Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution report on AfD: Why it reminds of conspiracy theories

The author has access to thousands of pages of Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution material, including information on the AfD. The secrecy surrounding the AfD report serves to maintain the agency's power. A guest article.

According to the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, "right-wing extremist": AfD politicians in Berlin after the federal election in February. Sören Stache/dpa-Pool/dpa

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution had to make a decision regarding the AfD. For years, the party has been suspected of pursuing extremist goals and is therefore being monitored by the domestic intelligence service. Such serious infringements of fundamental rights are only permissible if they can be objectively justified, are expedient, and are proportionate. This means, conversely, that the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is prohibited from simply listing a party as a "suspect case" for an unlimited period of time. Either the suspicion cannot be substantiated, and monitoring must be discontinued. Or it can be substantiated, and then the upgrade to "confirmed extremism" is mandatory. And yet, the process is unlikely to contribute to strengthening trust in the rule of law and democracy.

This begins with the timing of the decision. The Interior Minister made the classification just days before leaving office. She would have been better off leaving such a fundamental decision for democracy to her successor. In addition, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution currently has no regular president, and the AfD even performed ahead of the CDU/CSU parties in recent polls. All of this unnecessarily fuels the suspicion that partisan motives may also be at play.

And there's something else: The federal government declares it "certain" that the AfD is extremist. This sounds as if an independent academic institution had determined this. Even though those involved like to create the opposite impression: The domestic intelligence service is an agency bound by instructions like any other. Its head is ultimately the Federal Minister of the Interior.

Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution consistently refuses to provide evidence

The facts are therefore not "confirmed" objectively, but merely from the perspective of an agency bound by instructions. And of course, even an intelligence agency can make mistakes. This happens quite often, incidentally. For example, it illegally monitored the former Minister President of Thuringia , Bodo Ramelow, for decades. The agency even harassed human rights lawyer Rolf Gössner for a full 38 years. In these and other cases, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was unwilling to admit and stop its own unconstitutional conduct. It had to be forced to do so by the highest German courts.

It's fitting that he consistently refuses to provide evidence for his claims regarding the AfD. He did inform the public that there was a "report" over 1,000 pages long, but for confidentiality reasons, it would not be published.

That's not convincing. The author has access to thousands of pages of secret documents from the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution – including documents on the AfD. The agency relies almost 100 percent on sources accessible to the public. It would have been easy to black out the few passages actually based on intelligence findings and release the rest to the public. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution doesn't do this because it wants to evade public scrutiny. Secrecy is a tactical mechanism to surround itself with an aura of invulnerability. What would be publicly debated and controversial could no longer be considered "secure" without question. Secrecy is about nothing other than the agency's power.

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution's explanation for the AfD's upgrade is therefore rather lame: its concept of the people is "incompatible with the free democratic basic order." Thus, the AfD is not accused of seeking to violently overthrow the political order. What it is accused of is its "ethnic concept of the people."

This argument dates back to 2017. At that time, the Federal Constitutional Court had confirmed the NPD as an extremist party because it sought to link citizenship to ethnic origins. According to this argument, only those of ethnic German descent could be considered German. A Turk who immigrated to Germany could then never become a citizen. This would create a two-tier legal system based on blood. The Constitutional Court viewed this as a violation of human dignity and akin to National Socialism.

Arguments of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution are reminiscent of conspiracy theories

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution acts like a student with only mediocre mathematical ability, reducing every new problem to a solution he already knows. It accuses the AfD of, like the NPD, basing people's legal status solely on their biological ancestry and of seeking to subject migrants to "unconstitutional unequal treatment."

The only problem is: to the author's knowledge, unlike the NPD, there is not a single resolution by the federal party that could support such an accusation. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution therefore relies on isolated statements by elected officials and officials, which it interprets as unconstitutional.

The first quotes from the new "report" have now been made public (see Welt, May 2, 2025). Since the document is classified, it could constitute a criminal offense – allegedly committed by an official of the government or ministry. An AfD member is accused of making the following statement: "Misguided migration policies and asylum abuse have led to the 100,000-fold importation of people from deeply backward and misogynistic cultures."

Objectively, there is no evidence of a violation of the constitution in this statement. It is a robustly formulated expression of opinion. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution therefore resorts to a hermeneutic trick: If one already assumes that the AfD adheres to an unconstitutional ethnic concept of the people, constitutionally harmless statements can be interpreted as indicator plants for the alleged underlying worldview. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution simply assumes what it would have to prove. It's a pattern that is sometimes reminiscent of conspiracy theories.

After the report: Will there be proceedings to ban the AfD?

But not everything the domestic intelligence agency does is fiction. There are undoubtedly statements from the ranks of the AfD that are unconstitutional – including regarding the concept of the people. However, the number of these indisputably unconstitutional statements is rather small. It is therefore questionable whether this is sufficient to accuse the entire party of extremism. And this is precisely where the hermeneutic apparatus of the domestic intelligence agency comes into play: By interpreting even objectively constitutionally harmless statements in light of an unconstitutional concept of the people, the amount of alleged evidence increases immeasurably. What appears harmless at first glance is regularly interpreted by the agency as tactical restraint. That could be so, but the "evidence" does not always meet the standards of the rule of law.

Like the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, established politicians must now make a decision: Either they initiate ban proceedings and risk their failure. If this were to happen, a massive loss of trust in the political system and its actors would be inevitable. Or they forgo them because they do not want to expose themselves to the critical scrutiny of independent judges and the even higher hurdles of a party ban. Then they would appear dishonest and inconsistent. One cannot credibly describe the AfD as a threat to democracy and then fail to act. So, regardless of the outcome, German democracy faces perhaps its toughest test in its history.

Mathias Brodkorb, a Cicero columnist, served as Minister of Culture and Finance in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for the SPD. His book "Thought Police in a Constitutional State? The Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a Politician's Agent. Six Case Studies" was published by zu Klampen in 2024.