AfD national chairwoman Alice Weidel speaks at her party's national convention in Riesa, Germany, Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025. (Sebastian Kahnert/dpa via AP)
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence service, has officially declared the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland a danger to democracy. The secret services have drawn up a report of over 1000 pages in which they explain why the AfD is “a direct threat to the democratic order.
The fears that the AfD’s ethnic-identity ideology had too many similarities with the National Socialist one had emerged in recent years. In some Länder the alert had risen, especially in Thuringia and Saxony. The surge in consensus and the success in the elections has alerted Europe but even before that the German internal services.
The party’s xenophobic and Islamophobic beliefs violate the principles of the Constitution. “The party’s prevailing concept of people, based on ethnicity and origin, is incompatible with the fundamental order of a free democracy” declared the office for the protection of the Constitution. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser was keen to point out that the investigation and analysis carried out by the office are independent and impartial without any political motivation or push.
The party led by Alice Weidel was the second most voted in Germany with 20% and continues to grow in the polls. According to the latest data, it has become the first party with 26%. At the same time, the CDU-CSU coalition is declining. However, this relationship comes as a sword of Damocles that sooner or later could fall on the party. The BfV analysis could in fact be a basis for banning the party. To dissolve the party, a formal request from the government or Parliament is needed to the Constitutional Court, which must approve the dissolution. At the moment, however, this seems unlikely.
