German conservative publication Junge Freiheit has collected more than 57,000 signatures for a petition it launched on Monday, May 5th, which rejects the proposed banning of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party by the ruling elites.
The AfD, the most popular party in Germany, was officially designated as a “right-wing extremist” organisation by the country’s domestic intelligence agency last week, and this could pave the way for the mainstream parties to initiate a procedure to ban the AfD.
Junge Freiheit editor-in-chief Dieter Stein said of the petition:
We are currently experiencing an unprecedented attack on democracy in Germany. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, work is being done to ban the AfD, the strongest opposition party. This attempt to curtail democratic decision-making is a slap in the face for more than ten million voters.
The attempts to stigmatise the AfD, as well as the new chancellor Friedrich Merz’s U-turn on conservative campaign promises, have catapulted the AfD into first place in some opinion polls. It now has the support of a quarter of all German voters.
