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AfD leader Jörg Meuthen at the federal party conference in Kalkar in November.
Photo: INA FASSBENDER / AFP
Right at the beginning of the annual reports of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution there is always a chapter in brown: It deals with right-wing extremists and the danger they pose.
Neo-Nazis can be found there, »identitarians«, parties like »Dierechte« - and in future also the AfD.
The protection of the constitution has placed the entire party with its around 32,000 members under suspicion of right-wing extremism.
The AfD is now officially seen as a potential threat to democracy.
Never in the history of the Federal Republic has a party been able to hold its own in parliaments that has openly crossed the boundaries of right-wing extremism.
The "Republicans", the "German People's Union" (DVU) and the NPD were able to achieve individual electoral successes and move into state parliaments or the European Parliament.
However, the right-wing extremists never held more than two legislative terms.
There is much to suggest that the surveillance of the party by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is the beginning of its end
Sometimes they lost a topic that they could use for their own purposes.
Sometimes they fell out hopelessly.
Most of the time it was both.
Of course, history does not have to repeat itself in the case of the AfD.
As the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, it is in a better position than any other right wing party before it.
But there is much to suggest that the surveillance of the party by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is the beginning of its end.
It is getting tricky for the officials in the AfD
The staunch supporters of Björn Höcke will not care what the domestic secret service says about them.
You already think you are fighting "those up there" for a long time.
But at least for the middle-class, national-conservative AfD voters, the decision will be a deterrent.
You long for the fifties.
Not after the thirties.
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AfD politician Höcke
Photo: Boris Roessler / dpa
It will also be tricky for the officers among the members, for the police, teachers and soldiers.
They risk unpleasant questions and sanctions from their employers if they continue to be actively involved in a party that is monitored by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Many will prefer their careers to the AfD.
Even with the upcoming state elections in Baden-Württemberg, at least slight losses are becoming apparent for the far right party.
In other West German federal states the first signs of self-decomposition can be seen.
In Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, the AfD parliamentary groups dissolved in the dispute in 2020.
In the East there is little to suggest a rapid decline of the party.
The AfD is much more firmly anchored there.
A network of right-wing extremist associations, protest initiatives, publishers and think tanks has long been spinning around them.
The history of the AfD is one of constant molting
This means that the AfD should be able to stay in the East German parliaments for at least a while, as a fundamental opposition that moves from excitement topic to excitement topic: first immigration, then corona, and then whatever is good for polarization.
But here too, the AfD's success story can come to an abrupt end.
The right-wing extremist publisher Gerhard Frey's DVU won around 13 percent in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt at the end of the 1990s.
It has now been dissolved.
The history of the AfD is one of constant molting.
From an anti-euro party founded by economics professors to a populist party against Merkel's refugee policy, it is developing more and more into an anti-systemist right wing party.
During the pandemic, their functionaries openly made pacts with anti-democrats and opened the doors to the Bundestag for mobsters.
It is quite possible that the party was able to win some lateral thinkers and supporters of conspiracies as new voters.
In the long run, however, demagoguery and disinformation will do more harm than good.
Successful far-right parties in Europe - as the social researcher Alexander Häusler points out - have mostly taken the opposite path in recent years, if only for tactical reasons.
They moved away from open right-wing extremism.
In the AfD, co-party leader Jörg Meuthen recently tried to take a course that does not rely on pure riot and system opposition.
However, hardly anyone believes that he will still be able to assert himself in his party.
The spirit that he once let out of the bottle himself can no longer be captured.
It is more likely that the AfD far-right will continue to gain ground, move Meuthen aside like its predecessors - and the AfD will completely become a national party with a racist and historical revisionist face.
Maybe that's enough for electoral success in their strongholds in the east.
Probably also for a return to the Bundestag in the fall.
But in the long run it is the way into the abyss.
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