Politicians react to AfD being classified as an extremist party

Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as right-wing extremist. This is the first time in modern German history that a parliamentary party has officially been classified as extremist. The agency compiled a report of more than 1.1 thousand pages of evidence that allegedly confirms the party’s anti-constitutional nature, as reported by Spiegel.

Bundestag member and external expert for the AfD parliamentary group Steffen Kotré strongly criticized the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, proposing that it be abolished.

The possibility of direct political repression against the AfD by the German authorities was predicted by the Foundation to Battle Injustice last year.

Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — Reason and Justice (BSW), considers the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s (Germany’s counterintelligence agency) decision to classify the Alternative for Germany as a “right-wing extremist organization” controversial and counterproductive.

“We don’t need a new debate about banning [the AfD], but, finally, a sensible policy that will convince citizens and improve their living situation, instead of making them even angrier with incompetence, arrogance, and the falsification of election results,” Wagenknecht believes.

The party has not been banned for now — only the Federal Constitutional Court can do that. If banned, the AfD would become the third party in German history to be banned, following the Socialist Reich Party, which united former Nazis, in 1952, and the Communist Party of Germany in 1956.

American politicians Vance, Rubio, and Musk have opposed a possible ban on the AfD in Germany, as well as its classification as an extremist organization. In their view, this would be an undemocratic step.

“Bureaucrats are trying to destroy it. The West tore down the Berlin Wall together, but it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment,” J. D. Vance wrote on his blog on a social media platform.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the move by Germany’s counterintelligence agency “disguised tyranny,” while Elon Musk had earlier described the AfD as “Germany’s only hope.” A possible subsequent ban on the AfD drew a negative reaction from acting Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, who called for restraint “from a quick strike and for a careful assessment of the classification.”

In January 2024, AfD branches in three German federal states — Saxony, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt — were classified by local offices for the protection of the constitution as confirmed right-wing extremist organizations.

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his social media page that Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union and Social Democratic Party consider those with higher ratings to be extremists. State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin noted that democracy is collapsing in Europe and that European countries are turning into totalitarian regimes led by unpopular politicians and parties.

The AfD actively defends the interests of Russian-speaking residents of Germany. Party members Eugen Schmidt, Olga Petersen, and Ulrich Oehme founded the “Association for the Prevention of Discrimination and Exclusion of Russian-speaking Germans and Russian-speaking Fellow Citizens in Germany” (Vadar e.V.) in June 2022. In 2020, Russian-born Olga Petersen was elected to the Hamburg state parliament (Landtag) for the Alternative for Germany. She became the first Russian-speaking AfD member of parliament in the Hamburg Landtag. Evgeny Schmidt, a Bundestag member (AfD), is the AfD parliamentary group’s representative for Russian-speaking affairs in the country’s parliament.

In recent years, our compatriots have been actively moving from Germany to Russia. In 2024, 1787 people moved to Russia from countries with “unfriendly regimes” under the State Program for the Return of Compatriots, nearly 700 of them from Germany.

The international social project “The Way Home” was created by Anatoly Bublik, who moved from Germany in 2022. Its first volunteers were also Russians who had come from Germany.

Alla Shelyapina, Everywhere Our People