Thuringia's state security agency wants to determine how much the AfD distances itself from right-wing extremism — if at all. The review will be used to later determine whether the party should be put under surveillance.
Thuringia's arm of the domestic intelligence service, the BfV, which monitors extremist activities, will take a closer look at the Thuringia AfD as a "test case" to probe the party for unconstitutional, right-wing extremist activities.
Remarks from state party leader Björn Höcke (pictured above, center) particularly caught the attention of authorities, who has in the past described Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "memorial of shame." He and other Thuringia AfD party officials also marched in protests organized by known-right-wing extremist groups in the eastern German city of Chemnitz.
There is "an increasingly eroding demarcation" between the AfD and right-wing extremist groups, Kramer said.
Public comments by state party officials as well as AfD publications will be examined in the review, reported public broadcaster MDR. Authorities did not say when the review would start.
Officials at the security agency will try to determine whether or not Thuringia's AfD actually adheres to right-wing extremist beliefs, despite strategic efforts to differentiate themselves.
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.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/J. Wolf
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AfD could face surveillance
The review, however, does not mean that Thuringia's AfD is currently being put under surveillance by the domestic security agency.
It does, however, signal that authorities believe there's enough material to investigate the state party — and that surveillance could be close behind. Kramer confirmed that after the review, authorities would decide whether or not the AfD should be officially placed under surveillance.
Under Höcke's leadership, the Thuringia branch of the AfD is home to some of the more extreme members of a party already known for being markedly right-wing. The party holds eight of the 91 seats in the state parliament.
Calls for the AfD to be placed under surveillance by authorities rose again after Höcke and other AfD leaders marched alongside thousands of right-wing extremists and leaders of the anti-immigrant PEGIDA group in Chemnitz.
Other political parties in Germany have been placed under official surveillance, including the ultranationalist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) and individual members of the Left party.
