How to Confront Germany’s Fascist AfD Party?

By Omnia Magdy

On May 2nd, the German domestic intelligence agency officially classified the fascist party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) as a right-wing extremist party.

Beforehand, the AfD had already been under observation for suspected right-wing extremism and was classified as right-wing extremist in three East German states.

In a statement on the AfD’s classification as a right-wing extremist party in Germany, the domestic intelligence agency has now stated that: “The ethnicity—and ancestry-based understanding of the people prevailing within the party is incompatible with the free democratic order.” Furthermore, the AfD does not consider citizens of a “migration background from predominantly Muslim countries” as equal members of the German people, the agency reported.

The classification as right-wing extremists gives the domestic intelligence agency more powers to use informants and surveillance in monitoring the AfD.

Both US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and US Vice-President JD Vance have since intervened in the debate, with the former stating that the decision is “tyranny in disguise” and the latter declaring that it constitutes a rebuilding of the Berlin Wall.

Currently, the AfD has 152 seats in the German parliament, having won 20.8% of votes in the February federal elections.

Since the AfD was classified as a right-wing extremist, calls to ban the party have become louder. Both high-ranking members of the ruling center-right Christian Democrat (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD) have publicly stated that the AfD should be banned.

The German constitution states that parties can be banned if they “deliberately undermine the functioning of Germany’s free democratic basic order” and act in a “militant and aggressive way”.

After the fall of the Nazi dictatorship, Germany’s constitution, or Grundgesetz, was adopted in 1949. So far, two parties have been banned in the Federal Republic of Germany: in 1952, the Socialist Reich Party (SRP), a successor organization to the National Socialist Party (NSDAP), and in 1956, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD).

This gets to the heart of the dilemma of calls to ban the AfD.

The German domestic intelligence agency claims to ensure Germany’s “free democratic basic order.” In its yearly reports on organizations, groups, and parties that it surveilled, the agency lists three main fields that pose a threat to said “free democratic basic order”: right-wing extremism, Left-wing extremism, and Islamism. All three sections are allocated the same amount of space in the 400-page report, and all three political spectrums are declared as posing a similar threat to “German democracy.”

Fascists want to deport, throw out, or kill migrants and establish a dictatorship of authoritarian rule. Socialists wish to create a fundamentally democratic society where the working class seizes the means of production and ends exploitation and oppression. While the definition of Islamism that the German state uses is extraordinarily vague and the groups that are listed in the report of the agency are minuscule if not insignificant compared with the 50.000 members that the AfD has, not to mention other fascist groups with thousands of members.

The German domestic intelligence agency is responsible for counter-intelligence and the investigation of terror threats, which it defines as coming from all three spectrums: Right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, and Islamism. In fact, its duty is to help uphold the bourgeois status quo of the German capitalist state.

Antifascists should not rely on bourgeois state agencies that see antifascist socialists and racist fascists at the same level of a threat to society. The ban of a fascist party and the ban of the Communist party in the 1950s show that bans orchestrated by the bourgeois state hit back at Leftists.

A ban on the AfD could not be decided by the domestic intelligence agency itself. Still, it would have to go through the two houses of parliament, the government, or the constitutional court, and would take years. Relying on the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU), who have pushed through a plethora of racist laws and criminalizations of migrants as well as normalized relations with the AfD as the political force to stop fascism, is illusory. The Social Democrats (SPD), who fully support and supply the genocide in Gaza with weapons and have not only demanded but also carried out deportations of refugees, are also not the force we can rely on to stop fascism. It is the bourgeois parties’ appropriation of the language of the AfD who have created fertile ground for the fascists to broaden their spectrum of influence.

For example, the political establishment’s agreement that Palestine solidarity constitutes terrorist propaganda has played into the hands of the AfD. In November 2024, a resolution on “protecting Jewish life” that was brought in by the SPD, Greens, FDP, and CDU was passed in parliament, arguing that “imported Muslim antisemitism” is a threat to Germany. This resolution was also passed with the AfD’s vote.

It further argued that “Muslim Antisemites” should be deported. The AfD’s Beatrix von Storch (granddaughter of Hitler’s minister of finance) thanked the Greens in her speech in parliament thereafter, saying that the Greens have finally taken up AfD positions on imported antisemitism by Muslim immigrants.

To distract from the worsening living conditions for the German working class due to the austerity measures by the ruling German government, the bourgeois parties have gleefully used racist arguments. Germany’s foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, admitted recently that the government reduced spending on public infrastructure, like schools or public transportation, in order to ramp up military spending. In order to deflect from the fact that increased military spending or crumbling public infrastructure is not in the interest of the German working class, the German ruling class has once again whipped up the narrative that migrants are to blame for all societal ills. The maneuver of using racist talking points that scapegoat migrants to distract from horrific capitalist economic policies has effectively strengthened the AfD, which itself wants massive tax breaks for the rich.

Antifascists cannot rely on bureaucratic steps to defeat fascism. Instead, fascists must be stopped on the streets. This can only be done with very broad alliances, a united front with the common goal of crushing the fascist threat before it is too late. Socialists must orient people to the fight against fascism on the streets and away from illusions in bourgeois courts.

This means working together with a broad array of organizations, including reformists like social democrats. This does not mean that revolutionary socialists within united fronts hide their content or subjugate themselves to the reformist content of their alliance partners. Quite the contrary. Instead, within broad united fronts against fascism, revolutionary socialists must win over the base of reformist organizations by exposing the inherent contradictions of the reformist party leadership. Thus, we march separately, but strike together.