It is no surprise that the AfD can now officially be observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a suspected case. The party is now a largely right-wing extremist party that follows a völkisch-nationalist agenda, which could ultimately have been the deciding factor for the court. In the ideal, the AfD assumes an ethnically largely homogeneous people and differentiates between “correct” and incorrect “passport Germans” according to origin. It stands for the rights of the strongest, celebrates inequality and, if only it could, would at least orient itself towards the authoritarian governments in Poland and Hungary when it comes to state restructuring. The AfD has very little to do with a liberal democracy, and certainly nothing with a social one.
As correct as it is to make something unmistakably clear, it is questionable whether the protection of the constitution is the solution to the problem of right-wing radicalism in this country. One thing to remember is the self-disclosure of the so-called National Socialist underground – to this day it is not clear what role the constitutional protection and the informant system played in the racist series of murders. The mere fact that the question still arises as to whether the Office for the Protection of the Constitution could have prevented the acts is a scandal. Possible answers ended up in the authority’s shredder. The man who was supposed to ensure order at the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution after the self-disclosure was Hans Georg Maassen. A right-wing hardliner who sometimes gives interviews to right-wing extremist publications, who – to put it mildly – was very hesitant in dealing with the new formation of a right-wing extremist project in Germany. Although Maassen has since been deposed, the fact that someone like him was able to become boss at all says a lot about the authority that is supposed to protect the constitution.
The protection of the constitution is basically a dubious construct. Understandably, states use secret service means to protect themselves from terrorism and espionage because there are concrete dangers here. However, what a concrete danger emanates from a local group, for example the DKP, is unlikely to be seriously revealed to anyone.
Which actually helps against right-wing radicalism
Democracy involves controversy, dissent and strife. A secret service that determines in the background what is still acceptable and what is not is completely out of place. It is not the task of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to deal with right-wing radicals and classify their actions, but the task of society as a whole. And that also happens: through anti-fascist initiatives on site, in the sports club, in the family and through critical scientists and journalists.
Now the argument is circulating that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution could raise awareness of the problem of right-wing extremism and perhaps also persuade some to turn their backs on the party. But it is questionable whether a exit wave will really be the result. Certainly some will give up their party membership or no longer publicly engage in the AfD. But the majority of the activists and voters should not care about the observation by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
The problem with right-wing radicalism must be solved politically – and not by a questionable authority. That would mean dealing with the ideology that the AfD represents, with the fact that the AfD is essentially a counter-enlightenment project: its nationalism and racism, its anti-feminism, its ideology of inequality is an attack on the values of the Enlightenment. Dealing politically with the rise of the right-wing radicals would also mean asking about the reasons why the reactionary is so tricky, why people like to be kicked down. This certainly has something to do not only with an increasingly complex and confusing world, as some public intellectuals fervently claim, but also with an economic and social system that systematically produces inequality and even benefits from it, for example through the over-exploitation of oppressed groups.
A meaningful political debate would therefore be to reject the wrong answers that right-wing extremists give to the pressing questions of our time, to refute them – and at the same time to give our own answers and to show alternatives, real alternatives. The protection of the constitution should certainly not be of any help.