Germany concerned over radicalization of far-right AfD party's youth group

BERLIN

The German far-right AfD party’s youth wing the “Junge Alternative” has been classified as a right-wing extremist entity on Wednesday with the German interior minister expressing concerns that “no one should underestimate this danger.”

The country’s domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, said in a statement that the Junge Alternative’s position has become more radical, contradicting the principles of the free, democratic constitutional order.

“The Junge Alternative propagates a racial concept of society that is based on basic biological assumptions, postulates a nation that is as ethnoculturally homogeneous as possible, excludes migrants of non-European origin,” the agency said.

According to the BfV, the far-right Junge Alternative and its members have increased their propaganda against refugees and migrants, often with xenophobic and Islamophobic argumentations, and described citizens with migration backgrounds as “second-class Germans.”

Besides the Junge Alternative, two other groups – Institute for State Policy (Institut für Staatspolitik) and the One Percent (Ein Prozent) association – were also classified as right-wing extremist entities.

German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has underlined that authorities will continue to take strong measures against racist and anti-democratic groups.

“Not only violence-oriented right-wing extremists are dangerous, but also intellectual arsonists who prepare the ground for violence. No one should underestimate this danger,” she said.

The Social Democrat politician warned that the newly-formed far-right groups try to portray themselves as modern, but pose a serious threat to the democratic system.

“The actors of the so-called "New Right" spread nothing but hatred against refugees, and against citizens with migration backgrounds. They try to combine this with a supposedly educated, more modern face. But the inhuman ideologies behind it are clear,” she said.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party gained popularity during the refugee crisis in 2015 and entered the parliament for the first time in 2017, taking more than 12% of the vote.

Critics accuse the AfD of fueling xenophobia and anti-Muslim racism in Germany, which led to a rise in extremist violence in recent years.

The party has 78 lawmakers in the federal parliament, and it is polling around 15% in recent surveys.