Ist die AFD für die Demokratie zu extrem?

Graeme Wood: “In the year leading up to Germany’s February elections, the far-right party Alternative for Germany was rising fast in the polls. It would ultimately increase its seats in the Bundestag from 76 to 152. But when I talked with supporters, I found that they were cynical. One of the most consistent messages I heard when I visited Germany was that the government had rigged the game against them. ‘It’s not just the opposing parties that don’t want us; the system itself doesn’t want us,’ said a member of the crowd at a rally in Thuringia. Now that claim seems undeniable.

“Last week, the German domestic spy agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz declared the AfD an ‘extremist’ organization, which makes it eligible for surveillance, infiltration, and a potential outright ban. Other groups previously singled out for attention and investigation by the agency include the Islamic State, various unruly Marxist-Leninists, and the Church of Scientology. These others can boast a ragged caliphate, closets full of Che T-shirts, and an upcoming *Mission: Impossible* movie, respectively. But they do not have what the AfD has: nearly a quarter of the seats in the German Parliament. The AfD has already challenged the ‘extremist’ label in court, and the BfV has withdrawn its finding until the court rules on it. The case is expected to take months, possibly years, and in the meantime will throw German politics into disarray.

“The AfD hates immigration, and some of its leaders, such as Björn Höcke, have a disturbing tendency to say things that sound, if not outright Nazi, then at least Nazi-curious. If loathing immigrants and swiping right on the Third Reich is extremism, then the label does seem to fit at least part of the AfD’s leadership. The election results suggest that most Germans find these views, or the impulse to base a political party on them, repugnant. But the BfV’s actions would remove that judgment from the ballot, leaving AfD supporters unable to vote for the party and other voters unable to vote against it. Germans remember their authoritarian past, and they remember, too, that authoritarianism arrived by democratic means. These memories have led to ambivalence about democracy. Declaring a quarter of the country so extreme that the other three-quarters cannot be trusted to defeat it reflects this insecurity.”

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