U.S. Republican Senator Tom Cotton has urged Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard not to share any intelligence with Germany that might be used to target the opposition right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) last week officially labelled AfD a right-wing extremist group which paves the way for the BfV to put the party under constant surveillance and to use undercover informants.
In his letter to Tulsi Gabbard, the Arkansas senator, who is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wote:
Rather than trying to undermine the AfD using the tools of authoritarian states, Germany’s incoming government might be better advised to consider why the AfD continues to gain electoral ground and how Germany’s government can address the reasonable concerns of its citizens.
The senator said that eavesdropping, monitoring, and infiltrating Germany’s main opposition party are “police-state activities,” something that one would expect “in dictatorships like Communist China and Russia—not Western Europe’s largest country.”
The senator urged the DNI director to pause the sharing of intelligence with BfV until the German government “treats the AfD as a legitimate opposition party” and not as a “right-wing extremist organization.”
Tom Cotton’s words reflect the general negative mood in Republican circles and the White House about the way liberals in Europe are trying to silence their conservative opponents.
Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio criticised Germany for persecuting the AfD, with the latter saying Germany is “not a democracy, but a tyranny in disguise.”Reacting to Tom Cotton’s letter, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel tweeted: “No more U.S. intelligence support for Stasi spying methods against the AfD.”
