It’s August 31, 2024, the day of parliamentary elections in the German state of Thuringia. The lead candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Björn Höcke, is on the main square of Erfurt, hoping that the vote will clear a path for him to become governor. He insists that the country faces certain doom if his party doesn’t end up in power. "The cartel parties are dissolving our Germany like a bar of soap under a stream of warm water!” Höcke remonstrates from the stage. "Tomorrow, we will turn off the faucet!”

Two weeks later, Alice Weidel, national co-leader of the AfD, hits the campaign trail in Werder, a town in Brandenburg. A "jihad” is taking place on Germany’s streets, she cries, "a holy war against the German population!” The "knifings” and "the rapes,” she declaims, "are completely new in our country.”

The German government has "declared war on its own people,” was the message delivered at a demonstration one year before by Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an AfD member of state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt. "If we have a government that is waging war against us, then we will wage war against this government. We have come to drive these people out of their seats.”

These are just three of hundreds of examples collected by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic intelligence agency responsible for monitoring political extremism. The 1,108-page report produced by the BfV is intended to substantiate its conclusion that not just individual state chapters of the party is "proven right-wing extremist,” so too is the entire AfD. Such a categorization opens the party up to increased monitoring by federal authorities and has turned up the volume on calls for a ban.

1,108 Explosive Pages

The BfV spent several months compiling its most recent assessment. Originally, the report was supposed to come out in November 2024, but the collapse of the Olaf Scholz-led government and the snap new elections that followed ruined those plans. The agency had to keep a low profile as the vote approached.

So the BfV continued collecting evidence and finally sent the report to the Interior Ministry on April 28, where the acting minister, Nancy Faeser of the SPD, chose to release the results shortly before her successor, Alexander Dobrindt of the Christian Social Union, took office. Faeser decided against an in-depth ministry evaluation of the report, eager as she was to bring the matter to a conclusion before her government left office.

The paper is explosive. In it, Germany’s domestic intelligence authority officially declares the largest opposition party in the Bundestag, a party which received 20.8 percent of the vote in February elections, making it the second strongest political power in the country, to be hostile to the constitution. AfD co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla responded with outrage and deplored an "abuse of state power to combat and marginalize the opposition.” The party filed an emergency motion with the Administrative Court in Cologne, claiming that the accusations made by the BfV are "untrue.” Last Thursday, the BfV agreed to not treat the AfD as "proven right-wing" until the court rules on that emergency motion.

A long legal battle will now likely ensue, at the end of which the courts will have to answer the question: Is the AfD, a party with tens of thousands of members, a party with seats in federal parliament, European Parliament and in almost all state parliaments in Germany, hostile to the constitution? That is what the BfV believes.

Though the report has not been released in its entirety by the agency, DER SPIEGEL has been able to read it. In it, the BfV confirms that the AfD’s "anti-constitutional stance” has now "become a certainty.”

The agency collected inculpatory evidence from 353 members of the Alternative for Germany party, from the local level all the way up to party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla. Almost all members of the party’s federal executive board are quoted with incriminating statements. The report concludes that "an entrenched xenophobic mindset” prevails within the "top leadership structures of the AfD.”

"Well-Tempered Cruelty”

In its evaluation, the BfV paints the picture of an organization that has charted a clear course to the extreme right. Even years ago, elements of the party had already embarked on a racial-nationalist path, which led in 2021 to the classification of the AfD as a "suspected” right-wing extremist party. Leading the way is Höcke, the head of the state chapter in Thuringia, who has never tried particularly hard to conceal his radicalism. Early on, he began bloviating about a "large-scaled remigration project” with "well-tempered cruelty.”

Following the departure of former AfD leader Jörg Meuthen in January 2022, the BfV writes, other representatives of a more libertarian-conservative orientation left the party. At a party convention in summer 2023 in Magdeburg, the report notes, numerous AfD functionaries displayed "anti-immigration agitation.” During state elections last year and during the federal election campaign ahead of the February 2025 vote, the domestic intelligence agency found that the party’s course of radicalism continued. "There are no signs of moderation.”

The BfV believes that the racial-nationalist camp has completely taken over direction of the party, even if some important functionaries present themselves as being less polarizing than Höcke, such as Sebastian Münzenmaier, the party’s deputy floor leader in the Bundestag. According to the report, there is hardly any recognizable resistance against right-wing extremist positions in the party. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution does not believe, it writes in the report, "that it is still possible for more moderate forces in the AfD to reverse the anti-constitutional character of the party as a whole.”

The BfV sees one aspect as being especially problematic: the party’s ethnic-racist definition of the "Volk.” It is, according to the report, inconsistent with Article 1 Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution, which reads: "Human dignity shall be inviolable.” The BfV argues that the party differentiates between "real Germans” and "passport Germans,” with the latter group viewed by the AfD as second-class citizens because of their migration backgrounds.

"Ethnic Understanding"

The BfV substantiates that claim with around 400 pages of chauvinistic, racist, anti-minority and anti-Muslim statements made by party officials. One example is the claim made by Hans-Christoph Berndt, the AfD’s lead candidate in Brandenburg, in an August 2024 interview with a pro-AfD broadcaster. Berndt said that there were only "20, 30, 40 million Germans left in the country.” Millions of other citizens are, apparently, not real Germans for him.

In December 2018, federal parliamentarian Stephan Protschka, who was part of the AfD executive committee at the time, wrote on Twitter: "If a #dog joins a #wolfpack. Is he then a #wolf or does he stay a dog? #passportgifted.” The tweet remains online to this day.

Fabian Küble, a former federal board member of the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative (JA), referred to the SPD politician Aydan Özoguz as being an "Ottoman.” He continued: "In contrast to her, Austrians are always German and they don’t even have to assimilate.” The comment, writes the BfV, is an expression of Küble’s "ethnic understanding” of the Volk.

The domestic intelligence authority speaks of "ongoing agitation” against migrants, refugees and Muslims. In August 2023, the federal AfD posted on its Facebook page: "Half of Africa is allowed to stroll across the German border with no resistance and take our country as plunder.”

Erhard Brucker, who was a member of the AfD state executive committee in Bavaria at the time, wrote on the internet in 2022 that Europe was being "flooded with Musels,” using a derogatory term for Muslims.

The Junge Alternative in North Rhine-Westphalia insulted Muslims on stickers as an "invasive species,” dehumanizing them with an image of a raccoon wearing a turban and shouldering a rifle.

The AfD, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution writes, presents migrants as a "threatening collective.” In some cases, it attributes an "increased tendency for violence” to entire groups based solely on their origin.

"Knife Migrants” from "Violent Cultures"

The phenomenon of "knife criminality,” party leader Weidel told the right-wing extremist broadcaster Compact TV, is "completely unknown in our culture.” It is being brought to Germany from "violent cultures” in Africa and the Middle East.

Dennis Hohloch, a member of the AfD national board, said before the Brandenburg state elections that "multicultural means a loss of traditions, a loss of identity, a loss of home, murder, killing, robbery and gang rape.”

BfV officials say that the AfD has time and again spoken of "knife migrants,” "knife immigration” and a "knife jihad.” Far from being momentary slips-ups, they say, the use of these terms is a repeating pattern.

Openly racist statements are also part of the AfD repertoire, notes the BfV report. Nicolaus Fest, a former member of European Parliament for the AfD and once an editor at the German tabloid Bild, spoke of "civilized whites” and "severely criminal coloreds.” He has since been kicked out of the party – for other reasons.

In September 2024, the AfD posted a photo on X showing a bloody knife in the hand of a Black person. "The hellish summer that we are currently experiencing in Germany has nothing to do with the climate,” read the accompanying blurb.

AfD national board member Dirk Brandes posted a collage on the internet in summer 2024 showing a group of young men with Arab backgrounds set off against a photo of a blonde family. "Germany with talahons vs. without talahons,” he wrote, using a term that is now used against young men, mostly with immigrant backgrounds, who show off expensive consumer items.

Ahead of the state elections held in three eastern German states in 2024, several JA chapters in the region posted a racist web-based video game, where the player "saves" Germany. If the player arranges three Black men in a row, a voice says loudly: "Deport!” If it’s three bloody knives, a police siren plays. The JA activists also put out a song, generated with the help of artificial intelligence, called "We’ll Deport Them All.” The young party members danced to the song at the AfD’s post-election party. AfD co-leader Chrupalla defended them: "We’re talking about the youth. They put together an excellent campaign.” They should be allowed to "party wildly.”

The JA was categorized as right-wing extremist back in 2023 and in recent years, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, it has played an important role in the "training of current and future functionaries” in the AfD. Activists from the JA have been able to occupy "strategic positions” in the party and have thus "influenced the direction of the AfD.”

At the beginning of 2025, the JA disbanded, mostly out of concern for a party ban. In the report, however, the BfV predicts that previous members of the JA will continue to be active in the AfD, noting that numerous former JA members are currently working for AfD parliamentarians. The report lists almost a dozen examples.

Networking with the New Right

The BfV notes that the AfD’s orbit now includes an entire network of groups, associations and ideologues associated with the new right. Their goal, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is to establish anti-liberal and anti-democratic positions in politics and society.

The AfD’s ties with many of them are growing continuously tighter, such as to the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement and its leader Martin Sellner – despite the fact that the group is on an AfD party list of organizations with which an AfD membership is incompatible. Politicians from the AfD have nevertheless supported the Identitarians with donations.

The right-wing extremist ideologue Götz Kubitschek, who runs a new right think tank in Schnellroda, a town in Saxony-Anhalt, is considered to be the driving force behind the ethnic-nationalists in the AfD. His publishing house put out the book "Politics from the Right” by Maximilian Krah, a missive that contains "blatantly chauvinistic and racist statements,” according to the BfV.

The report says that the AfD also maintains close ties to the association "Ein Prozent,” or "One Percent,” which Kubitschek helped start. The right-wing extremist group promotes "actions, forms of protest and spaces for meetings and events.” The goal is that of bringing about a "patriotic revolution.” Domestic intelligence officials have been keeping close tabs on the association for five years. As the BfV has discovered, AfD groups transferred at least 294,739 euros to a PR company belonging to Ein Prozent between October 2017 and August 2022. Payments came from the AfD group in the Bundestag as well as from lawmakers in four state parliaments.

The publication Compact, from the right-wing conspiracy theorist Jürgen Elsässer, launched a campaign to support the AfD ahead of the 2024 state elections called "The Blue Wave Rolls.” Party functionaries regularly write for Elsässer’s right-wing extremist magazine and also appear on the publication’s television channel. Last year, the German Interior Ministry banned the medium, though a court ruled that publication and broadcasting could continue for the time being. AfD party head Weidel celebrated, saying it was "excellent” that Compact could resume operations.

According to the BfV, a right-wing extremist conspiracy myth has become a "central” element of AfD policy. The reference is to the Great Replacement theory, according to which those in power are seeking to replace ethnic Germans with migrants.

AfD parliamentarian and former German soldier Hannes Gnauck said in 2023: "The old party governments at the federal and state levels are engaging in a population exchange and they will not rest until every corner of our country and every peaceful village is stuffed with illegal migrants.” Party leader Weidel claimed back in 2022 "leaders in our society” would be "replaced” by Syrians, Romanians and Afghans.

In December 2024, Bundestag member Gereon Bollmann, a retired judge, wrote in a Christmas message: "We are suffering more and more from increasing mass migration, behind which is the planned replacement of our Volk.” Others, like current AfD parliamentarian Krah, blathered about an "Umvolkung” meaning "repopulation” – a term coined by the Nazis.

"Aggressive” Demands for "Remigration"

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution says that the AfD has "constantly and aggressively” presented "remigration” as the purported solution to all problems. AfD leader Weidel has also begun using the term. The party has claimed that it is merely expressing support for the legal deportation of those who have been refused asylum and others who are not legally allowed to stay – a claim which the BfV believes is misleading. AfD politicians regularly demand that "millions be remigrated” – which exceeds the number of foreigners eligible for deportation "by several orders of magnitude.”

"Every additional foreigner in this country is one too many,” read one September 2023 post on X by AfD national board member Gnauck. "We need a strict #remigration of those who are here.”

Anti-Semitism is also widespread within the AfD, even if a "prevailing character of anti-Semitism” cannot be ascribed to the party as a whole, as the agency writes in its report. Still, the document includes over 40 pages of examples. The AfD’s anti-Semitism, the report argues, primarily expresses itself in the form of inferences, codes and figures of speech. Instead of writing about "Jews,” for example, the party focuses on the U.S. philanthropist and billionaire George Soros, who is from a Jewish family. Or they speak of a purported "global elite.”

A deputy head of the AfD in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, for example, called then-U.S. President Joe Biden a "poisonous mouthpiece of the globalists,” while a member of state parliament in Saxony grumbled about powers "under the control of global finance.” A prominent member of the JA in Schleswig-Holstein was a bit less circumspect, tweeting about a "minority that we almost exterminated” and which now controls "this country.”

"Traitors to the People" and Other Insults

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution also "strongly suspects” that the AfD doesn’t just violate the human dignity of minorities but also stands against the "principle of democracy” outlined in the Basic Law. Party functionaries, the report notes "continually and broadly” defame representatives of other political parties, disparaging them, for example, as a "community of political gangsters” or as "traitors to the people.”

Not every hyperbolic criticism of those in power is, of course, a potential violation of the constitution, the report points out. But it is a different situation, the BfV notes, when the political opponent is denied all legitimacy.

Such as the message written by the Saxony AfD politician Karsten Hilse in 2024: A vote for the "unity party” CDU, SPD, FDP, Greens, Left Party and BSW is a vote for "murder, killing and rape on Germany’s streets and squares.”

Tillschneider, the state parliamentarian in Saxony-Anhalt, said in August 2022: "Whether it’s the CDU, FDP, SPD, Greens or Left Party – they are all the same. They are the accomplices of those who would plunder Germany.” The AfD, he intimated, is today what "Stauffenberg was in 1944,” the "only relevant political power that is resisting.” The reference was to Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried and failed to assassinate Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Höcke, the head of the state chapter of the AfD in Thuringia, said in September 2023: "We Germans managed to survive the brown dictatorship. We survived the red dictatorship. We will also survive the diversity dictatorship.”

The report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution lists several additional examples in which AfD politicians compare the German government to the Nazi regime or the communist dictatorship in East Germany.

AfD parliamentarian Stephan Protschka, for example, villified Bavarian Governor Markus Söder of the CSU as "Södolf.” Another senior AfD member called Thomas Haldenwang, then head of the BfV, a "new Goebbels.” Haldenweg had introduced measures to monitor the AfD, a move that put a target on his back.

During the coronavirus pandemic, AfD politicians ramped up their rhetoric. Functionaries spoke of a "corona dictatorship.” A local AfD chapter from the town of Kehl in Baden-Württemberg referred to vaccinations as a "euthanasia program” and blasted measures implemented to slow the spread of the virus as the beginning of the "Fourth Reich.” The AfD in Saxony demanded in September 2022 that there be a "Nuremberg 2.0” for the SPD politician Karl Lauterbach, who was health minister at the time. The reference was to the Nuremberg Trials, which prosecuted numerous top Nazis following World War II.

Parliamentarian Matthias Moosdorf launched a verbal assault on the government in February 2024 due to its weapons deliveries to Ukraine, calling it a "power-hungry clique of Germany haters” and "government criminals.” Moosdorf is well-known for his close ties to Russia. During the war, he took an honorary professorship at the Gnessin State Musical College in Moscow.

Overthrow Fantasies in Chat Groups

Some AfD functionaries speak of a "right to resistance” or, according to the BfV, have called on their followers to arm themselves. A state parliamentarian in Brandenburg posed in social media networks last summer with a Kubotan, a weapon used for self-defense.

In a closed chat group on Facebook known as the "Alternative News Group Bavaria,” state politicians years ago called for a civil war, as the public broadcaster Bayerische Rundfunk revealed in 2021. "Without overthrow and revolution, we will not achieve a change in course,” wrote a local AfD leader. An AfD state politician responded: "I don’t think we’ll get out of this without a civil war.”

Investigations have revealed links from the party to potentially violent right-wing extremism. In November, the prosecutor general had eight men arrested for alleged membership in the terror group "Saxon Separatists.” Three of them were members of the AfD. Another example is the former AfD federal parliamentarian who has been in investigative custody for more than two years. She is suspected of having planned a coup d’état with a group belonging to the right-wing extremist "Reichsbürger” movement. Both cases earn a mention in the BfV report.

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution also includes exonerating factors in the report. But the officials apparently didn’t find much. Severe sanctions were rarely imposed following misconduct, according the BfV. One example is the North Rhine-Westphalian AfD politician Matthias Helferich, who referred to himself as the "friendly face of the NS,” with NS being an abbreviation for the National Socialist (Nazi) party. He hasn't been booted out of the party so far. Indeed, he is now part of the AfD group in federal parliament in Berlin. Maximilian Krah is another example. Though he was temporarily pushed out of the limelight after a number of scandals, including his trivialization of the SS, he was accepted into the parliamentary group without much debate following the February elections. For the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, both men are "proven right-wing extremists.”

The conviction of Björn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, for using the banned SA slogan "Alles für Deutschland” ("Everything for Germany”) likewise had no consequences in the party whatsoever. On the contrary, during the federal election campaign, the AfD printed blue hearts for lead candidate Alice Weidel reading "Alice für Deutschland.” At a campaign event in Hesse, the entire hall chanted the slogan. The BfV sees it as a deliberate provocation.