By officially classing the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as ‘right-wing extremists’, the German establishment may have scored an own goal – or even shot itself in the foot. The domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), announced its decision today after keeping the insurgent party under close observation – including by state spies – for years.
But the AfD is no tiny sect of secretive neo-Nazis. It is a legal and open party, founded in 2013, that no fewer than 20.8 per cent of Germans voted for in this year’s general election. Now that the centre-right CDU/CSU and the centre-left SPD are forming a new coalition government together under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the AfD is the third largest party – and is Germany’s official parliamentary opposition.
A ban on the AfD will not necessarily follow automatically
The AfD has been under official state investigation for some time by authorities alarmed by the party’s rise, which is largely attributed to popular resentment of mass migration and fears of more Islamist terrorist atrocities like those which took place around last Christmas. By branding the party as a hotbed of right-wing extremism, the BfV – the office which guards the constitution against extremes of the far left and right – has paved the way for what the AfD’s leftist opponents hope will become an outright ban on the party.
But how can any country that outlaws a party commanding the support and votes of almost a quarter of its citizens be considered a real democracy? It would be equivalent to Britain’s Supreme Court banning Reform UK or the Greens. Yet, contrary to the opinions of those who don’t know the country well, Germany has never been a particularly liberal country.
Understandably, given its dark history during the 20th century, Germany is sensitive to the point of paranoia about any return of right-wing extremism. And with communist East Germany next door until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the guardians of the constitution were just as harsh in cracking down on the far left.
Ironically, it is from the states of former East Germany that the AfD draws its strength today. It has topped the polls in local elections in Brandenburg and Saxony, and all the centre and left-wing parties in the Bundestag have combined to form a Brandmauer (firewall) against party’s rise, agreeing to refuse all cooperation with it.
Evidently the old authoritarian ways of the old Germany are not quite dead. When I studied and worked in the country at the height of the violence unleashed by the Red Army Fraction or Baader-Meinhof band of terrorists, I was shocked by the harsh repressive measures invoked against my left-wing student comrades, who were frequently spied on and harassed by the BND, Germany’s version of MI5.
A ban on the AfD will not necessarily follow automatically. The party can appeal against today’s decision in the courts, and the German state has frequently tried and failed to ban another party, the NPD, now called ‘Heimat’ (homeland) which really is a genuine neo-Nazi outfit. This clumsy official persecution of a party which, rightly or wrongly, represents the views of a large and growing number of voters is likely to infuriate more ordinary Germans than it pleases, and drive them further into the insurgent party’s arms.
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