strong enough to threaten German democracy. Parties that are unpopular or followed by just a few yahoos, such as the odious right-wing National Democratic Party, do not rise to the level of banning. This provision contains within it the tension underlying the whole project of banning parties: Once they are big enough to ban, they are also so large that to ban them would entail undermining the will of many Germans, and the value of subjecting difficult questions to the democratic process. At this point, the AfD is a force of that magnitude: too big to ban, and too big not to. The proper solution was political all along. The other German parties delayed their reckoning with popular discontent over immigration, and instead let the AfD dominate that issue, which heated up politically until it could not be ignored. Now a harder task will fall to the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. He has already stumbled in efforts to show that he will reform immigration. He will have to show that his own spy agency is not just playing politics as it goes after the party that cared about immigration long before his own did—the party that is either too German, or not German enough.
Local Germany
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Local Germany
OPINION: The truth is out about Germany's far-right AfD - now ban the party
In the days leading up to the federal election last February, the whole of Germany held its breath, waiting for the results and hoping for a brighter future. But sadly, this hope was misplaced. When it was clear that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party had won the second most votes (doubling its result from the previous election four years prior), I got a call from my friend who was crying. She didn't have a German passport and feared that someday, even if not today, she could be deported. In that case it wouldn't matter that she had built up a whole life in Germany. READ ALSO: 'A fifth of voters hate me' - How do foreigners in Germany feel about far-right surge? A strong case for a constitutional ban The AfD should be banned or at least restricted. People need to know how serious of a threat the party poses to the German political system, even more broadly, to democracy. In Germany the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (or Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz - BfV) has the power to ban or closely monitor parties that might be a danger to the constitution. Given that the BfV formerly classified the AfD as a right-wing extremist group on Friday, the time to do so is now. The BfV has only ever banned two parties in history: the Socialist Reich Party (SRP) and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). More recently there were attempts to ban the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), which was known to promote far-right, neo-Nazi and ultranationalist positions. The first ban attempt failed in 2003 due to procedural errors, and then a subsequent attempt in 2017 was dismissed because the party was ruled to have too few supporters to be considered a serious threat. (However the party did lose its public funding .) But this isn't the case with the AfD, which has now clearly established itself as one of Germany's top parties, yet holds positions that are similar to those of the NPD. Both parties oppose immigration, rail against non-traditional gender and family roles, and are critical of the European Union – arguing that Germany would be better off to leave it . READ ALSO: 'Dexit' would cost Germany '€690 billion and millions of jobs' Advertisement Until recently, only some parts of the AfD were condemned by the BfV. Specifically, the party's state branches in Saxony, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt were all officially declared 'unconstitutional' by the authority. In my opinion, the AfD's state chapter in Thuringia, led by Björn Höcke, is the worst case of them all. Björn Höcke has made several public statements that should be taken as a warning as to the party's goals: He has said, 'Das Problem ist, dass Hitler als absolut böse dargestellt wird' (The problem is that Hitler is portrayed as absolutely evil). Archive photo from 2020 shows demonstrators in Erfurt, Thuringia holding a march under the motto "Against fascism". Photo: picture alliance/dpa/dpa-Zentralbild | Bodo Schackow He was also charged for incitement to hatred (or hate speech) on two separate occasions for saying, 'Alles für Deutschland' (Everything for Germany) on stage at his rallies. The phrase is banned in Germany, because it was commonly used by the Nazi Party's paramilitary group – the Sturmabteilung (SA). Höcke, who was a history teacher, denied knowing about the phrase's historical context, but was ultimately sentenced to pay thousands of euros in fines. The fact that Höcke is still an active member of the AfD demonstrates the values the party holds. FACT CHECK: Are people punished for using Nazi slogans in Germany? Advertisement Why we should be concerned about 'unconstitutionality' Perhaps I need to back up a little, and explain what it means for a party to be 'unconstitutional'. The BfV defines a political party as 'unconstitutional' when it harms the dignity of human beings, the principle of democracy, and the rule of law. The AfD, for example, does not see every human as equal and this is seen by the party's policies that promote exclusion and xenophobia. These policies, if enacted, would harm the dignity of certain groups. Article 3 of the German basic law states that all humans should be treated equally, regardless of different characteristics, such as 'sex, descent, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, and religious or political views'. German law also states that a public authority cannot stand above the law. To that end some AfD leaders have disregarded the state's monopoly on the use of force. For example, former AfD spokesman Christian Lüth was let go in 2020, but only after being recorded suggesting that the AfD would actually benefit from Germany seeing more immigrants, and then adding, 'We can still shoot all the [migrants] afterwards. That's not an issue at all. Or gas, or whatever you want.' Despite his dismissal, the fact that the AfD allowed someone with such extreme views to represent them in a public role for years is deeply concerning. Advertisement The party's influence has grown too great Until recently the case for banning the AfD as a political party could have perhaps been disregarded due to the party's lack of influence. But now that the AfD is the second strongest power in Germany, and officially deemed to be opposed to Germany's 'free and democratic order', it's time for the BfV to take action. Again and again we've seen demonstrations with tens of thousands of protestors rise up in opposition to the AfD and its right-wing policies. Meanwhile, AfD members haven't shied away from voicing their intention to deport foreigners from Germany. The now infamous meeting in Potsdam that took place in November 2023, and was revealed by Correctiv in January 2024, made it clear that leading AfD figures want not only to deport refugees and asylum seekers but really anyone they see as 'not German' or 'not assimilated'. Another extremely alarming fact about that meeting is that it was attended not only by AfD members and right-wing extremists, but also members of the conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), such as Ulrich Vosgerau (a judge), Alexander von Bismarck (a former mayor), Simone Baum (a municipal employee in Cologne) and several others. This is even more unnerving as the CDU is now the party set to lead Germany's federal government for the coming term. READ ALSO: Will Germany's Merz try to ban the far-right AfD? Advertisement It's understood that politics, not just in Germany but globally, have taken a sharp turn to the right in recent years. Currently we see Trump undermining democratic principles in the US and other right-wing parties rising in countries such as the Netherlands and Italy. Germany is not an exception, but given its history most Germans agree it has an exceptional responsibility to ensure that extremist right-wing politics will not lead the country down a path that leads to tyranny, and mass murder, ever again. INTERVIEW: Is Germany at risk of repeating its dark history? An important step must be taken – either in the form of a full ban, or at least a warning serious enough to wake people up to the fact that the AfD is becoming a serious threat. We are long past this being optional: it has now become a necessity.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
How AfD's Alice Weidel went from German pariah to top opposition figure
Alles für Deutschland, ('everything for Germany') was once a Hitler-era rallying cry. It was more recently adopted by Björn Höcke, a high-ranking member of Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland at party rallies, for which he was prosecuted. Then in August last year the slogan popped up at events attended by Alice Weidel, the party's co-leader, but in a subtly modified form – Alice für Deutschland. The party printed blue cardboard hearts bearing the slogan and distributed them to members, who held them up at rallies to show their approval. The 46-year-old has been credited with being the driving force behind the AfD's success in last month's election. In a seismic result, the party doubled its vote share to 20.8% . For the first time since the second world war a far-right party is now the second largest force in parliament. When the newly elected Bundestag convenes for the first time on Tuesday, it will take up no fewer than 152 out of 630 seats as the main opposition force in the new parliament, where Weidel has vowed to do battle with her opponents at the dispatch box. 'The AfD is now firmly anchored as a people's party,' Weidel declared on election night, pledging to 'hunt' the other parties in government and promising to 'shift up two gears'. Under her watch the AfD has attracted donations from German millionaires, and in the run-up to the vote she was praised by Elon Musk, who repeatedly hailed the AfD on his X platform as the only party capable of saving Germany, where he hosted her for a tête-à-tête in which they appeared to downplay the Nazi era, even appearing on screen at the AfD's final pre-election rally. In many respects her backstory and home life make her an improbable figurehead for a radical anti-immigration party that is under surveillance by security authorities for suspected extremism. A Mandarin speaker who has previously lived in Singapore and Hong Kong, she lives in Switzerland with her Sri Lanka-born wife and their children. On the campaign trail she was unable to answer a question about how many people live in the constituency she represents. Her relationship puts her at odds with the AfD's own policies on the family unit, which it defines in strictly heterosexual terms. The party explicitly rejects other definitions and has campaigned for the abolition of same-sex marriage. 'She does not exactly have the sociodemographic characteristics you'd expect from an AfD voter,' said Andreas Busch, a political scientist at Göttingen University, who contrasted her with the party's other co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, a painter-decorator by trade. Chrupalla, Busch said, was 'rather more pedestrian, down-to-earth and has no intellectual pretensions'. One AfD supporter told the Guardian they weren't interested in Weidel's lifestyle but instead judged her on her messaging and 'her ability to address our concerns, and makes us feel counted'. Asked for her own view, Weidel has previously said she did not 'see skin colour' and that 'I'm not queer, I'm just married to a woman who I've known for 20 years.' With her trademark cream polo necks and pearl necklaces, Weidel has undoubtedly lent a different air to a party led by ageing male professors and economists when it was founded in 2013 as a Eurosceptic alternative to the conservative CDU. Image, say analysts, counts for a lot: even as the party has moved ever further to the right on immigration and Islam, Weidel has helped somehow to detoxify it in the eyes of some voters. 'She is often smiling at the same time as having very aggressive rhetoric,' said Busch, who added that she had at times maintained a 'dangerous' ambiguity in order to expand the AfD's electoral appeal. On the one hand, she has enthusiastically adopted the use of the term 'remigration', a highly controversial but nebulous far-right concept that is usually understood to mean the mass deportation of foreign-born people – even if they are naturalised citizens. 'But at the same time as using this term, she says 'of course we need migration',' Busch said. 'It's that creative ambiguity which allows her to appeal to different parts of the electorate. 'It's … dangerous but also electorally attractive.' Less ambiguous has been her embrace of AfD figures who were once shunned for their extremism. She has said she wants to make Höcke – who has two convictions for knowingly using Nazi language at a political event – one of her ministers. And last month she welcomed Maximilian Krah and Matthias Helferich – who were sidelined over remarks they made relating to the Nazis – into the AfD's parliamentary group. Deike Diening, a Spiegel journalist who spent months shadowing Weidel in the run-up to the election, said she had worn two hats simultaneously, staying in the party's top ranks by tolerating and even courting the party's most radical right wing while also remaining 'the comparatively friendly face of the party for the broad public'. Having emulated the electoral gains of other women on the far right in Europe, most notably Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Weidel now faces the challenge of piloting the party in opposition towards its ultimate goal of victory in the next election in 2029. Busch said: 'She's mainly interested in gaining power and that is where her main challenge now lies. The question is will she keep the AfD focused on resentment, continuing its fundamental opposition role, or is she ultimately interested in some sort of power perspective, which would require her to tone down the rhetoric?' In the short term, Weidel has little hope of breaking through the 'firewall' erected by the other mainstream parties to block the AfD's entry into government. But if another unwieldy, quarrelsome coalition fails to get Germany back on track, her party will be waiting in the wings next time round.
