After Germany s Elections, the AfD Could Still Have the Last Laugh
So wherein lies the AfD s crimes against the central fundamental principles of the constitution?
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, this alleged defender of Germany s free democratic basic order, has not deigned to publish the 1,100-page secret dossier on which its judgment rests. The public cannot evaluate the BfV s decision. The AfD cannot respond to or defend itself against the agency s indictment.
But the BfV s press release makes clear that the AfD s sins are purely conceptual: It rejects what would appear to be contemporary Germany s most fundamental value demographic replacement. In calling for an end to mass migration the AfD s central tenet party leaders notice things that one is not allowed to notice in Germany today and hold views about nationhood that one is not allowed to hold.
The AfD has had the temerity, reports the BfV, to use terms like Messermigranten [knife migrants], presumably in reference to the long train of knife attacks by Muslim immigrants. (As long as it was at it, the AfD might as well have also coined the phrase, Menschenmengerammende Migranten [crowd-ramming migrants], in reference to terrorist vehicle rampages in Christmas markets and elsewhere.)
After the BfV s announcement, Germany s media, barely tamping down their elation, rushed to fill out the details of what the BfV calls AfD s xenophobic, anti-minority, anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim statements. (Apparently, postcolonial studies has reached even the denizens of Germany s sprawling government bureaucracies.)
A favorite video clip making the rounds on ZDF, a large public TV broadcaster, shows Weidel telling two women: These phenomena, people walking around armed with knives, the rapes, are completely new in our country. . . . We are experiencing Jihad on our streets.
Hyperbole is now apparently a political crime. Of course, knifings and rapes occurred before mass migration into Germany. But the scale of post-mass-migration violent crime is unique. Germany never experienced mass sexual assault before the New Year s celebrations in 2015. From 2019 to 2023, asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, have sexually assaulted more than 52,000 females. In 2023, Germany saw 761 group rapes. Half of the suspects were foreign nationals; others were of immigrant parentage. There were nearly 40 knife attacks a day in 2023, with non-Germans six times more likely to be the assailant than Germans. In 2023, foreigners committed 41 percent of all crimes in Germany, though they were about 15 percent of the population.
To notice such a disparity in criminal offending, as some AfD leaders do, promotes irrational fears, according to the BfV, and thus is not allowed. Never mind that the disparities are real.
Heather MacDonald.