In Germany, the fight against the extreme right represents a mystery for democracy
For Germany – a country that knows something about how extremists can hijack a government – the rising popularity of the far right has raised a difficult question.
How far should a democracy go in limiting a party that many believe is bent on undermining it?
It’s a dilemma that politicians and legal experts across the country are grappling with as support grows for Alternative für Deutschland, a far-right party whose support is now greater than any of the three parties in the governing coalition.
Not only is the AfD the most popular party in three states that are organizing elections this year, in national opinion polls the party even has 20 percent. German politicians have become increasingly alarmed that the party could one day exert influence in the federal government. Its popularity has grown despite domestic intelligence agencies announcing they are investigating the party as a suspected threat to democracy.
Germans have already had a front-row seat to the rise of so-called illiberal democrats in Poland and Hungary, who used their power to stack courts with dovish judges and silence independent media. History also hangs heavy over Germany: the Nazis used elections to seize state power and shape an authoritarian system.
Today, German lawmakers are rewriting the statutes and pushing for constitutional changes to ensure that courts and state parliaments can provide checks on a future, more powerful AfD. Some have even started a campaign to ban the AfD altogether.
But each remedy carries its own dangers, forcing German politicians to navigate a course between protecting their democracy and the possibility of unwittingly giving the AfD tools that they could one day use to hinder it.
“It is never the case that if you have democracy, once you win it, you have it forever,” said Free Democratic Party MP Stephan Thomae. “That’s why we need to protect it a little more.”
10,000 extremists
For years, Germany’s mainstream parties have tried to isolate and exclude the AfD by avoiding political cooperation.
They now acknowledge that these efforts have failed to curb the AfD, whose popularity has increased amid German concerns about migration and a stagnant economy, and despite reports of the AfD’s increasingly anti-democratic tendencies.
According to Germany’s domestic intelligence service, 10,000 of the party’s 28,500 members are extremists. Several state branches of the AfD have already been classified as extremist, as has the youth wing.
Some AfD members are embroiled in criminal charges, including a fantastic, foiled plot in 2022 to violently overthrow the government: police say the plot was aided by a former AfD lawmaker who allowed the conspirators into parliament to identify routes and targets to explore.
Recently, several AfD members, including an aide to the party’s co-leader, attended a meeting where a far-right activist reportedly discussed his views on “remigration,” or mass deportations of immigrants, including possibly naturalized citizens.
The aide was later fired and AfD leaders have denied wanting to deport German citizens. But the news of the meeting, reported from the German research agency Correctiv in January, sparking weeks of protests against the AfD across the country.
The protests, in turn, have intensified the debate over the protection of German democracy.
The enemy of my enemy
The AfD’s impact on governance is already being felt at state level.
In the central German state of Hesse, the AfD became the largest opposition party in the state parliament after last year’s elections. That gave the party the right to hold positions on key committees – including the body that oversees domestic intelligence services.
In other words, the members of a party currently the subject of surveillance operations would have access to information about who and what was being monitored.
Hesse’s rival mainstream parties came together to pass a “democracy package,” rewriting several parliamentary rules, including one that effectively blocked the AfD from the intelligence committee. Now its members will be chosen solely by the ruling coalition, a move that risks weakening the opposition’s control over the majority.
In the eastern state of Thuringia, mainstream lawmakers also wanted to exclude the AfD from their intelligence committee, initially agreeing to put aside their differences and vote for each other’s candidates.
The plan failed when the Christian Democrats, the country’s largest center-right party, ultimately refused to accept the center-left Green Party’s candidate. The committee is still led by members of the former parliament, including one lawmaker who has retired.
“Political compromises and cooperation are eroding,” said Jelena von Achenbach, a public law expert at the University of Erfurt. “They can’t trust each other. And that makes things like working together against the AfD very difficult.”
In Bavaria, the AfD came second in October elections, giving it the right to appoint two honorary judges to the southern state’s constitutional court.
One of the party’s nominated judges was photographed with far-right and anti-vaccination supporters who attempted to storm the German parliament during a 2020 protest. (He later told reporters he was just trying to get a sense of the protest.)
Because the nominees for the courts are chosen by parliament as an entire list, Bavarian lawmakers were faced with accepting all nominees, including the AfD candidates, or blocking everyone and obstructing the functioning of the Supreme Court of Justice the state.
The left-wing parties decided to block.
“There is no escaping the fact that enemies of democracy cannot sit in bodies that are supposed to protect or shape democracy,” Bavarian parliamentary Green leader Jurgen Mistol said in a statement to The New York Times.
But Bavaria’s Conservative majority pushed the list through, pledging instead to work with their center-left rivals to change the system later.
The two AfD judges are in court today.
Unintended consequences
Efforts to counter the rise of the AfD are now intensifying at the national level, but these efforts may have the unintended effect of weakening democratic functions in Germany.
Some of the measures under discussion would give law enforcement and domestic intelligence agencies more leeway, never an easy move in a country that has experienced both fascism and communism over the past century.
The Interior Ministry has proposed a 13-point plan that would, among other things, allow security forces to investigate the finances of anyone deemed to pose a “threat potential,” as opposed to just those people under investigation for sedition or violence.
Another proposal would allow civil servants to be fired for suspected links to extremists, putting the burden of proof on employees rather than the state.
“A culture of suspicion is being created,” said Gottfried Curio, an AfD lawmaker. “We see this as the real threat to democracy.”
Some state lawmakers are particularly concerned about protecting the independence of the Supreme Court. They want to enshrine the process of appointing judges in the constitution and ensure that a two-thirds majority is required in both houses of parliament. Until now, the appointment of judges is governed by federal law and requires a simple majority.
But if the AfD were to ever control more than a third of parliament, such a change would effectively allow the country to block any judicial appointments it wants.
“It’s one of those classically difficult questions for which there is no right answer,” says Michaela Hailbronner, professor of public law at the University of Munster. “You see the potential for abuse. You could even label it as abuse.”
Yet some Germans are demanding even more drastic measures.
The governing coalition in the northern city of Bremen has announced it will gather evidence against the AfD in support of a nationwide ban on the party.
But many politicians, such as Mr Thomae of the Free Democrats, fear such a move could backfire, effectively disenfranchising almost a quarter of voters who express support for the AfD.
“It is our political task to explain to people that the AfD’s real goal is to change the foundations of democracy,” he said. “You can’t solve all problems with laws.”