A German think tank has called for the banning of the populist-conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) in a policy paper released earlier this week, claiming that the party has met the conditions in the German constitution that allows the government to disband political parties.
The German Institute for Human Rights, which receives millions of euros in German government funding, announced its new study on the AfD in a press release earlier this week, arguing that the party wants to “eliminate the free democratic basic order,” and that the AfD is a “right-wing extremist party.”
“It aims to abolish the guarantee of human dignity enshrined in Article 1 (1) of the Basic Law. In addition, the course promoted in particular by Björn Höcke, which is based on the tyranny of National Socialism, is increasingly gaining ground within the AfD,” the think tank said.
Björn Höcke, leader of the AfD in the region of Thuringia, has been a controversial figure in German politics for several years, once stating in 2017 that Germans should reconsider their “defeated” attitude following the Second World War and calling Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a “monument of shame.”
Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic spy agency, later put Höcke under surveillance in 2019 along with his supporters, formerly known as “der Flügel” or “The Wing.”
Thomas Haldenwang, president of the BfV, commented at the time as to why Höcke was placed under surveillance saying he and his supporters supported, “excluding and denouncing foreigners, migrants, Muslims in particular, and persons having a different political opinion and depriving them of almost all of their rights.”
Höcke struck back on social media stating, “I am really sorry for the officials who have to kill their time looking for things that do not exist.”
Earlier this week it was announced that German prosecutors were coming after Höcke based on a speech given in 2021 at a campaign event in which he stated “Everything for Germany,” which prosecutors allege is a reference to the motto used by the National Socialist Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.
The German Institute for Human Rights notes that banning the AfD would require the Federal Constitutional Court to act, but such actions can only take place if either the German parliament or the government applies for the party to be banned.
The call for banning of the AfD comes as the party has exploded in popularity in federal polling in recent weeks, with an Infratest Dimap poll for ARD and WELT putting the party even with the ruling Social Democrats (SPD), the party of current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, at 18%.
AfD MP Petr Bystron spoke to The European Conservative about the German Institute for Human Rights report saying, “This organisation is funded up to six million euro per year by the German government, particularly the German parliament.”
He noted that one of the members of the board of the think tank is Anetta Kahane, a former asset of the notorious East German spy agency known as the Stasi.
Kahane, who sits on the think tank’s board of trustees and also runs the far-left Amadeu Antonio Foundation, was criticised in 2016 by German historians after a group linked to Kahane was tasked by the government to monitor “hate speech” on social media platforms.
“This organisation is a typical example of a lot of NGOs and organisations founded by the German government and they are all doing work in favour of the ruling pirates and always against the opposition,” Bystron said, and added,
This study was issued exactly at the time when the AfD became the second strongest party in the country. The AfD is now even stronger than the SPD and has overrun the Greens. So this is a typical move the ruling pirates are always doing. It was the same four years ago when the AfD was coming up they start with this defamation.
