From a stage in front of rows of picnic tables under bright blue tents, Dennis Hohloch tells the crowd that his country doesn\u2019t need more watchdogs to peg Alternative for Germany as far-right extremists that oppose the constitution. He says the party will renew democracy and freedom. The crowd of more than 100 people erupts in applause for Mr. Hohloch, a member of the AfD federal executive board and the parliamentary secretary for the group in Brandenburg.<\/p>\n
While this could be mistaken for a political rally, it is actually <\/b>the AfD\u2019s summer festival in Senftenberg, a city of about 23,000 people south of Berlin. The town square is filled with party supporters eating bratwurst and drinking beer. <\/p>\n
The AfD is not a typical political party. In the spring, Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency \u2013 the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) \u2013 which is tasked with monitoring extremist and terrorist activities, and safeguarding democratic order and security, designated the AfD as a \u201cconfirmed rightwing extremist\u201d party. <\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Dennis Hohloch, the AfD parliamentary secretary for Brandenburg, was in Senftenberg to drum up support for his party and brush off criticism that they are extremists. Many in Brandenburg turned out for the AfD in this year’s federal elections.Stefanie Marotta\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Pressure is building on the Bundestag, Germany\u2019s federal parliament, which returned from summer recess in September, to ban the AfD over its alleged Nazi sympathies. <\/b><\/p>\n Last year, Bj\u00f6rn H\u00f6cke, leader of the AfD party in the state of Thuringia, was fined by a regional court in the eastern German city of Halle for the second time for using the illegal Nazi-era slogan \u201cAlles f\u00fcr Deutschland,\u201d which translates to <\/b> \u201cEverything for Germany.\u201d Mr. H\u00f6cke \u2013 who is credited with transforming the AfD from its Eurosceptic roots in 2013 into a far-right party \u2013 has also said that Berlin\u2019s Holocaust memorial is a \u201cmonument of shame.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2024, the BfV cited examples of the AfD expressing hostile views toward foreigners, including accusations that asylum-seekers and Muslims are culturally incompatible with Germany.<\/p>\n Some of the party\u2019s politicians previously <\/b>endorsed the \u201cremigration\u201d \u2013 a euphemism for deportation \u2013 of migrants and banning asylum seekers. Of the country\u2019s 3.3 million asylum seekers, many are from Syria and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n The constitution allows parliament to ban a party that it deems to be a threat to democracy <\/b>but the prospect of doing so is paralyzing lawmakers because cultural and political divides are deepening in Germany. <\/p>\n Some politicians and Germans believe that the AfD must be stopped before it infringes on the country\u2019s democracy, while others argue kicking the party <\/b>out of government will further disenfranchise voters and undermine fair elections.<\/p>\n The AfD is fighting the \u201cconfirmed rightwing extremist\u201d label by the intelligence agency and the classification is temporarily on hold as the court reviews the BfV\u2019s decision. <\/p>\n Over the past decade, as Germany has grappled with a stagnating economy, experts say the AfD has capitalized on a growing resentment toward newcomers. \u201cThere is currently a great deal of political discontent among the population. This mainly concerns migration policy,\u201d said Volker Boehme-Ne\u00dfler, constitutional lawyer at the University of Oldenburg. \u201cThe AfD is tapping into this discontent and responding to it politically.\u201d<\/p>\n Support for the AfD has ballooned since the federal election in February, when it received the most support a far-right party has garnered <\/b>in the country since 1945 and became the largest opposition in parliament. The AfD received 20.8 per cent of the vote, doubling its support from the previous election and grabbing 152 seats of 630 in the Bundestag.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In August, a Forsa Institute survey found that support for the AfD overtook the ruling Christian Democratic Union, with 26 per cent of respondents expressing approval for the party. Support for <\/b>the CDU, which sits on the centre-right of the political spectrum and is led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz, slid to second with 24 per cent. <\/p>\n In September, support for the AfD more than tripled in a local election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany\u2019s most populous state, increasing its share of the vote by 9.4 percentage points to 14.5 per cent.<\/p>\n Later that month, voter turnout plummeted in the mayoral election in Ludwigshafen, a city south of Frankfurt, in a race where the electoral committee expelled AfD candidate Joachim Paul. The committee had expressed concerns about Mr. Paul\u2019s loyalty to the constitution.<\/p>\n The AfD has built a base in small rural towns \u2013 especially those located in what was once East Germany, which historically has struggled economically following years of communism. They have done so by joining soccer teams, organizing volleyball tournaments and hosting events \u2013 such as the festival in Senftenberg.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n There are 630 lawmakers in the Bundestag, whose party makeup is decided by a form of proportional representation. These members are casting votes for a new bill.Fabrizio Bensch\/Reuters<\/p>\n While the AfD has heralded the election wins and its growing base as a success, <\/b>the threat of a potentially extremist political party reigning in the Bundestag has brought to mind the scars of Germany\u2019s past.<\/p>\n At the end of the First World War, the German Empire was replaced with the Weimar Republic, which established the country\u2019s first parliamentary democracy. In the decade that followed, the Great Depression of the 1920s sparked a crisis in Germany, and the Nazi party attacked the Weimar government as ineffective, pledging to solve the social and economic problems. <\/p>\n Adolf Hitler exploited flaws in the government to come to power through the ballot box, which is part of why many Germans are nervous about the AfD\u2019s growing influence in the Bundestag. When Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, the Nazi party undermined democracy from within and set off a chain of events that led to the Second World War.<\/p>\n The AfD rejects accusations that their party is a modern manifestation of the Nazis. Its politicians say they offer alternative solutions to the biggest issues affecting Germans \u2013 including migration, housing affordability and climate policies \u2013 and that a ban could not snuff out the intensifying support from those who feel left behind by traditional political parties. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think that you can ban a party which has so many people behind them,\u201d Mr. Hohloch said in an interview at the summer festival in Senftenberg. \u201cIf you ban this party, you ban democracy in Germany because you have no chance to vote for another party which wants another political style in this country.\u201d <\/p>\n Even without a full ban on the party, the BfV\u2019s \u201cconfirmed rightwing extremist\u201d label allows the intelligence agency to increase surveillance on the AfD. <\/p>\n At the AfD summer barbecue in Senftenberg, some counterprotesters spelled out their objections to the party and Nazism in explicit terms.<\/p>\n Stefanie Marotta\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n The national <\/b>debate over how to manage the party is palpable at the summer festival. On either corner of the square <\/b>where the AfD event is set up, protest groups gathered with posters. Some handed out information pamphlets aimed at informing people about political issues, while others shouted at the AfD crowd.<\/p>\n But even those against the party can\u2019t agree on whether a ban is the best approach to address mounting far-right support. <\/p>\n A ban would not cause all the AfD supporters in Senftenberg\u2019s town square to turn away from far-right parties, says Chris, a representative with Omas Gegen Rechts (Grandmas Against the Right), a group that protests against far-right political positions. They would just shift support to a new organization that would rise in the AfD\u2019s wake, she said. The Globe is not using her last name to protect her safety.<\/p>\n But a ban would remove a threat to Germany\u2019s democracy from parliament and cut the party off from the public funding it receives, stunting their promotional campaigns, countered Barbara, another Grandmas Against the Right member whose last name The Globe is also not revealing. <\/p>\n \u201cWe have to get rid of this party because it is a dangerous party,\u201d Barbara said. \u201cThey receive the taxes that we pay and are able to pay for everything they want to do. If we ban them, then they won\u2019t get this money anymore.\u201d <\/p>\n The urn outside Pl\u00f6tzensee is filled with earth from various concentration camps, whose victims are also commemorated at the Holocaust memorial across town. For many Germans, the Nazi legacy of genocide looms heavily in the debate about right-wing politics today.<\/p>\n John MacDougall\/AFP via Getty Images; Markus Schreiber\/Reuters<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s postwar political system was constructed to avoid another Nazi government, operating as a \u201cstreitbare Demokratie\u201d \u2013 or militant democracy \u2013 that gives the main branches of government additional powers to protect against actors that seek to destroy the political system. <\/p>\n Since 1945, Germany\u2019s federal court has banned only two political parties: the Socialist Reich Party \u2013 a Nazi successor organization \u2013 in 1952 and the Stalinist Communist Party of Germany in 1956. <\/p>\n \u201cThe people who wrote our constitution said that if we are again in a situation in Germany where we have the fear that our democracy could be destroyed by a party, then we have to [ban them],\u201d said Carmen Wegge, a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).<\/p>\n In the decades that followed the Second World War, Germans were taught to repent for the country\u2019s sins from an early age. History classes in schools focused on the events that led to the war. Monuments acknowledging the atrocities were built. The unique German word for \u201ccoming to terms with the past\u201d rang out across the country: vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung. <\/p>\n That widely held belief has started to fracture and trust has eroded in the incumbent political parties. <\/p>\n \u201cThis consensus is evaporating at the moment,\u201d said Marcus B\u00f6ick, a professor in modern German history at the University of Cambridge. \u201cThe Germans felt they already learned the lesson from the darkest places of history of the 20th century. And now the evil spirit is rising again.\u201d <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n The SPD, whose co-leader B\u00e4rbel Bas is in Mr. Merz’s cabinet, is pressing the Chancellor’s party to take tougher action on the AfD.RALF HIRSCHBERGER\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n In Germany\u2019s federal parliament in Berlin, the discord has divided the Bundestag. The SPD \u2013 the party that was unseated as the governing party in the recent election \u2013 passed a motion to establish a federal working group to collect materials that support banning the AfD. <\/p>\n Before formerly proposing the ban in government, SPD leaders are imploring Mr. Merz and his CDU party \u2013 which has so far thrown cold water on the idea \u2013 to back the proposal. <\/p>\n The parties need to move \u201cas fast as possible, because it will take time to ban the AfD,\u201d according to Ms. Wegge. <\/p>\n \u201cWe just have the next four years to go this way, and after that it\u2019s probably not possible anymore,\u201d she added, referring to the next election. \u201cThe AfD is getting more and more powerful in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n But Mr. Merz and many members of his party believe kicking the AfD out would not solve the issues prompting people to vote for the party in increasingly higher numbers. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n The Federal Constitutional Court, whose judges’ red robes are modelled after those of Renaissance Florence, has only rarely banned parties in Germany. The last time was during the early Cold War.Heiko Becker\/Reuters<\/p>\n The constitutional bar is high to have a party banned. <\/p>\n Mr. Boehme-Ne\u00dfler, the constitutional lawyer, said the evidence currently available is insufficient to support banning a party, which is \u201ca serious encroachment on democracy.\u201d Proposals and campaign tactics from some AfD party members is not enough to warrant a ban. The entire party must behave in an anti-constitutional manner, he said. <\/p>\n He believes that the SPD and other parties are misusing the party ban to eliminate a political rival.<\/p>\n \u201cI find it completely inappropriate to want to ban a party that enjoys such widespread support among the population,\u201d Mr. Boehme-Ne\u00dfler said. \u201cA ban would tear society apart and seriously damage democracy in Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n The option to ban a far-right extremist party is one of the \u201cstrongest weapons of German democracy established after the war,\u201d Prof. B\u00f6ick said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dangerous moment here is that you think you might have the silver bullet, but it isn\u2019t, because all these resentments about migration, about detachment, about being left out of the political centre \u2013 all of this wouldn\u2019t be gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Traditional political parties must explore why voters are turning away and consider ways to rebuild trust with those they have lost, said Christoph Kuhlmann, a representative with German campaign organization Campact.<\/p>\n At the very least, the CDU should review the case for a ban on the AfD, he said. <\/p>\n \u201cAfter the Second World War, we lived in a phase of peace when right-wing parties were small and had mostly insignificant influence, so we didn\u2019t really need to have a discussion on the national level of how democracy is something that needs to be protected,\u201d said Mr. Kuhlmann. <\/p>\n Reckoning with the far right: More from The Globe and MailThe Decibel podcast<\/p>\n Where does Canada draw the line between free speech and incitement to political violence? In the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk killing, The Decibel spoke with<\/a> James L. Turk from the Centre for Free Expression about Canadians\u2019 rights and proposed changes<\/a> to federal anti-hate laws. Subscribe for more episodes.<\/a><\/p>\n Commentary<\/p>\n Jonathan Garfinkel: In Germany, the extreme right is rising. How did my adopted country forget so much?<\/a><\/p>\n