German AfD party labeled 'extremist' by intelligence agency – DW – 05/02/2025
www.dw.com
The agency cited a "xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic" rhetoric among the reasons for the designation. The label gives authorities more power to investigate the far-right party.

Germany’s spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.

The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany’s constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an “intense and comprehensive” examination.

“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the BfV said on Friday.

Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.

As we say in Germany: Hope dies last

      • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Politically, yes. When it comes to law, no. It’s certainly convenient to have a 1000 page report to file as evidence but as far as opening proceedings is concerned the only requirement is that you’re the government, have a majority in parliament, or a majority among states.

        • PurpleTentacle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          1 day ago

          As you pretty much confirmed in your own reply, it’s both an inherently political and legal process. While this isn’t technically a mandatory step, it’s effectively a necessary one.

          • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
            3·
            1 day ago

            It wasn’t necessary for previous cases: The SRP (NSDAP successor) and KPD (run by the KGB, laid siege to parliament) had no political hand-wringing attached to them, legally they were also pretty much open and shut cases. Banning the NPD was never politically contentious, but needed some work for the legal part so it took a while for proceedings to be opened.

            That is: It’s not necessarily a long and arduous process.

            The reason it’s such a slog with the AfD is because it didn’t start out as a Nazi party – it slowly, over multiple internal putsches, turned into one. It got normalised, simply by people becoming accustomed to its presence, at about the same speed at which it radicalised. Had it started out with the programme it has now it would have long since been banhammered.