Germany’s most senior policeman has claimed that being a supporter of the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is “incompatible” with being an officer of the law.
Germany’s Federal Police Commissioner Uli Grötsch, a former member of the Bundestag parliament for the leftist Social Democrat Party (SPD), said this week that members or even mere supporters of the AfD should not be welcomed in police forces.
“AfD membership and working as a police officer are incompatible,” Grötsch said in comments reported by Deutsche Welle.
The top police officer in the country said that even those who demonstrate a “commitment” to the right-wing party should be barred from serving, which he classified as “openly supporting the party, running for local or city council or even for the Bundestag.”
Grötsch’s comments come amid a broader effort to root out AfD members from the police, with the states of Bavaria and Hesse saying in May that they would be examining whether or not to ban members of the party from government roles, including in their police forces.
This came in the wake of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s political spy agency which reports to the government, ruling that the AfD was a “right-wing extremist” organisation, potentially opening up the party to further state surveillance.
The ruling, which is currently being challenged in the courts by the right-wing party, was criticised this month by a former president of the BfV, Hans Georg Maaßen, who argued that it was politically motivated, noting that the agency directly reported to former far-left Interior Minister Nancy Faeser at the time the decision was made.
“This is a clear case of using domestic intelligence services to suppress opposition,” he said, adding that the “BfV has been weaponised to attack political rivals in an unscrupulous way. This damages its public reputation and undermines its core mission.”
The former spy chief also called into question the supposed evidence used by his former agency to classify the AfD as an extremist party. A leaked copy of the BfV’s report on the party consisted almost entirely on public comments made by AfD politicians on issues like immigration, indicating that the government views broadly held opinions as a demonstration of extremism.
Attempts to sideline the AfD were criticised by U.S. Vice President JD Vance in a speech at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year in which he warned that democracy in Germany was imperilled by political elites “telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.”
“Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t,” Vance said.
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