The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the German state of Saxony has formally classified the conservative, antiglobalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the state’s most popular party—as a “right-wing extremist” outfit. Leading AfD officials say the move is little more than a desperate attempt to drag the party’s name through the mud before next year’s elections.
State Office for the Protection of the Constitution (LfV) President Dirk-Martin Christian claims that the regional AfD—which polls suggest commands more than a third of the state electorate’s support—is heavily influenced by Thuringia’s AfD leader Björn Höcke and the so-called ‘solidarity-patriotic camp,’ the Berlin-based newspaper Junge Freiheit reports.
AfD Saxony is the third state association to receive such a classification, following Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt.
In a press release published on Friday, December 8th, the LfV says that AfD Saxony pursues an ethnopluralistic policy, with many of its elected officials holding the view that German citizenship should be linked to ethno-cultural criteria. “Such a popular understanding is incompatible with the Basic Law,” the state office wrote.
It’s worth noting that under this criterion, the government in Hungary, which has been in office since 2010, would likely be classified as ‘extremist’ by German intel as well.
A term first coined by German sociologist Henning Eichberg, ethnopluralism, sometimes referred to as ethnodifferentialism, is a concept that affirms the right of all peoples to conserve and maintain, if they so wish, the ethnocultural identities that are inherent to their respective territories, countries, or regions.
Commenting on the move, the LfV chief of Saxony said: “There are no longer any doubts about the right-wing extremist orientation of the AfD in Saxony.”
Continuing, Christian said:
The state association of the AfD may have a heterogeneous composition in terms of personnel, but in terms of content and program, the so-called solidarity-patriotic camp that emerged from the former ‘wing’, whose spiritual father and leader is the right-wing extremist Björn Höcke, predominates and now shapes the character of the entire state association.
Responding to the LfV’s classification, AfD’s federal foreign policy spokesman Petr Bystron told The European Conservative:
This action shows the desperation of the CDU in Saxony. AfD is the strongest party in the polls and the establishment is doing everything in its power to stop us. However, despite the establishment’s actions, the results of the latest state elections in Hessen and Bavaria show that Germans do not care anymore about such classifications and accusations.
Bystron’s assessment of the situation is supported by a poll, carried out in October of this year, that revealed half of Germans welcome the AfD’s participation in government.
Others outside of the AfD, like Hans-Georg Maassen, who previously served as the chief of Germany’s Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), have leveled similar accusations against the spy agency. Maassen recently said it is “obvious that the BfV is no longer being used to protect the constitution, but is being misused to protect the government and to fight and persecute government critics.”
