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AfD right winger Björn Höcke in Kalkar
Photo: INA FASSBENDER / AFP
After a two-year long examination, the observation of the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) by the constitution protection is getting closer.
According to SPIEGEL information, a corresponding decision will apparently be made in January.
At the conference of interior ministers on Thursday, according to participants, Thomas Haldenwang, President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, reported that the influence of the völkisch wing in the AfD had increased.
This was also shown recently at the federal party congress in Kalkar, North Rhine-Westphalia, where the right wing camp had almost half of the delegates behind it.
In a few weeks, the party should therefore be declared a suspected right-wing extremist case.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution had already classified the now officially dissolved »wing« of the AfD around the Thuringian state chief Björn Höcke as »proven extremist«.
In a report, the domestic intelligence service attributed around 20 percent of all party members to the Völkische.
If the influence of the far right in the AfD continues to increase, the authority warned in the confidential report that "the party as a whole could be upgraded to an object of observation (suspected case)."
In this case, intelligence agents could also be used to monitor the party.
In several East German federal states, the AfD state associations are already being monitored by the offices for the protection of the constitution.
It was only on Wednesday that it became known that the Saxon constitutional protection agency wants to make the AfD a suspected case.
In June, the Brandenburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution put the AfD there under observation.
And already in March, the Thuringian constitution protection had classified the AfD in the state as a suspected case.
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