Young alternative
The Bundeswehr is looking internally for members of the AfD youth organization
Members of the Bundeswehr are obliged to advocate for the preservation of the free basic order both in their service and privately
© BildFunkMV / Imago Images
Anyone who belongs to the Bundeswehr will probably have to declare their possible membership in the Junge Alternative in the future, as a media report states. The AfD youth is considered to be right-wing extremist.
According to “Spiegel” information, the Bundeswehr is looking for members of the Bundeswehr within its own ranks AfD youth organization JA. The Bundeswehr secret service MAD has asked all soldiers who are privately involved with the right-wing extremist Junge Alternative to immediately declare their membership to their employer, the magazine reported on Friday. The AfD sharply criticized the MAD’s actions.
The “Spiegel” cited a report from the military counterintelligence service on the force’s intranet from the beginning of the week. It said that membership in a right-wing extremist organization was always seen as an “actual indication” of efforts against the free-democratic basic order. The Cologne administrative court recently confirmed that the AfD youth organization JA can be described as “certainly right-wing extremist”.
The MAD therefore warned that every JA member in the ranks of the Bundeswehr would be assessed as a suspected intelligence case. In addition, every soldier who is a member of a regional AfD association that is classified as right-wing extremist must report this “immediately”.
AfD criticizes Bundeswehr for its actions
In principle, it is part of a soldier’s duty to advocate for the preservation of the free basic order, both on duty and privately. This is already violated if a soldier “does not clearly distance himself from efforts that attack, fight or defame this state and the current constitutional order,” the “Spiegel” further quoted from the MAD message on the Bundeswehr’s intranet. The text ended with the sentence: “Simply silence is not enough at this point!”.
Sharp criticism of the MAD’s actions came from the AfD. “Neither the Office for the Protection of the Constitution nor the MAD are authorized to make judgments about the constitutionality of a party’s youth organization,” explained AfD defense politician Rüdiger Lucassen. There are still courts about this in Germany. The request to report soldiers if they are members of the Young Alternatives violates Article 3 of the Basic Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination because of political views. The MAD is taking the “wrong path,” emphasized Lucassen.
The JA specifically tries to recruit members of the Bundeswehr as members. The head of the JA, Hannes Gnauck, is a soldier himself. However, the AfD MP was banned from wearing uniforms and from serving before he entered the Bundestag.