Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, has classified Junge Alternative (JA), the youth wing of the right-wing, national-conservative Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a “certain right-wing extremist endeavor.”
The new designation, announced Wednesday, April 26th, provides the legal basis for the spy agency to greatly expand its covert surveillance monitoring against Junge Alternative and comes as a considerable political hit to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which has witnessed its popularity surge—surpassing the ruling Greens—in the past several months, the Hamburg-based Die Zeit reports.
The BfV, which originally began keeping watch on the AfD’s youth wing in 2019 after it classified JA as a “suspected” extremist case, now has the authority to use all intelligence tools at its disposal to monitor the group, including the use of confidential informants, electronic wiretapping, and covert observations.
The domestic spy agency justified its step by stating, among other things, that the JA’s concept of the German nation and society is not compatible with the Constitution, also known as the Basic Law.
“The JA’s understanding of the [German] people, which is clearly evident in its statements and pronouncements, contradicts the understanding of the people expressed in the Basic Law and is capable of excluding members of supposedly other ethnic groups and devaluing German citizens with a migration background as second-class Germans,” the BfV wrote in a press release published Wednesday.
Additionally, the spy agency stated that JA’s attitude toward asylum seekers and migrants contributed to the new classification. Speaking of the youth wing’s members, the BfV said:
Xenophobic arguments are combined with Islamophobic resentment. In particular, immigrants with a (supposedly) Muslim background are generally assigned negative characteristics such as cultural backwardness and a disproportionately strong tendency towards crime and violence, simply because of their origin and religion.
The BfV, in its press release, did not provide any concrete examples of what it called the JA’s “xenophobia” and “resentment” toward and “devaluing” of foreigners. However, it’s more than likely referring to, among other things, accusations made against the the youth wing for emphasising the disproportionate number of reports of criminal acts—especially on particularly serious crimes like murder, assault, robbery, and rape—committed by foreigners: information supported by government statistics and reported on by the country’s mainstream press.
Furthermore, the BfV, which reports to the country’s hard-left interior minister, says that JA has displayed anti-democratic tendencies via the “defamation and disparagement of” not only political opponents but also “the state and its representatives.” This, for the BfV, indicates that the JA is not concerned with democratic discourse “but with a general disparagement of the democratic system of the Federal Republic of Germany.”
“The classification of the so-called protection of the constitution does not surprise us,” Junge Alternative’s federal executive committee said, claiming that the spy agency’s primary mandate is to suppress the country’s right-wing opposition.
“Regardless of whether they are critics of migration, critics of coronavirus measures, or advocates of peace—every form of authentic opposition in this country is systematically stigmatized by this authority,” JA claimed, adding that it would examine available legal options to opposing the classification.
Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, AfD’s co-leaders, slammed the BfV’s announcement, saying: “We currently have neither a reason nor the corresponding documents that make the step comprehensible.”
Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD), for her part, lauded the BfV’s new designation of JA.
“We are a strong and resilient democracy. We are very resolute in defending ourselves against racism and other forms of inhumanity,” she said, adding that the government is “doing everything we can to dry up the breeding ground for right-wing extremist violence.”
