The corresponding classification has previously been made by the party's youth association and several of the party's state branches. The party as a whole has until now been regarded as "suspected" of being right-wing extremist, which has already given the police and intelligence services extensive opportunities for surveillance, for example, through infiltrators and wiretapping.
Now, the assessment is being tightened, since the AFD as a whole has been found by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to be working against the "liberal democratic basic order". A German court has previously ruled that it is permissible to call the leading AFD politician Björn Höcke a "fascist".
The AFD, which pursues a xenophobic and Russia-friendly politics, received 20.8 percent of the votes in the election in February. It was a doubling of the party's result in 2021.
