Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution gives reasons
AfD young people in Thuringia are also right-wing extremists
May 23, 2024, 1:05 p.m
The Young Alternative Thuringia formulates “biological assumptions about who can be German and who cannot,” judges the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This is just one of the reasons why the AfD’s young members in the state are now classified as right-wing extremists.
The Young Alternative (JA) Thuringia has been classified as proven right-wing extremist by the state’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This was announced by the State Ministry of the Interior in Erfurt, referring to a decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The JA Thuringia is the youth organization of the Thuringian AfD, whose state association has been classified as proven right-wing extremist by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2021.
The Thuringian regional association of the AfD is led by Björn Höcke as party leader. Throughout Germany, JA, as the AfD’s junior organization, has been classified by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a proven right-wing extremist organization since 2023. The JA regional associations in Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt were also classified as definitely right-wing extremist.
According to the Interior Ministry, the Thuringian Office for the Protection of the Constitution justified its classification on March 28th by citing, among other things, “an ethnically homogeneous German nation and a German community of descent” that “contradicts our constitution.” The JA formulates “biological assumptions about who can be German and who cannot.” All groups that the organization denies Germanness are “discredited as criminal across the board.”
AfD repeatedly makes headlines
The classification takes place shortly before the local elections in Thuringia. The AfD got 10.2 percent there in 2018. However, the regional association is now much stronger. In the state elections in October 2019, the AfD became the second strongest force with more than 23 percent. In the polls for the upcoming election, the party was recently polling around 30 percent.
Before the upcoming local elections, the AfD repeatedly made headlines. Last week, the Halle Regional Court in Saxony-Anhalt sentenced AfD state and parliamentary group leader Höcke to a fine for using a banned Nazi slogan. The verdict is not yet final.
An internal party dispute over two competing AfD candidate lists for the district council election in the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district is also causing a stir. In addition to the AfD, the Alternative for the Saalfeld-Rudolstadt district (AfL) is running with its own candidates.
The AfD district association tried to repeat the election in advance on the grounds that too few candidates had been chosen for the list originally elected in the fall. The AfD state parliament member Karlheinz Frosch, who was placed in first place, successfully sued in court.
The state AfD and Höcke are now supporting the AfD, and according to media reports, the state leadership even initiated exclusion proceedings against nine party members in the dispute. The dispute has now reached the next level of escalation: AfD candidates openly criticized Höcke and called for his resignation.