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The word “suspected case” hits the mark.
With the AfD, there is a well-founded suspicion that right-wing extremist positions are not only occasionally found on the fringes of individual members, but are actively represented by broad currents and are generally accepted by the large majority without explicit distancing and are thus factually supported.
Therefore, the classification of the entire party as a "suspected case" is correct.
Of course, also because "suspected case", in contrast to the equally correct classification of the "wing" as a "secured right-wing extremist tendency", does not mean that the free-democratic basic order is questioned in the entire AfD and that basic rights are not recognized equally for all people .
Around the co-party leader Jörg Meuthen there are groups in the party to be taken seriously who cannot be said to have such attitudes.
But: This “Meuthen camp” has been making compromises and alliances with right-wing extremists in the party for a long time and to this day, and permanently restricts criticism of them to not being able to do so through “provocations” or a lack of verbal “discipline” should scare away bourgeois voters.
These are tactical arguments, not principled.
As long as the fundamental dispute in the AfD is not carried out with the willingness to take all the consequences, the entire party is suspected of working towards right-wing extremism.
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The fact that the "wing" was officially dissolved in spring 2020 will not change that.
On the one hand, the informal networks and ideological consensus structures persist and can be freely noticed.
For example, when a state list paved with "wing" people was elected for the federal election in the Saxon state association.
On the other hand, in the course of the furious AfD protests against the Corona protective measures, a kind of "Wing 2.0" has developed.
Namely, a broad consensus of the party that supposed “elites” manipulate the entire country and establish a “dictatorship”.
This is not just a dramatic trivialization of actual dictatorships.
Rather, such unfounded assertions give the impression that one must go into resistance against the existing free-democratic order.
The appropriate “suspected case” classification hits the party hard: At the beginning of the super election year, it sees itself as classified for what it is.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has not made the classification public, considering the election year and the party's legal action.
For the time being, the authority cannot be blamed for the media researching and finding out something like that.
Meuthen is particularly hard hit by the development: Last year he tried several times - for example by expelling the Brandenburg ex-party leader Andreas Kalbitz or through the angry speech at the federal party congress at the end of November - to protect the entire party against the “suspected case” classification .
Meuthen failed because he did not act consistently against the right-wing extremists for a long time.
Now he is likely to be driven even further on the defensive by the “wing” supporters, who don't care about the protection of the Constitution, because of useless “ingratiating” to the alleged “establishment”.
Which can then lead to Meuthen's influence waning and there are even more strong reasons for assessing the AfD as a "suspected case".