Germany’s domestic intelligence service has classified the far-right Alternative for Germany, which some polls show as the most popular in the country, as an extremist party, the German authorities announced on Friday.
The classification, which allows the agency to use more powerful surveillance tools to monitor the party and its leadership, is certain to inflame a long-running debate over whether German lawmakers should move to ban the party, which is known by its Germany initials, AfD.
“The AfD advocates an ethnic concept of the people that discriminates against entire population groups and treats citizens with a migrant background as second-class Germans,” Nancy Faeser, Germany’s departing interior minister, said in a statement, noting that such discrimination runs afoul of Germany’s Constitution.
The intelligence agency made its determination after a thorough monitoring and is based on the findings of a 1,100-page report compiled by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The office was specifically created in 1950 to monitor domestic threats to Germany’s democracy prevent any takeover of Parliament and government by extremist actors. It was an attempt by modern Germany’s founders to prevent the kind of takeover that took place in 1933, when the Nazis seized control of Parliament and government in short order.
The AfD dismissed the agency’s classification as a political move to undermine the party.
“This decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is complete nonsense in terms of substance, has nothing to do with law and justice, and is purely political in the fight between the cartel parties against the AfD,” Stephan Brandner, an AfD leader, told D.P.A., a German news wire, referring to the mainstream parties.
