Germany, France Crack Down On Right-Wing Groups

Germany, France Crack Down on Right-Wing Groups

Germany and France acted in sync as Berlin reportedly put right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) under surveillance over alleged extremism and Paris banned far-right group Generation Identitaire

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th March, 2021) Germany and France acted in sync as Berlin reportedly put right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) under surveillance over alleged extremism and Paris banned far-right group Generation Identitaire.

This is not the first time the AfD has been at loggerheads with the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (or BfV). In 2018, the party was classified as a "test case", while in March 2020, the BfV launched a probe into the party's radical faction called The Wing, which the AfD then dissolved in April of the same year. It was led by Thuringian party leader Bjorn Hocke and Brandenburg politician Andreas Kalbitz who have since been expelled from the party.

Nevertheless, for the domestic intelligence service to investigate a major party is quite extraordinary and the repercussions may haunt Germany's and Europe's politics for years to come.

AFD BRISTLES AT BEING SUBJECTED TO PROBE

Germany is the only country in Western Europe that has an organization like the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), an agency supposed to protect democracy against extremists, particularly the resurgence of Nazism. By launching an investigation into the AfD, the agency will be allowed to monitor party members, bug phones, and deploy informants.

The decision was greeted with jubilation among other major German parties as the AfD, founded in 2013, has rapidly become the main opposition party, as well as the third party in the Bundestag, after the ruling Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the Social Democratic Party.

Thomas Haldenwang, the head of the BfV, reportedly informed regional branches of the classification of the "suspected cases". This investigation is said to be far-reaching and based on a 1,000-page intelligence report cataloging alleged party violations against democracy. The decision is all the more sensitive as Germany will have a general election in seven months, in which the AfD will likely be the main opponent of the CDU.

"If the government can no longer find arguments to defend itself against the criticism of the elected opposition led by AfD, then the government tries to damage the reputation of the opposition by ordering a political investigation to be carried out by the domestic secret service," Jorg Meuthen, the head of the AfD delegation in the European Parliament and a former party president, told Sputnik.

His fellow AfD member Maximilian Krah, another EU lawmaker, responded to the investigation by invoking his family's history.

"So, now I will foreseeably be spied on by the all-German domestic secret service because of exactly the same political convictions that my father was spied on by the communist East German domestic secret service before 1989!" Krah told Sputnik.

Krah added that the parliamentary opposition would be outraged at being spied on by the secret service and cited "a design flaw of the German constitutional protection," which makes it possible.

"We should not use the upcoming investigation to castigate ourselves, but rather fundamentally question this illiberal institution," Krah added.

Tomasz Froehlich, the vice-president of the AfD's youth organization, Young Alternative, drew a comparison with various Eastern European countries, constantly criticized by the EU bureaucrats, as well as Western European politicians, for alleged illiberal tendencies.

"This is a unique case in Western democracies. Even in the so-called 'illiberal democracies' in Eastern Europe, which are often criticized by the West, there is no such thing," Froehlich told Sputnik.

FRENCH GOVERNMENT BANS GENERATION IDENTITAIRE

Meanwhile, in France, the government confirmed the decision to dissolve the far-right group Generation Identitaire, known for its public stunt to draw attention to the domestic issues it believes to be linked to immigration and islam. According to the government, the group resembles a paramilitary organization.

In February, the group held a demonstration in the Pyrenean mountains, at the border between Spain and France, against the free passage of illegal migrants into France. Incidentally, French President Emmanuel Macron visited the same border a few days later to reaffirm that borders do, actually, matter.

But now, Minister of Interior Gerald Darmanin, who has recently banned three Islamist organizations in France, wants to play it tough regarding the right-wing groups as well.

The attempt to dissolve the group has provoked a strong reaction in French conservative and patriotic circles. It also raised the group's profile among the general public, with its young spokeswoman, Thais d'Escufon, being invited to many tv talk shows.

"All he [Darmanin] managed to do by his ridiculous decision, is to make the young Thais d'Escufon a new Joan of Arc for the Right and to give free publicity for Generation Identitaire that will soon be reborn, I suppose, under a new name. Doesn't Darmanin have more important things to do?" Gilles Lebreton, an EU lawmaker from the National Rally party, told Sputnik.

National Rally spokesman Laurent Jacobelli believes that the situation with Generation Identitaire is very worrying and presents a very serious danger for democracy.

"If the government has not proven that it is an armed militia, but that it simply dissolves this association because they condemn the current management of immigration, which means no control of illegal migrants at the borders, it is a very serious danger for democracy," Jacobelli told Sputnik.

According to Benjamin Biard, a political scientist at the CRISP think tank in Brussels, the two decisions, which have been announced on the same day, are not the same � the dissolution of Generation Identitaire is purely political, while in Germany the situation is quite different.

"The internal intelligence service, the BfV, rarely follows party members as such. So far, their work is limited to identifying dangerous individuals in small groups ... Their action is not to prevent the irruption of a Hitler 2.0 but to avoid a violent demonstration like the one which almost took place at the Bundestag in Berlin, or like the one which took place at the Capitol in Washington at the departure of Donald Trump," Biard told Sputnik.

The academic also predicted that the investigation may actually make the AfD look like a victim and give it votes during the upcoming election.

"We see for example in Belgium that the Vlaams Belang party, after its conviction as a militia in 2004, set a historic record in the elections which immediately followed," Biard concluded.