AfD to disband youth groups over police surveillance
September 3, 2018
Two regional youth wings of the AfD are planning to close after being placed under observation. The nationalists decried the "abuse of power" after authorities cited concerns over extremist ties.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/S. Kahnert
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The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said on Monday that its youth wings in Bremen and Lower Saxony would be disbanded after it came to light that they were under observation by the relevant regional arms of Germany's domestic intelligence service (the BfV).
Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat (SPD), said he had signed the order to observe the Young Alternative ("Junge Alternative," or "JA" for short) due to credible concerns about right-wing extremism.
Pistorius's counterpart in Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said that he had already commissioned a review of the JA group in the city last year, the final draft of which had been presented to him last week.
"These people have dropped their masks several times in the recent past, parts of the messages in this group are pure racism," Mäurer said.
In Bremen, police reportedly carried out a search recently over incitement to hatred allegations against a JA member.
AfD decries 'abuse of power'
The revelations came at a time when other mainstream parties in Germany are calling for the BfV to monitor the AfD for extremism, particularly in light of right-wing violence in Chemnitz.
Andreas Kalbitz, the top AfD politician from the state of Brandenburg and one of six sharing the title of "chairman" at a national level, accused the mainstream parties of trying to start an anti-AfD panic.
"The call for the AfD to be observed by the BfV is more than a desperate act by the helpless older parties. We're seeing the desire for an abuse of power unmatched in reunified Germany," Kalbitz said in a press release.
When asked about the push to monitor the AfD, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that what the BfV investigates is "not a politcal decision, they are decisions based on facts."
Merkel said that she had heard from regional leaders that there were individual actions that needed to be monitored, and that the situation would be handled the same way on the federal level.
Although current polls have the AfD at around 16 or 17 percent support nationwide, according to the research institute Civey, polls also suggest that a majority of Germans would approve of the BfV monitoring the anti-immigrant party.
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
