It’s an agenda that raises profound questions about the extent of artistic freedom here, but also around the world, as the far-right rises in prominence and seeks to exert its newfound strength. Such parties have won seats across much of Europe—the AfD itself won over 20 percent of the vote in elections in the German state of Thuringia over the weekend—and have sought to pressure a wide variety of cultural institutions that they see as intrinsically left-wing, from theaters and museums to publishing houses and historical monuments.

Germany’s postwar constitution guarantees freedom of the arts and expression, but the AfD and its critics contest what that looks like. Marc Jongen, the AfD’s spokesperson on cultural affairs, has often argued publicly that German culture is limited by left-leaning bias, with “enormous uniformity” in the implementation of theater programs and exhibitions. (Jongen did not respond to my requests for comment.) The AfD’s critics counter that it is the party that is the real threat to artistic freedom and pluralism—but should they respond by ostracizing the party and its supporters, or attempt what one center-right politician has called “moderation through engagement”?

Read: How to discuss the far right without empowering it

The AfD’s surveillance of the cultural landscape is meticulous and extends across the country’s most prominent artistic organizations, down to minor details of otherwise little-known projects. In Paderborn, the AfD filed a defamation claim against the city theater over an illustration in a season flyer that compared the AfD’s electoral ascent to that of the Nazi Party. In Aachen, an AfD politician threatened the theater director Reza Jafari with legal action unless he removed a section from his latest play that drew parallels between right-wing populism and fanatical Islam. In Berlin, the party has filed successive legal complaints against a small exhibition on far-right extremism that included brief references to the AfD on two display panels. In the historic university city of Freiberg, political events were banned at the central theater after an AfD councillor decried a scheduled book reading and discussion about right-wing populism as “left-green ideology.” And an AfD member of the Bundestag’s cultural-affairs committee demanded a cut in subsidies to a theater in Berlin after its artistic director criticized the party. Two days earlier, the venue had been evacuated following an anonymous bomb threat.

Critical artistic voices have also been subject to surveillance. In April, the performance-art collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty) discovered that it had been under a 16-month criminal investigation following its construction of a Holocaust memorial outside the home of Björn Höcke, a leading AfD politician. The proceedings, launched by an AfD-supporting prosecutor, placed the group in the same category as organizations such as the Islamic State, allowing for surveillance of its telecommunications and written correspondence, as well as the deployment of informants and undercover agents to monitor their movements.