The intelligence report claims that the AfD is antisemitic over their criticism of leftist philanthropist George Soros, who funnels money into the campaigns of leftist lawmakers and prosecutors as well as into leftist protest movements through his Open Society foundation. The report claims that this critique of Soros is a form of "inferences, codes and figures of speech," Spiegel writes, having read the report.
"Instead of writing about 'Jews,' for example," says Spiegel, "the party focuses on the U.S. philanthropist and billionaire George Soros, who is from a Jewish family. Or they speak of a purported 'global elite.'" The outlet goes on to critique the deputy head of the AfD for calling then-President Joe Biden "a poisonous mouthpiece of the globalists."
The classification from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) came just after the AfD had a major win in the national elections, with support increasing by double to 20.8% of the electorate. The AfD is the second largest political party in the German Parliament. The case will now play out in court while the label is temporally suspended pending the outcome.
The over 1,000-page report and took several months, Spiegel notes, for the BfV to put together and they presented it to the Interior Ministry on April 28. The person receiving the report, Nancy Faeser of the SPD, "decided against an in-depth ministry evaluation of the report, eager as she was to bring the matter to a conclusion before her government left office," the outlet writes. Faeser was being replaced by Christian Social Union Party member Alexander Dobrindt.
After the BfV determined that the party was "extremist," AfD protested and brought a legal challenge. They accused the government, headed by their opponents, of bringing the classification for politically motivated reasons. This was the first time that a party with substantial support in the German Parliament, the Bundestag, was labeled as "right-wing extremist organization."
Party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla said the BfV classification was "a serious blow to German democracy" and questioned the timing of the report's release. "Current polls show the AfD as the strongest force," said Weidel and Chrupalla. "The federal government only has four days left in office. The intelligence service doesn't even have a president. And the classification as a 'suspected case' hasn't been finalized in court."
After the party brought their challenge to court, BfV "told an administrative court in Cologne that it will suspend the classification while legal proceedings are ongoing," per Politico. They said they will continue to monitor the party with added surveillance, but only as a "suspected case," which means that there will be judicial oversight of that surveillance.
The report shows "evidence" from 353 members of the AfD and had determined that the anti-immigration comments made by party members, as well as those decrying the knife violence perpetrated in Germany by migrants from the Global South, constituted "an entrenched xenophobic mindset." Party members who oppose mass migration to Germany were said to have displayed "anti-immigration agitation" by the BfV.
Part of the issue for the BfV is the AfD's assertion that there is a difference between native Germans and "passport Germans," which the BfD concluded was anathema to the Article 1 Paragraph 1 phrase in the German Constitution which reads, "Human dignity shall be inviolable." Another party official is cited by the BfD as saying there are just "20, 30, 40 million Germans left in the country," meaning that conversely, he does not believe that those who came to Germany from elsewhere are German.
A Facebook post was also added to the evidence by BfV, which read, "Half of Africa is allowed to stroll across the German border with no resistance and take our country as plunder." Party leader Weidel called out the "violence" and "knife criminality" imported to Germany by African and Middle Eastern migrants.
AfD national board member Dennis Hohloch was cited in the report for saying that "multicultural means a loss of traditions, a loss of identity, a loss of home, murder, killing, robbery and gang rape." Calling for deportations or a halt to migrations is also deemed as being "right-wing extremist."
The report from the BfV claimed that the AfD are proponents of the so-called Great Replacement Theory, meaning that well-meaning western governments are seeking to import people from across the world to replace the populations of those nations.
"If we have a government that is waging war against us, then we will wage war against this government. We have come to drive these people out of their seats," the BfV cited AfD member of state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt Hans-Thomas Tillschneider as saying.
