In a climate of escalating rhetoric and maneuvering amid shifting political realities, Germany’s new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has rejected growing calls from leftist and globalist parties to ban the right-wing, anti-globalist AfD, warning that such efforts risk weaponizing state power against legitimate political opposition.
“I have always been very skeptical about party bans,” Merz stated in a recent interview. “It smells too much like an attempt to eliminate political competition.” His comments directly challenge the chorus of voices from within the left-liberal Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and even elements of his own Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who are agitating for an unprecedented move to ban the country’s most popular opposition party.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), recently escalated its classification of the AfD to that of a “confirmed right-wing extremist” organization.
The agency compiled a 1,100-page report—filled with party speeches, social media posts, and policy papers—in an apparent attempt to justify such a designation. However, critics argue the report is little more than an ideologically driven dossier aimed at smearing the AfD rather than exposing any genuine threat to the constitutional order.
Legal experts have noted that criticizing migration policy or linking rising crime to mass immigration—positions often taken by the AfD—are entirely within the bounds of democratic debate and cannot serve as grounds for a party ban under Germany’s Basic Law.
Merz, though known for political flexibility and occasional backpedaling, has so far drawn a red line on this issue. “To prove that a party is ‘aggressively combative’ against the liberal-democratic order is a burden that lies solely with the state,” he said. “And I strongly oppose initiating prohibition proceedings from the middle of the Bundestag.”
The AfD has surged in the polls, regularly drawing support from more than a quarter of German voters and ranking as the most popular party in several eastern states. Its success reflects deep dissatisfaction with the governing coalition’s policies on mass migration, economic mismanagement, energy insecurity, foreign policy, and rising inflation.
Germany, INSA poll:
CDU/CSU-EPP: 25%
AfD-ESN: 25% (+1)
SPD-S&D: 16%
GRÜNE-G/EFA: 11%
LINKE-LEFT: 10%
BSW-NI: 4%
FDP-RE: 4%+/- vs. 05-09 May 2025
Fieldwork: 09-12 May 2025
Sample size: 2,004➤ https://t.co/obOCVirbpF pic.twitter.com/urf0vE70Bm
— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) May 12, 2025
For many ordinary Germans, the AfD represents the only meaningful opposition to a political class increasingly seen as detached, elitist, and subservient to EU and Washington (before Trump) dictates. This popularity has clearly rattled the establishment.
Yet instead of reflecting on their failures, the ruling parties and their allies appear eager to crush dissent through legal overreach and institutional coercion. Former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, of the SPD, a radical left-wing politician who previously wrote for an extremist Antifa publication, pushed the intelligence service’s classification forward on her final day in office, before the report had even undergone proper legal or constitutional review.
Merz called her approach “deeply unsatisfactory” and criticized the fact that the report was released as a classified document, restricting any transparent public scrutiny
“I do not know the content of this report, to be honest I do not want to get to know it until the Federal Ministry of the Interior has derived an assessment from it,” the chancellor added.
“This isn’t how democratic institutions are supposed to function,” said one CDU source. “You can’t weaponize secret documents to justify banning your opponents.”
Despite Merz’s current position, many observers remain cautious. The CDU leader has a history of bowing to political pressure, and with the European elections approaching and media campaigns intensifying, some fear he may eventually reverse course.
Even within his own party, voices are split. While Merz distances himself from collaboration with the AfD—insisting there will be no governing coalitions—many CDU voters and local party members are increasingly open to cooperation, particularly on shared policy goals like restoring border control, protecting national sovereignty, and ending the reckless green transition.
One high-ranking AfD official responded to the latest ban calls by saying: “This isn’t about extremism. This is about silencing millions of voters who no longer trust the establishment.”
From a conservative, nationalist perspective, the calls to ban the AfD are less about protecting democracy than about preserving the crumbling authority of a plutocratic, discredited, and increasingly despised political class. When a political system responds to dissent not with debate, but with legal suppression, it ceases to be democratic in any meaningful sense.
For now, Merz appears to understand the danger: “We must ensure people regain trust in the political center,” he said, “not push them further toward the margins by treating them like enemies of the state.”
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