AfD report by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: This is how the Federal Office came to the classification

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has classified the AfD as "certainly right-wing extremist." The report has now been leaked.

AfD co-chair Alice Weidel is quoted several times in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution report. John Mac Dougall/AFP

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution will no longer publicly describe the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement until a court decision is reached in expedited proceedings. The domestic intelligence agency issued a so-called standstill pledge in the legal dispute with the party, as was announced on Thursday.

Last week, the authority classified the AfD as "confirmedly right-wing extremist." This assessment is based on an approximately 1,100-page report. The document was previously classified. Now the platform Ask the State has published an excerpt , and Der Spiegel has obtained access to the complete report . The report contains incriminating statements from a total of 353 AfD members from all levels of the party—from the district level to the party leadership.

The collected quotes, statements, and publications are intended to demonstrate that the AfD is increasingly opposing the free democratic order and that "moderation" is "not in sight." The authority has a "strong suspicion" that the AfD is also opposing the "principle of democracy." Its officials "continually and indiscriminately" defame representatives of other parties, disparaging them as "a community of political gangsters" or "traitors to the people."

The incriminating statements are assigned to four central categories: ethnic-origin statements and positions, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the principle of democracy.

AfD co-chair Alice Weidel appears several times in the report. Particular emphasis is placed on an interview she gave to Compact TV in July 2023. In it, she commented on the unrest in France and drew a connection between migration and violence: "Of course, this is possible here because it has fostered parallel societies when they simply have too much influx of people from a culturally alien context, from cultures prone to violence, such as knife crime."

Weidel is accused of Islamophobia

The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies this statement as “statements and positions based on ethnic origin” – that is, a way of thinking that assumes that certain groups of people are more dangerous or problematic than others because of their origin or culture.

Another Weidel interview from 2023 is listed in the "Islamophobia" category. In it, the politician comments on migration: Germany has created a "massive sociopolitical problem" with the influx of "culturally alien people," "which is contrary to our free democratic basic order."

Co-party leader Tino Chrupalla is accused, among other things, of denigrating CDU politicians Friedrich Merz and Norbert Röttgen, as well as then-Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), as "vassals of America" ​​at a rally in Nuremberg in April 2023. AfD European politician Maximilian Krah has also been quoted several times. For example, he is said to have said on X in response to a statement by Green Party politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt on migration policy: "This Green master plan means population replacement."

Social media posts by the AfD federal association also play a central role in the report. In September 2024, the party wrote on X about a migration-related "hellish summer" "that we are currently experiencing in Germany, [which] has nothing to do with the climate. Outdoor swimming pools have become spaces of fear, knife attacks are commonplace, while the established parties look the other way." A picture was posted under the post: the arm of a non-white man holding a blood-stained knife.

AfD member of the Bundestag speaks of “population exchange”

Hannes Gnauck, AfD member of the Bundestag and then chairman of the youth organization Junge Alternative, is also quoted in the report. "We must be allowed to decide again who actually belongs to this people and who doesn't," Gnauck reportedly said at the election campaign event in Brandenburg last August. "Each and every one of you has more in common with me than any Syrian or Afghan." This is "simply a law of nature, and we can all be damn proud of it." Gnauck is said to have spoken of "population exchange" in another speech.

The new federal government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) has announced that it will "carefully evaluate the report." In connection with the classification of the AfD as "certainly right-wing extremist," the debate about banning the AfD has also flared up again.