According to the ruling of the Münster Higher Administrative Court, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution can continue to monitor the AfD. But there is little gained from this – on the contrary.
Is the AfD a party that is becoming increasingly extremist? Is their goal to make democratic institutions contemptible? And don’t many of its members want to overcome the liberal democracy they defame as a “system”?
Yes, yes and yes.
Anyone who is interested in the AfD, who attends their party conferences or rallies, who looks into their Telegram channels or Facebook groups can give these answers. Or, as the Münster Higher Administrative Court puts it: There are “sufficient actual indications” of anti-constitutional efforts in the party.
Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla comment on the judgment of the North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court (OVG) on the classification of the AfD as a suspected right-wing extremist case
© Bernd von Jutrczenka / DPA
The AfD doesn’t need to have its mask torn off its face. She did it herself a long time ago.
Especially since there are citizens who look closely and get involved. There are journalists who research intensively and provide detailed information. And there is state security and that Judiciary who intervene when the law is broken.
The office that paid neo-Nazis
But no, that shouldn’t be enough. Rather, as a subordinate authority to the federal and state interior ministries, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution should be able to do and know everything much better. And that’s why it’s good, of course, that after the verdict in Münster, the federal party AfD can continue to be treated as a so-called suspected case.
Or?
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution is the office that once employed former SS Obersturmbannführer and until the 1970s had a president who had joined the SA in 1933.
It is the office that paid neo-Nazis for spying services, indirectly financed the right-wing extremist scene and, as a result, was responsible for the failure of the first ban proceedings against an openly anti-constitutional NPD.
It is the office that had (or did not want to have) any idea that it was the self-proclaimed National Socialist Underground that was murdering and bombing its way across Germany, even though the right-wing terrorists were surrounded by undercover agents.
The ex-president who cuddles with the AfD
And after all, it is also the office that was held in the federal government by Hans-Georg Maaßen until a good five years ago. The man is now at the head of a right-wing populist party that expressly wants to cooperate with the AfD and is therefore, what a sad irony, targeted by his former employer.
No, everyone who can read, hear or see knows what the AfD wants. Once again, a quick reminder of what your Thuringian leader Björn Höcke – who is awaiting judgment in Halle on Tuesday because he shouted an SA slogan – wrote in his book: “In the hoped-for turnaround phase, we would face difficult times, because the longer a patient refuses the urgent operation, the harder the necessary incisions will inevitably be.”
And further: A new political leadership is committed to the “interests of the indigenous population and will most likely have to take measures that run counter to their actual moral feelings.”
This also clearly answers the question of what the Höckes would do if they came to power.
The Thuringian AfD state leader on the way to the hearing room in the Halle Justice Center. He is accused of knowingly chanting an SA slogan.
© Hendrik Schmidt / Reuters
But back to the judgment in Münster. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution can therefore classify the AfD as a suspected case and thus continue to use a larger part of its instruments to monitor it. Thanks to this control, the office wants to force the party to follow a course that is faithful to the constitution – or to collect material for a possible ban.
So much for the theory. But practice looks different. No matter how unpleasant the remaining bourgeois sections of the party may find the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, intelligence surveillance strengthens the AfD’s demagogic narrative of decomposition, which stylizes itself as a victim of an overreaching and increasingly dictatorial state. And it serves to mobilize people in election campaigns, especially in East Germany. For the core of AfD supporters, the classification by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is now a seal of approval for right-wing sentiments.
Otherwise: Apart from a possible ban procedure, which would take years and be open-ended, there is very little that can be done with the expertise of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This can be seen again in Thuringia, where the Office for the Protection of the Constitution once supported the neo-Nazi Tino Brandt with a six-figure sum and protected him from prosecution.
When democracy is defensible
But it was the Erfurt state office that first classified a state association of the AfD as “proven right-wing extremist” and thus a case of observation. This means that the authority has been able to fully monitor the Höcke state party since March 2021.
It’s been going on for three years now. But police officers who belong to the AfD still sit in the Thuringian state parliament and give big speeches. And AfD members are still allowed to own weapons despite a decree from the Interior Ministry to the contrary.
All of this proves that this democracy is not defended by an intelligence service. It is defended in parliaments and governments, on the streets and in clubs or in schools and universities. And she defends herself using legal means.
In the end, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is not a clandestine authority that can be hidden behind in case of doubt.
We are all the protection of the constitution.