Summary
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency declared the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” citing Holocaust trivialization, Nazi slogans, and anti-immigrant rhetoric.
This marks the first time a federally represented party has been labeled extremist.
U.S. Republicans, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance, condemned the move. Rubio called it “tyranny in disguise” and praised the AfD’s popularity, while Elon Musk said banning the “centrist AfD” would be “an extreme attack on democracy.”
The AfD recently won 152 seats and over 20% of the vote.
Yes. This is actually a fairly big step. All of the previous attempts to ban the AfD have been thrown out because of the lack of a ruling like this.
No, they’ve been thrown out because our political landscape collectively is too afraid to stand up to fascists. Karlsruhe has more than hinted at the fact that they would rule in favor of banning the AfD yet nothing is being done.
It’s sadly not a ruling yet, it’s a assesment by an intelligence agency, which now can use more tools to surveil the afd. And hopefully we get a court case to ban the afd soon, but for this we need either the government, bundestag or bundesrat to start proceedings.
As far as I understand, the domestic intelligence agency declaring the AfD as rightwing extremist and the party being outlawed are two independent things. It could have been outlawed prior to this decision, and it will not necessarily be outlawed even with the decision. However, the intelligence service now has greater authority to observe and wiretap AfD members.
Of course, the fact that the party is now officially declared as Nazi scum should hopefully embolden the parliament to start the necessary processing to outlaw them.