The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) said on Monday that its youth wings in Bremen and Lower Saxony would be disbanded after it came to light that they were under observation by the relevant regional arms of Germany's domestic intelligence service (the BfV).

Lower Saxony's Interior Minister Boris Pistorius, a Social Democrat (SPD), said he had signed the order to observe the Young Alternative ("Junge Alternative," or "JA" for short) due to credible concerns about right-wing extremism.

He said that his decision was "completely detached" from the nationalist marches that swept through the eastern city of Chemnitz last week, but rather based on "a not insignificant ideological and personal overlap," with the Identitarian movement, a far-right fringe group.

Pistorius's counterpart in Bremen, Ulrich Mäurer, said that he had already commissioned a review of the JA group in the city last year, the final draft of which had been presented to him last week.

"These people have dropped their masks several times in the recent past, parts of the messages in this group are pure racism," Mäurer said.

In Bremen, police reportedly carried out a search recently over incitement to hatred allegations against a JA member.

AfD decries 'abuse of power'

The revelations came at a time when other mainstream parties in Germany are calling for the BfV to monitor the AfD for extremism, particularly in light of right-wing violence in Chemnitz.

Andreas Kalbitz, the top AfD politician from the state of Brandenburg and one of six sharing the title of "chairman" at a national level, accused the mainstream parties of trying to start an anti-AfD panic.

"The call for the AfD to be observed by the BfV is more than a desperate act by the helpless older parties. We're seeing the desire for an abuse of power unmatched in reunified Germany," Kalbitz said in a press release.

When asked about the push to monitor the AfD, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that what the BfV investigates is "not a politcal decision, they are decisions based on facts."

Merkel said that she had heard from regional leaders that there were individual actions that needed to be monitored, and that the situation would be handled the same way on the federal level.

Although current polls have the AfD at around 16 or 17 percent support nationwide, according to the research institute Civey, polls also suggest that a majority of Germans would approve of the BfV monitoring the anti-immigrant party.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland Co-chairman Alexander Gauland said the German national soccer team's defender Jerome Boateng might be appreciated for his performance on the pitch - but people would not want "someone like Boateng as a neighbor." He also argued Germany should close its borders and said of an image showing a drowned refugee child: "We can't be blackmailed by children's eyes."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alice Weidel Alice Weidel generally plays the role of "voice of reason" for the far-right populists, but she, too, is hardly immune to verbal miscues. Welt newspaper, for instance, published a 2013 memo allegedly from Weidel in which she called German politicians "pigs" and "puppets of the victorious powers in World War II. Weidel initially claimed the mail was fake, but now admits its authenticity.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Frauke Petry German border police should shoot at refugees entering the country illegally, the former co-chair of the AfD told a regional newspaper in 2016. Officers must "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings." Communist East German leader Erich Honecker was the last German politician who condoned shooting at the border.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Björn Höcke The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia made headlines for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. The comments came just as Germany enters an important election year - leading AfD members moved to expel Höcke for his remarks.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Beatrix von Storch Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts - but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Marcus Pretzell Pretzell, former chairman of the AfD in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and husband to Frauke Petry, wrote "These are Merkel's dead," shortly after news broke of the deadly attack on the Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Wendt The member of parliament in Germany's eastern state of Saxony made waves in early 2016 with an inquiry into how far the state covers the cost of sterilizing unaccompanied refugee minors. Thousands of unaccompanied minors have sought asylum in Germany, according to the Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees (BumF) — the vast majority of them young men.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andre Poggenburg Poggenburg, head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Alexander Gauland - again ... During a campaign speech in Eichsfeld in August 2017, AfD election co-candidate Alexander Gauland said that Social Democrat parliamentarian Aydan Özoguz should be "disposed of" back to Anatolia. The German term, "entsorgen," raised obvious parallels to the imprisonment and killings of Jews and prisoners of war under the Nazis.

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks ... and again Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. Acknowledging Germany's responsibility for the crimes of the Nazi era, he went on to say Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."

AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks Andreas Kalbitz The Brandenburg state AfD chief admitted in 2019 to attending a 2007 rally in Greece by the ultranationalist Golden Dawn party at which a swastika flag was raised. "Der Spiegel" had published a leaked report by the German embassy in Athens naming him as one of "14 neo-Nazis" who arrived from Germany for the far-right rally. Kalbitz released a statement saying he took part out of "curiosity." Author: Dagmar Breitenbach



es/msh (AFP, dpa)