A week ago, Germany‘s domestic intelligence service (BfV) presented the outgoing federal government with a 1,108-page report classifying Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a “guaranteed far-right” political party.
Not any more: a week on, after the AfD filed an injunction, the BfV has set aside this classification temporarily until a court ruling, shifting attention away from damaging claims against the party to claims of political interference in the BfV report, how it was compiled and issued.
On May 2nd, after nearly four years of work, the report was accepted – but not published – as one of the last official acts of outgoing federal interior minister Nancy Faeser.
In an accompanying press statement – since deleted from its website – the BfV said the AfD and its politics were “incompatible” with Germany’s “free democratic order”, in particular because of its “ongoing” agitation against refugees and migrants.
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The intelligence agency declined to release the report, claiming that doing so would reveal key elements of its investigation.
That in turn has prompted the AfD, joint first in national opinion polls with 25 per cent support, to launch legal action against what it views as a smear campaign by political rivals.
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Despite the BfV pause, leaked extracts suggest the report is largely an extensive compilation of public remarks by about 300 party officials – either at rallies or in online posts.
Given this, an unnamed BfV official told the Süddeutsche Zeitung daily that many in the agency doubted the report would stand up in court.
On Friday the Bild tabloid presented five key accusations, drawing on extracts from the report’s seven chapters: claims that the AfD discriminates against non-white people; rejects non-ethnic German citizens; represents Islamophobic positions; undermines the legitimacy of the state; and plays down Nazi-era crimes.
The report quotes AfD MP Maximilian Krah from January 2024 saying that “whoever takes Afghans and Africans into the government makes the government culturally more African and Afghan”.
Other politicians complain about “passport Germans”, discuss the “genetic make-up of living things” and urge voters, in a social media post: “Don’t let us GERMANS be robbed of our PRIDE and HONOUR”.
The BfV rates such political remarks as indicative of a party that views a population as an “ethnic-cultural collective, exclusionary of people with a migration background. This violates the [constitutional] principle of human dignity.”
On Islam, the BfV report cites party officials’ claims of a Muslim takeover plan to “undermine and enslave us” as proof of a “sweeping degradation and criminalisation of the entire Muslim faith community”.
Other quotes cited by Bild draw parallels between the Nazi dictatorship and modern Germany, claiming “the Berlin republic is moving in the direction of totalitarianism”.
In its summary the intelligence agency says it “doesn’t expect” moderate forces in the party can halt the AfD’s slide towards an “unconstitutional organisation”.
High legal hurdles must be cleared before a party can be classified as extremist, allowing intelligence services step up surveillance of party members and communications – and deploy, or recruit, informers within party ranks.
Germany’s new federal interior minister Alexander Dobrindt has admitted he has yet to read the report but said it was likely to contain sensitive information from intelligence activities.
Despite this he promised “not to put it in a cupboard” and publish as much of the report as possible.
It is no longer certain that this will happen. On Friday AfD leader Alice Weidel said she was confident their legal action would be successful, ensuring the BfV report would never see the light of day.
On Twitter/X she wrote: “We are fighting with all legal means.”
