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AfD officials Meuthen, Gauland, Höcke (photo from 2019)
Photo: CHRISTIAN MANG / REUTERS
The step had been indicated in the past few months, now the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has taken it: The authority has declared the entire AfD to be a so-called suspected case.
This allows the authority to monitor the party using intelligence services (read more about this here).
Several parties agreed to the decision of the constitution protection.
"The observation of the inhuman and anti-democratic AfD by the protection of the constitution has become exactly right and also necessary," said SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil to SPIEGEL.
"The right-wing extremist face of the AfD has become more and more visible in recent years."
Klingbeil said that the AfD stood for the brutalization of political discourse, denied our history and wanted to silence the sensible.
“It lives from the fact that there is hatred and agitation that divide our society.
The AfD is rightly a case for the protection of the constitution. "He was very happy, said Klingbeil," that our democracy and our rule of law are defensible. "
CSU General Secretary Markus Blume expressed himself in a similar way.
He wrote on Twitter that the right-wing extremists set the tone in the AfD.
Therefore, the classification as a suspected case is absolutely correct.
One will continue to fight the AfD politically.
"It has no business in parliaments."
The Greens member of the Bundestag Irene Mihalic wrote on Twitter that in parliament one experiences day after day "that the AfD has at best a tactical relationship with the democratic #lawful state".
Mihalic's parliamentary group colleague Konstantin von Notz wrote that, especially against the background of experiences from German history, he could well understand that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had declared the AfD to be a suspected right-wing extremist case.
The FDP politician Konstantin Kuhle wrote that the AfD was »the focal point for anti-constitutional tendencies in Germany.
A defensive democracy cannot put up with that! "
From the AfD, on the other hand, comes sharp criticism of the decision - and the announcement that it will not accept it.
Alice Weidel, parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, said that legal action would be taken against it.
"I am sure that such a classification of the AfD will not stand before the Federal Constitutional Court."
Weidel renewed the accusation that the decision by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was politically motivated - AfD representatives had already made this in the past.
"The Office for the Protection of the Constitution acts purely politically on the question of the AfD," said Weidel, who is also the state chairman of the AfD in Baden-Württemberg.
The decision of the authority is particularly noteworthy in view of the upcoming state and federal elections this year.
In Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, state elections are due in less than two weeks.
A new state parliament will be elected in Saxony-Anhalt on June 6, and federal elections as well as state elections in Thuringia, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are due on September 26.
Icon: The mirror
cte / ulz / dpa