Office awaits court decision
Report: Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution wants to reclassify the AfD
February 25, 2024, 8:35 p.m
According to a report, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been working on a new report on the radicalism of the AfD for almost a year. The secret service’s verdict is therefore clear. But the officials probably want to wait for an ongoing court case before presenting their results.
According to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is working on classifying the entire AfD as a “secure extremist effort”. The newspaper reports this, citing internal emails and notes from the domestic secret service. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution currently only classifies the AfD as a so-called suspected case. But according to the report, a team from the Federal Office has been working for months to prepare a new report on the party.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s report on the AfD’s radicalism, which is currently relevant for the classification of the AfD, dates from spring 2021. As the “SZ” now reports, internal emails from the Federal Office have been talking about an “AfD follow-up report 2023” since March 2023 at the latest that you are working on. A first draft of the structure was circulated in the authority last April. The document lists the well-known criticism of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution of racism and authoritarianism in the AfD. Under the heading “Development of the party since March 2022” it also contains a new point that has been particularly relevant since the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “Relationship with Russia”.
According to the report, the new report should have been ready in December 2023. However, the AfD’s lawsuit against its classification and the resulting observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution put a brake on this schedule. The AfD’s appeal is currently pending before the Münster Higher Administrative Court. According to information from the “SZ”, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution wants to wait for the end of the process before submitting their new report.
The newspaper quotes from internal emails from the secret service: The court’s expected “considerations” should be “taken into account as far as possible” in the new AfD report, it says. In other words: You want to be able to react if the court has unexpected, new questions.
Several state associations secured right-wing extremism
In terms of content, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is apparently sure of its case. When some employees in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution once asked what the AfD would have to prove in order to assume that the previous suspicions of right-wing extremism had been “consolidated”, the superiors replied: It was not necessary to prove new developments, just the mere “continuation”. “the anti-constitutional effort” amounts to a “condensation” of references to their right-wing extremist views.
From the point of view of the domestic intelligence service, the extreme current in the party has become stronger anyway. “In view of the decreasing but still existing heterogeneity of content within the party,” says an internal note from the Federal Office last August, “not all party members are viewed as supporters of extremist movements. Nevertheless, the so-called solidarity-patriotic camp is gaining in the party “The party is increasingly gaining influence.”
The solidarity-patriotic camp refers to the radical current of the AfD around the Thuringian state chairman Björn Höcke. The Thuringian regional association, like the regional associations of Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt, is classified as definitely right-wing extremist by the respective state constitutional protection offices. The same applies to all four eastern regional associations of the youth organization Junge Alternative, which, unlike the parent party, has been classified this way by the Federal Office since last year. At the request of the “SZ”, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) declined to comment on “internal agency work processes”.