The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the sights of German spies.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, one of the main intelligence services against threats on German territory, officially suspects, since Wednesday March 3, the movement of being a far-right party that threatens German democracy .

Until now, these spies hesitated on this qualification.

However, most German media have long associated the term extreme right with the AfD and anti-racism associations have repeatedly denounced the anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic abuses of certain officials of this party.

But if the Office for the Protection of the Constitution resolves to it in its turn, it is because the movement concerned represents an obvious threat for the country, which has consequences which can go as far as its ban. 

All the arsenal of the spy

The internal intelligence service had already taken an interest, in certain regions, in the most turbulent elements of the Alternative für Deutschland.

In March 2020, he called Björn Höcke, the highly controversial party leader in Thuringia, an extremist.

He also carried out a large national survey in 2018, but based only on documents and public statements to assess whether the values ​​of this party could pose a threat to the country.

And the nearly 1,000 pages of this report should not have reassured the secret services, which now want to know everything about the AfD, and throughout the country. 

“Concretely, this new step allows it to consult the emails of all AfD members, to recruit informants and to place undercover agents within the organization to monitor internal debates and set up telephone tapping” , summarizes Wolfgang Schroeder, political scientist at the University of Cassel and co-author of a book on the history of the AfD, contacted by France 24. 

The possibility of setting in motion the vast range of conventional intelligence weapons “should make it possible to really realize the links that the AfD maintains with the most extremist groups in Germany, such as the 'identity movement' or the 'New Right. 'German', underlines Robert Lüdecke, spokesperson for the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an organization fighting against extremism, contacted by France 24. 

It is also a way of "knowing how the party spends the funds allocated to it for its presence in the Bundestag", he adds.

Clearly, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is giving itself the means to verify whether the populists of the AfD are not using public funds to finance movements even more radical than them.

Political repercussions

This placing under surveillance is unprecedented.

It amounts to saying “that the state, through its internal intelligence service, declares that the most important opposition party in the Bundestag is suspected of being an enemy of democracy”, underlines the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the main German center-left daily.

"If it is not a political act as such, it will have inevitable political repercussions", judge Hans Vorländer, political scientist at the University of Dresden and specialist on the extreme right, contacted by France 24. The Germany is indeed entering a very busy electoral year with the general elections in September, and regional elections with high stakes, as in Thuringia or Saxony, two Länders in the former East Germany where the AfD traditionally obtains good results.

The decision of the German secret services will be, in the opinion of all the experts interviewed, politically exploited, "but it is difficult to know whether this will work in favor of the AfD or not", summarizes Wolfgang Schroeder. 

On the one hand, “it is a kind of infamy that can push voters tempted to vote for the AfD by protest against the power in place, rather than by ideology, to turn away from such a party” , notes Hans Vorländer.

This surveillance can also strengthen the Republican sanitary cordon.

"In some Länder, traditional conservatives will probably now think twice before considering allying with a party suspected of being far-right and undemocratic by the intelligence service," said Robert Lüdecke, of the Foundation. Amadeu Antonio.

But these populists, always quick to play martyrs, will probably also seek to present themselves as the victims of an attempt to muzzle the main opposition party.

“It is a strategy which is more likely to work in the east because the AfD will be able to exploit the still vivid memory of the Stasi [the political police of the time of East Germany] to try to make a parallel with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution ”, emphasizes Hans Vorländer.

For this specialist, the very organization of the populist party risks being turned upside down by this surveillance.

The AfD is, in fact, shaken by a war of currents, between the most radical elements and more “moderate” voices who “will be able to try to take advantage of the occasion to do a big clean-up and kick the extremists out of the party. ”, Notes the political scientist from the University of Dresden.

Others believe that with its decision, the internal intelligence service plays pyromaniac firefighter.

“We must not forget that there is a part of the Germans who find that the AfD is the only party to offer an alternative to a government health policy which they deem more and more restrictive.

And these individuals may have the impression that by stigmatizing this movement, they are deprived of the only way to legitimately protest against power, ”said Florian Hartleb, specialist in populist movements and speaker at the Catholic University of Eichstätt. 

But beyond the short-term political implications for the AfD, monitoring German spies can become a matter of survival.

Indeed, if at the end of their observations, they believe that the party presents a real direct threat to democracy, “they can file a complaint before the constitutional court to request the ban of the AfD”, underlines Wolfgang Schroeder.

This has only happened twice in the history of post-war Germany, in the 1950s, with a small Nazi Party and with the Communist Party.

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