Germany's domestic security agency will run surveillance on the far-right Alternative for Germany's (AfD) most nationalistic group, the agency's president announced on Thursday.

The step designates the AfD group known as the "Wing" ("Flügel") as a far-right extremist group warranting observation from security forces.

"The Wing evidently has extremist intentions," said Thomas Haldenwang, the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution — Germany's domestic security agency.

The AfD group was identified as "suspicious" by the agency in January 2019 and was already being monitored, along with the far-right party's youth branch.

After the far-right attack in Hanau in February, in which 11 people lost their lives, the German government saw increased calls from people across the political spectrum to put the AfD under observation. A manifesto written by the perpetrator of the attack contained anti-migrant rhetoric that echoed AfD sentiments.

Read more: Germany underestimated far-right terror for 'too long'

'We cannot repeat the past'

Halberwang made reference to the 12 people who died in right-wing extremist attacks in Germany in the last 12 months.

"Behind these figures there are innocent victims — and there are also those who are responsible and those who supported them," he told reporters.

"We cannot repeat the past," he said, explaining that a higher level of surveillance, especially in the digital world, could help unmask the supporters of extremism. He also referenced Germany's murky past with far-right hate crimes.

"The digital world leads to a disinhibition," he said. "If people can easily consume hate in the virtual world, they will begin to act with hate in the real world."

He identified several members of the AfD's Wing, including the state of Thuringia's regional party leader Björn Höcke, as "far-right extremists."

Read more: AfD's Björn Höcke: Firebrand of the German far right

Thuringia regional leader Björn Höcke

AfD slams new surveillance measures

Ahead of the official announcement, several AfD politicians condemned the move, calling it a deliberate tactic to silence the party.

"This is a convoluted, politically motivated, anti-AfD act," said Jörg Meuthen, spokesman for the AfD. The party has repeatedly said its activities are not unconstitutional and do not warrant observation.

"The security agency has made a mistake with its allegations," the party said in a statement on Wednesday.

Höcke, who is one of the Wing's most prominent leaders, also spoke out against the decision ahead of the announcement. The Thuringian politician said his calls for the "de-Islamization of Germany and Europe" are "not directed against the freedom of religion anchored in the constitution."

He said his frequent use of anti-Islam rhetoric did not call for "the collective expulsion of Muslims living in Germany, and certainly not of German citizens."

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



Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a Wing supporter and member of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt, expanded on his 2017 comments comparing Islam to a fungus.

Tillschneider said on Wednesday he would no longer draw this comparison, saying it prompts "false associations."

Thuringian AfD lawmaker Torben Braga denounced the new surveillance an "institutionalized attitude of snooping" after the announcement.

Read more: AfD: What you need to know about Germany's far-right party

How does the 'Wing' fit into the AfD?

The AfD, formed in 2014, received 12.6% of the vote at the last German federal election in 2017, and has representatives in all 16 German state parliaments and in the European Parliament. Members of the party have been accused of spreading anti-Semitic, xenophobic, Islamophobic and racist rhetoric.

The Wing was set up in 2015 in the Thuringian city of Erfurt as a nationalistic splinter group of the party. It eschews clear party lines and hierarchies and as such estimates vary as to how many AfD members and voters support the Wing.

Reports in German media from 2019 suggest that up to 40% of AfD supporters in Germany's former eastern states were members of the Wing.

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ed/sms (AFP/dpa)