The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is launching a new blow against the so-called New Right: three organizations are classified as right-wing extremist efforts – including the youth organization of the AfD.
A young man sweats during training, hits his fist in the punching bag – a current advertising photo of the “Junge Alternative” (JA), the AfD’s youth organization, placed on social media. “Be defensive,” is written on the picture.
The accompanying text gives a deep insight into how specifically this could be meant: political diversity is paramount, “the suffering of the locals” is merely collateral damage in an open society. “We” would have to unite, protect each other so that “as German youth” we are not oppressed in “our own country”, writes the JA – without explaining in more detail who it sees as “locals”, who for them as “German youth ” heard.
In the press release of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution on the classification of the YES as “certainly right-wing extremist endeavors” you will find answers to this: “The YES propagates a völkisch concept of society that is based on basic biological assumptions and postulates an ethnoculturally homogeneous state people,” it says. Nationals with a migration background would be devalued as second-class Germans. It is precisely this popular understanding that contradicts the Basic Law.
“No more doubts”. anti-constitutional
In addition to the “Young Alternative”, the so-called Institute for State Policy (IfS) of the new right-wing pioneer Götz Kubitschek, based in Schnellroda, Saxony-Anhalt, and the organization “One Percent” in Halle (Saale) are also classified as right-wing extremists. All three organizations have so far been listed as right-wing extremist suspects by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: the JA since 2019, IfS and “One Percent” since 2020.
Since then, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has put together an extensive collection of material in order to be able to prove the anti-constitutionality in a court of law. “The positions of the Institute for State Policy, EinPercent eV and the youth organization of the AfD, Junge Alternative, are not compatible with the Basic Law,” said the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang. “There is no longer any doubt that these three groups of people are pursuing anti-constitutional aspirations. They are therefore classified and processed by the BfV as secured right-wing extremist aspirations.” The organizations concerned can appeal against this classification before the administrative court.
upgrade not surprising
In concrete terms, this means that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution can use the entire range of intelligence tools to monitor the activities of the three organizations. This includes the use of informants, surveillance, financial investigations, and tapping of phones.
In principle, this has already been possible so far, since the use of intelligence services is also permitted in so-called suspicious cases. However, proportionality must always be maintained, especially in the case of particularly deep interventions, such as observations and measures to monitor telecommunications. The hurdles are lower for assured extremist endeavors. The upgrade by the Federal Office comes as no surprise in all three cases.
Höcke a regular visitor
In fact, one wonders, especially in the case of the “Institute for State Policy”, why it took the Federal Office until today to come to this assessment. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution of Saxony-Anhalt had already taken this step in 2021 and attested the new-right think tank “racist and biological perspectives”.
The “Institute” has existed since 2000 and is regarded as a legal intellectual centre. The who’s who of the right-wing extremist scene comes together here at events, and the company’s own publications serve right-wing narratives, such as the alleged population exchange, according to which the political elites are pursuing the goal of replacing what right-wing extremists view as German part of the population with immigrants. The right-wing extremist AfD politician Björn Höcke is one of the regular visitors.
The “One Percent” association has existed since 2015, when it was founded by Kubitschek and Jürgen Elsässer, head of the right-wing extremist Compact Magazine, among others. “One Percent” is led by Philipp Stein, a pupil of Kubitschek. This organization of the new right also pursues the goal of establishing a counterculture and is closely linked to the right-wing extremist “Identitarian Movement”.
JA spreads the narrative of “population exchange”
The AfD member of the Bundestag, Hannes Gnauck, has been at the head of the “Junge Alternative” since October 2022. During his time in the Bundeswehr, Gnauck was classified as a right-wing extremist by the military counter-intelligence service before he entered the Bundestag. Gnauck’s election as head of JA was another indication that the AfD youth organization was consistently drifting further to the right.
The JA also spreads the narrative of “population exchange”, agitates against migrants and represents a nationalist social model. At an AfD rally in Prenzlau, Gnauck recently said that the other parties represented in the Bundestag would not rest “until every corner of this country and every peaceful village is crammed with illegal migrants.”
The entire AfD party is still considered a suspected right-wing extremist. The AfD had appealed against this classification by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the final decision of the Higher Administrative Court in Münster is still pending.