German Politics Thread

Germany's domestic security agency is on the verge of announcing whether the far-right Af D will be placed under surveillance for posing a threat to democracy, dealing a potential blow to the anti-immigration party in a key election year.

After a two-year investigation and a report totalling over 1,000 pages, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bf V) is to decide in the coming days if the Alternative for Germany (Af D) will be classed as a "suspected case" over its ties to right-wing extremism.

The classification would allow intelligence agents to shadow the party, tap its communications and possibly use undercover informants.

The anti-Islam, anti-immigration Af D has often courted controversy by calling for Germany to stop atoning for its World War II crimes. Senior figure Alexander Gauland once described the Nazi era as just "a speck of bird poo" on German history.

The Bf V's decision comes at a sensitive time for the Af D. While it is the largest opposition party in parliament, it has seen its ratings fall as the pandemic has kept the spotlight firmly on Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition parties.

Af D leader Joerg Meuthen has vowed to take legal action if the Bf V decides to begin surveillance, accusing the government-run agency of playing politics in what pundits have dubbed a "super election year" in Germany.

The Af D faces six regional elections this year and a general election on September 26, the first in over 15 years that won't feature Merkel.

The first regional test will come with state polls in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate on March 14, where support for the Af D is hovering around 10 percent.

- Radical 'Wing' -

The Af D started out at as an anti-euro outfit in 2013 before capitalising on public anger over Merkel's 2015 decision to allow in a wave of asylum seekers from conflict-torn countries like Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Af D took nearly 13 percent of the vote in the 2017 general election, allowing it to make its debut in the German Bundestag.

But the party has long been locked in an internal battle between an extremist faction and populist, conservative members who are wary of scaring off mainstream voters.

Germany's domestic intelligence service already placed a radical fringe of the party, known as The Wing, under surveillance last year over its association with known neo-Nazis and on suspicion of violating the constitution.

The faction, led by firebrand Bjoern Hoecke, dissolved itself last March but many of its 7,000 members remain active in the Af D.

"This gives rise to doubts about whether they really lost influence," Der Spiegel weekly said.

Hoecke, the Af D's leader in Thuringia state, famously referred to Germany's Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as "a monument of shame" and has called for a "180 degree reversal" in the country's remembrance culture.

The Af D's Thuringia branch and another one in Brandenburg have also been designated as "suspected cases" of right-wing extremism by the Bf V.

The authorities' concern about the Af D has grown after the country suffered a string of right-wing, anti-Semitic attacks in recent years. The risk of violence from Germany's far-right scene is now considered the country's top threat.

Af D chief Meuthen has struggled to rein in the party's more radical figures, telling a congress in November that they would not win over voters by being "increasingly crude, aggressive".

He also rubbished comparisons of the current coronavirus restrictions with a "dictatorship", as Af D lawmaker Gauland had done.

Nevertheless, more than a few of the Af D's 35,000 members are believed to harbour extremist sympathies.

One of them, Andreas Kalbitz, was the head of the Af D in Brandenburg before he was kicked out for hiding his past membership in a neo-Nazi youth group.

"The Af D could be declared a suspected case because it is dominated by the radical wing of the party, whose influence has only grown in recent months," Hajo Funke, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University, told AFP.

As for the party's chances at the ballot box in 2021, Funke said "endless" infighting had left the Af D without clear policies, settling instead on "simply saying the opposite of whatever the government proposes".

Alternative for Germany may be deemed a “suspected case” of extremist activity. The United States should take note.

BERLIN — Should a government agency put a democratically elected political party under surveillance if the party is feared to be a threat to the democratic order?

This question is the subject of fierce debate and a legal battle here. Late last month, the German media reported that the domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was poised to declare the far-right Alternative for Germany party a “suspected case” of antidemocratic extremist activity. The party’s anti-immigrant and anti-Islam talk has emboldened far-right extremists, and some of its officials have ties to extremist groups.

The “suspected case” designation would give the intelligence service broad powers to surveil the party’s politicians and staff members, including tapping their phones and monitoring their movements. Certain highly radical parts of the party are already under surveillance.

Leaders of Alternative for Germany — the largest party outside the governing bloc in Parliament — pre-emptively took the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to court, arguing that the designation was a political maneuver designed to hurt the party’s chances in federal elections in September. The legal battle could take months to resolve.

The dispute raises questions about how a democratic state should draw the line between what is and isn’t politically acceptable, especially when extreme opinions seem to foster violent action. In the United States, these questions have become more urgent in the wake of the storming of the Capitol last month. Germany has been wrestling with them for years — and with renewed focus since the Alternative for Germany won its first parliamentary seats in 2017.

The German experience suggests that democracies must establish defense mechanisms against such internal extremist threats. This includes drawing clear lines for acceptable democratic behavior and formally penalizing parties and movements that cross them.

The Alternative for Germany party — widely known by its German initials, Af D — was founded in early 2013, driven largely by concerns about the country’s involvement in international debt relief. The party became a major political force by protesting the influx of refugees into Germany in 2015 and 2016. It has grown more radical over the years, often blurring the lines between its official party structures and the country’s informal network of right-extremist movements.

Some in the party, for example, have ties with organizations like Generation Identity, a far-right youth group opposed to political liberalism and non-European immigrants. Andreas Kalbitz, an Af D leader in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, was ejected from the party last year after he was accused of belonging to a banned neo-Nazi youth organization and failing to disclose his membership.

The Constitution that Germany adopted after World War II establishes what is often called a “defensive democracy,” with several provisions aimed at preventing a far-right extremist force like the Nazis from taking power again. Not only can the domestic intelligence service gather information on any political movement or party that it deems a threat to the democratic order, but the constitutional court can also ban parties based on what the intelligence service finds. (Such bans have occurred twice since 1949, first with the neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party in 1952 and again with the Communist Party of Germany in 1956.) Publicly displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in Germany, as is denying the Holocaust, and hate speech is less protected under the law than it is in the United States.

Since the Af D entered Parliament, it has frequently tested this “defensive democracy,” pushing — and often crossing — the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Its politicians have suggested that migrants could be shot at the border or gassed. They have dabbled in conspiracy theories like the “Great Replacement,” which imagines a coordinated campaign to replace Europe’s white population with non-European people. They have even sought to downplay the horrors of the Nazi past: An Af D leader named Alexander Gauland notoriously described the Nazi era as a mere “speck of bird poop” in German history.

All this comes as political violence here is on the rise. In the past two years, right-wing extremists have murdered the politician Walter Lübcke (he had argued that Germans who did not support taking in refugees could leave the country themselves); killed two people after attempting to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur in Halle; and shot and killed nine people in two hookah bars in Hanau. Although none of the perpetrators were directly linked to the Af D, its rhetoric has helped foster anti-refugee, anti-immigrant sentiments in Germany.

That does not mean that using constitutional tools to push back against an extremist political party is easy. More than five million Germans voted for the Af D in 2017, and while its support has dropped during the pandemic, it remains a significant force in the German Parliament. Whenever government agencies or other parties penalize the Af D, its leaders claim that the party is being persecuted — which only bolsters the conviction among its supporters that more mainstream political parties are indifferent to their concerns.

In addition, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has sometimes contributed to the problem it now seeks to solve. It has been rightly criticized, for instance, for having a historical blind spot when it comes to the far right. One of its chiefs, Hans-Georg Maassen, lost his job in 2018 after downplaying far-right violence in Chemnitz.

Still, Germany has an arsenal of constitutional tools to protect against extremist forces, even if using them generates controversy and accusations of persecution. “Defensive democracy” is working, at least in the sense that the domestic intelligence service has recognized a threat and is taking steps to eliminate it. At a time when disinformation, political polarization and far-right forces are combining to endanger democracies across the West, other countries should take note.

Should a government agency put a democratically elected political party under surveillance if the party is feared to be a threat to the democratic order?

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany (Af D) has been placed under surveillance by the country’s domestic security service, several German media outlets reported Wednesday.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bf V) has declared the entire party as a so-called “suspected case” of far-right extremism. This enables the service to step up its monitoring of the Af D, allowing it to observe and wiretap individual members and hire internal informants.

The Af D’s youth organization has already been classified as a “suspected case” and the party is under surveillance in four of Germany’s federal states. But as Germany heads toward federal and multiple regional elections this year, the party has sought to avert Bf V monitoring for the whole Af D by filing several lawsuits in January.

As a result of that ongoing legal dispute, the Bf V will refrain from surveilling elected Af D members of the federal, regional and European parliaments, Der Spiegel reported. The same exemption will apply to candidates running in the upcoming elections.

The Bf V has not publicly confirmed the decision to monitor the party. The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that the Bf V’s president told the leaders of the regional domestic security service branches on Wednesday morning that the Af D has been surveilled as a “suspected case” since February 25.

The service’s decision is based on a report of some 1,000 pages by lawyers and extremism experts, who have been compiling the document since the beginning of 2019.

A significant factor is concern over the influence of the so-called Flügel (“wing”), the Af D’s extreme-right faction, which came under surveillance in 2019. The Flügel disbanded last year after the Bf V concluded it was a “proven extremist endeavor,” but the security service has since warned of a growing influence of the Flügel’s former members within the party and there are doubts as to what degree the group continues to operate.

The Af D is not the first party to come under Bf V surveillance. The left-wing party Die Linke was monitored from 2007 to 2014 over suspicions of extremist tendencies related to its roots in the former East German Communist Party.