A group of over 1,000 left-wing lawyers in Germany have demanded the government ban the anti-mass migration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party as it has surged to become the most popular in the country.
The self-described leftist Republican Lawyers’ Association issued a public appeal to the German government and lawmakers in the Bundestag to launch proceedings to ban the AfD, which it argues “contradicts the central fundamental values” of the country and its constitution, Die Welt reported.
Chairwoman Angela Furmaniak said that banning the leading opposition party would be necessary for the sake of “the human dignity of all people.”
The petition, which was signed by 1,051 legal professionals, notes that the “Basic Law” constitution provides the mechanism to ban political parties if a case is brought before the Federal Constitutional Court.
Such a case can be initiated by the federal government, the Bundestag parliament, or the Bundesrat senate, who would have to successfully argue that the party in question “not only takes an anti-constitutional attitude but aims to act on that attitude in a militant and aggressive way.” The party would need to be demonstrated to have acted to “deliberately undermine the functioning of Germany’s free democratic basic order.”
Furmaniak said that “politicians must no longer hide behind specious arguments, but must act before it is too late.”
At present, the country’s top left-wing party, the Social Democrats (SPD), is in favour of a ban on the AfD. However, despite being in a governing coaltion with the SPD, the centrist Christian Democrats (CDU) have so far refused to back a ban.
Efforts to use lawfare to prevent the rise of the AfD have been longstanding in Berlin, with the government-funded German Institute for Human Rights (DIMR) telling lawmakers in 2023 that a ban against the AfD would be justified, again arguing that the party goes against the “free democratic basic order”. The DIMR accused the party of having an ideology “based on the tyranny of National Socialism” despite it having broadly classical liberal positions.
Meanwhile, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the German government’s political intelligence agency, has sought to brand the AfD as a “right-wing extremist” organisation. Although the classification is currently being appealed, should it be upheld, the government would be granted additional powers to spy on AfD communications and to install moles within the party apparatus. The classification would also potentially lay the groundwork for an outright ban on the party.
The efforts to ban the AfD have come under heavy criticism from the Trump administration in the United States.
Last year, Vice President JD Vance remarked: “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it. The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio added that surveilling the AfD represented “tyranny in disguise,” adding that the “truly extremist” position in Germany was the Berlin establishment’s support of the “deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”
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