The German State’s Fear: Mass Palestine Solidarity

Every year, the German federal domestic intelligence agency, officially named the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz), brings out a report with the intelligence it has gathered over the last year on organizations that threaten the “liberal democratic basic order” of the German state. This year’s report shows how much the German state fears the Palestine solidarity movement.

The 400-page report by the Verfassungsschutz has three main categories of politically motivated threats to the German state: right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, and Islamism. Another smaller category is named: foreign-related extremism.

There are possible material consequences of being mentioned in the report of the Verfassungsschutz, if you work in the public sector: Employers can be informed, and disciplinary proceedings may follow up to being fired.

It also means that an organization is being monitored more closely by the secret services, not only based on publicly available information but also undercover collection of information. Many Leftist organizations have been listed in the reports of the Verfassungsschutz for many years under the pretext that wishing to establish a socialist state poses a threat.

The fascist AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) is not named in the report. In early May 2025, the Verfassungsschutz had publicly declared that they had categorized the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremists.” Only a few days later, the AfD went to court against the decision. Currently, a legal tug-of-war is taking place, which is why the Verfassungsschutz is currently not giving any public statements on the AfD’s categorization.

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).

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 1950s simultaneous ban of a fascist party and the ban of the Communist party show that bans orchestrated by the bourgeois state hit back at Leftists. The lingering legal process of officially defining the AfD as “confirmed right-wing extremist” demobilizes people from confronting the fascist threat on the streets and transfers antifascism to the bourgeois state.

The German domestic intelligence agency’s definition comparison of Right-wing extremism, left-wing extremism, Islamism, and foreign-based extremism shows that its actual duty is to uphold the bourgeois status quo of the German capitalist state in the name of supposed “neutrality.”

Setting these categories as posing the same threat shows where the German state stands: it compares right-wing extremists who wish to implement a fascist dictatorship that locks up and kills migrants and foreigners to left-wing extremists who wish to abolish class exploitation and set up a system of workers’ power. Islamists are a tiny fraction within the political sphere in Germany, not even comparable with the scope of right-wing groups. The inflation of the role of Islamists in Germany shows how the German state upholds the bogeyman of Islamism to manufacture consent for its surveillance of migrants and imperialist warfare abroad, be it in Afghanistan or Gaza.

The genocide in Gaza and the anger against the German state aiding and abetting said genocide militarily, politically, and ideologically, poses a threat to the status quo.

On the second page of the introduction of the report, the Minister of Interior, Alexander Dobrindt, states: “The ongoing Middle East conflict continues to exert a high potential for emotionalization and mobilization, thus contributing to an increased abstract threat, particularly for Jewish and Israeli institutions and interests.”

While organizations like Hamas and the PFLP are banned in Germany, as well as other Palestinian organizations like Samidoun, the Verfassungsschutz has now added two pro-Palestinian organizations as ones that they are surveilling: The Jewish Voice for Peace (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden) and Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS). Both are listed under “foreign-related extremism.” That a Jewish organization with German Jewish citizens is categorized as foreign-related extremism in the name of “fighting antisemitism” is not only a bastardization of the term but also a crass revisionism of Germany’s fascist past.

The reason why the Jewish Voice for Peace and BDS are listed as a threat to the Constitution is twofold. For one, putting them in the report legitimizes further surveillance and can set the stage for a future ban. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, putting these two peaceful human rights organizations in the report of the Verfassungsschutz serves to intimidate people in Germany from publicly showing any form of solidarity with Gaza.

Polls in Germany show that 80% of the population is against Israel’s actions in Gaza. Yet, due to severe police violence and criminalization of pro-Palestine and anti-genocide voices in Germany, of which the report by the Verfassungsschutz is one factor, this rejection of Israel’s actions has remained relatively passive. While mass demonstrations in Berlin constitute 30 to 50,000 people in a country of over 80 million people, in other Western imperialist countries like the UK, up to a million people take to the streets for Palestine in a country of 60 million.

What the German state fears most is that passive solidarity will turn into active solidarity that questions its imperialist interests in the Middle East. It fears that masses take publicly to the streets to demand an end to German support for genocide in Palestine.

Now that the hypocrisy of the German ruling class is crystal clear and more and more people are against Germany’s support for Israel, Socialists must continue to fight to transform passive solidarity for Palestine into active solidarity for Palestine. Demanding an end to German weapons deliveries to Israel is one crucial point that can be rallied around and which many Palestine solidarity groups have been pushing for. As the German state is the second largest weapons deliverer to the Israeli regime after the US, fighting German imperialism at home can have huge ripple effects and be a crucial point in fighting for a free Palestine.