German extremists – how to stop the rise of AfD

• Ten critical questions on taking AfD to court
• Fear for Germany, fear of Germany
• How to close a party in Germany
• What is ‘remigration’?

“One day, history books will be written about the years that lie ahead of us … If these books come to a bad end, it will be the thoughtlessness and opportunism of many that bear the responsibility.”

Justus Bender (2025)

 

Dear friends of ESI,

Could a party that wants to see Germany ally with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, abandon Ukraine to its fate, that considers Poland as a threat, that promises to deport millions of Muslims and wants Germany to leave (and destroy) the European Union win power in Berlin?

A few years ago, the idea seemed far-fetched. Today, the troubling answer is: Yes, it could. In the past two years, the rise of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) seemed unstoppable. By the summer of 2026 the AfD leads the national opinion polls, ahead of every other party. It is also adopting ever more radical positions. The party poses a threat to German democracy, its minorities and to Germany’s European allies and neighbours. It would end an era of almost eight decades of German integration into European structures that brought unprecedented security and prosperity across Europe. 

And so this summer, Germany’s most popular politicians – many of them Minister-Presidents from various parties in different federal states (the heads of government of Germany’s sixteen regional states, a role similar to that of a state governor in the United States) – face a decision that others have been putting off for years: whether and when the question of the AfD’s constitutionality will be referred to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe (Germany’s highest court, based in the southern city of Karlsruhe; it is the only body that can ban a political party). Our latest report explains why this is now both possible and urgently needed, and why and how this decision can and must be made as early as July 2026:

Can extremists win power in Germany?
AfD, a threat to Europe and the courage of democrats

Identitarian activist Martin Sellner: Cem Özdemir (governor of Baden-Württemberg, born in Germany to Turkish migrant parents) is a “coloniser” and AfD is successful because it is radical.

The path to a review of the party’s constitutionality lies through the Bundesrat (the chamber of the national parliament in which the governments of the sixteen states are represented; it can ask the Constitutional Court to rule on whether a party is allowed). A necessary majority can be achieved there this summer.

Whether the competent court, following a thorough review, will then ban the federal party, cut state funding for parties, or ‘merely’ ban radical state parties on the grounds of unconstitutionality remains to be seen. The AfD exists both as a national party and as 16 separate branches in each state, so a ruling could apply to the whole party or only to its most extreme regional branches. That is for the judges in Karlsruhe to decide. The law states:

“If the application for a ruling pursuant to Article 21(2) of the Basic Law [Germany’s constitution, which allows parties that seek to abolish democracy to be banned] proves to be well-founded, the Federal Constitutional Court shall declare the political party to be unconstitutional. The declaration may be limited to a legally or organisationally independent part of a party.”

The outcome also depends on the AfD. It could distance itself from identitarian (the identitarian movement is a far-right current that wants European countries to keep an ethnically ‘native’ population and opposes immigration, above all by Muslims) and far-right politicians, factions and positions. It could follow the path of other right-wing populist protest parties in Europe. So far, all attempts to do so have failed spectacularly.

Today, according to journalist Frederik Schindler, the far-right extremist Björn Höcke (the AfD’s most radical leading figure, who heads the party in the eastern state of Thuringia) is “the most influential figure in AfD ideology”. Journalist Robin Alexander wrote the following on the subject in 2025:

“The AfD has become more radical, but Höcke has not. He has always been a right-wing radical … The AfD is not just ‘not a normal party’. It is not a normal right-wing party either … The AfD has evolved into what Höcke has always been.”

In June 2023, the Frankfurt Public Prosecutor’s Office ruled that it was lawful to describe Höcke as a Nazi. It dropped proceedings against a demonstrator for defamation. In May 2023, during an anti-AfD demonstration in Königstein, the demonstrator had held aloft a placard reading ‘Björn Höcke is a Nazi’. The public prosecutor’s office viewed this as “not an insult, but a value judgement based on facts, which, within the context of political discourse, is protected by the freedom of expression guaranteed under Article 5 of the Basic Law.” Höcke had, “in recent years… expressed himself in a clearly nationalistic and ethno-nationalist manner, with racist undertones and by emphasising a natural claim to leadership on the part of the Germans, repeatedly using phrases… that formed part of the standard vocabulary of representatives of National Socialism prior to May 1945”.

The AfD today is a “Höcke AfD”. A Höcke AfD, however, is clearly unconstitutional. Might it gain control over German citizens or the police, in Berlin, Erfurt or Magdeburg soon? (Erfurt is the capital of Thuringia, Magdeburg the capital of Saxony-Anhalt).

Debating the AfD in London
Mehdi Hasan, Maximilian Krah and ESI

Ten critical questions on taking AfD to court

Will proceedings to ban a party be successful? Is it legitimate or undemocratic? When is the right time? There are many misunderstandings surrounding these questions. In our report, we set out ten questions and give ten answers to provide guidance during this historic summer:

1. Can a political party be banned in Germany?
2. Is banning a political party undemocratic?
3. Are there lessons from previous German closure cases?
4. Why did the AfD fear a motion to be banned last year?
5. Why did AfD not fear one this year?
6. How does AfD behave when it does not fear a court case?
7. Has a court in Cologne not whitewashed AfD in early 2026?
8. Does a political firewall without legal proceedings make sense?
9. Must German leaders wait until state elections in the autumn?
10. How certain is it that proceedings would succeed?

The answers: Can extremists win power in Germany? AfD, a threat to Europe and the courage of democrats.

 
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s right-hand man, 3 and 6 June 2026

Fear for Germany, fear of Germany

Germany is Europe’s biggest supporter of Ukraine and, at the same time, the logistical hub for reinforcing NATO’s eastern flank. If the AfD were to steer the most powerful country in the European Union onto a pro-Russian course, this pillar would crumble.

The AfD leaves no doubt about its stance today: it rejects sanctions, calls for an end to arms deliveries to Ukraine and advocates ‘security with Russia’. Co-leader Tino Chrupalla stated in November 2025 that he saw “no current threat to Germany from Russia” and played down the war of aggression (Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022) as a continuation of a “civil war” that began in 2014; speaking of Putin, he said that Putin had “done me no harm”. Co-founder Alexander Gauland described Crimea in 2014 as “historically Russian territory” and defended its annexation; whilst acknowledging that it was contrary to international law, he declared this to be of lesser importance than its “legitimacy”.

A breakthrough by the AfD in the autumn elections would cause Germany’s neighbours to doubt Germany’s reliability. For Warsaw or Tallinn (the capitals of Poland and Estonia), a Berlin that speaks in such terms would no longer be a source of protection, but a risk. This would hit hardest those countries that support Ukraine most resolutely and fear Russia the most – the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and the Nordic countries.

The year 2025 demonstrated just how quickly relations can deteriorate, even between the closest of allies. No sooner had Donald Trump taken office than Washington’s relationship with two long-standing partners turned hostile within a matter of weeks. He threatened Denmark, a founding member of NATO, with punitive tariffs and did not rule out the use of military force to take over Greenland; as a result, the Danish foreign intelligence service listed the US for the first time alongside Russia and China as a threat to national security. A former Danish foreign minister compared Trump’s actions to Germany’s territorial claims against Poland in the 1930s. Trust between neighbours, built up over decades, can crumble in a matter of months if one side pursues an aggressive, revisionist and identitarian policy. Nowhere would such an impact be greater than between Germany and Poland, where memories of German violence are most vivid. Relations are already strained: AfD leader Chrupalla calls Poland a threat to Germany. The rise of the AfD is thus dangerous for the whole of Europe. It would reawaken the old ‘fear of Germany’ and undermine the trust that democratic neighbours have painstakingly built up. And this at a time when Europe’s democrats need cohesion most urgently.

Taking a step back, this presents a situation the likes of which Europe has not seen for decades: an aggressive Kremlin waging the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 in Ukraine and preparing for further conflicts; a White House whose willingness to deter Putin and stand by Europe has long been in doubt; and extremist, anti-European parties that are stronger than ever before, even in Germany. A similar constellation last existed in 1948, the year before NATO was founded. At that time, the soldiers of Stalin’s Soviet Union were stationed in the East, followed by the Prague coup in February and the Berlin Blockade from June onwards (in the Prague coup, communists seized full control of Czechoslovakia; in the Berlin Blockade, the Soviet Union sealed off the western part of Berlin, which the Western allies kept supplied by air for almost a year), and communist parties were among the strongest political forces in France and Italy. Yet in one crucial respect, 1948 was a more favourable time than today: the United States stood firmly on the side of the European democracies.

This is a moment of danger the likes of which Europe’s democrats have not experienced for generations. That is why German stability is crucial. Germany is the European Union’s largest economy and the linchpin of NATO’s conventional defence on the continent. Its instability would not be merely a German problem; it would be a continental risk. That is why the summer of 2026 is a summer of decision not only for Germany’s democracy, but for the whole of democratic Europe. Political momentum can easily become an irresistible force. It is easier to prevent it than to reverse it; once a sense of inevitability has taken hold and the firewall in the East and in the economy begins to crumble, a new dynamic feeds on itself. A decision in the Bundesrat this summer, however, could reverse the current momentum.

In the early 1950s, the young German state found itself confronted by an expansionist Soviet Union. On several occasions at that time, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer took swift and courageous decisions: alignment with the West, accession to NATO – and the young republic’s first proceedings to ban a political party. At the request of his government, on 23 October 1952 the Federal Constitutional Court declared the Socialist Reich Party (a neo-Nazi party founded after the war), a successor organisation to the NSDAP (Hitler’s Nazi party), to be unconstitutional and dissolved it. Adenauer’s lesson is that a statesman must make decisions in times of danger. There is never a perfect moment, he explained in 1952:

“There is one thing a responsible politician, a statesman, certainly cannot do: he cannot simply resort to inaction simply because there is no way to act without drawbacks; for then others will act over the heads of that politician and his country, and that country will certainly fall behind.”

Today, too, it is a matter of making a political decision rather than postponing it. Back in 1952. And today, in the summer of 2026.

Best regards,