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German Politicians Call For Ban on AfD as Party Surges in Polls

German Politicians Call For Ban on AfD as Party Surges in Polls

NYT: “The AfD is leading the polls in two states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, that will vote next month.” 

With Alternative for Germany (AfD) surging in polls ahead of next month’s regional elections, establishment parties are calling for a ban on the right-wing party. “High-ranking German politicians have advocated for proceedings to ban the most radical regional branches of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party,” German public broadcaster DW News reported Sunday.

For years, the German left has called for a ban on the AfD, but these demands are now reaching a fever pitch as Berlin’s political class dreads a looming right-wing victory. “The AfD is leading the polls in two states, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, that will vote next month,” The New York Times reported on Sunday.

If AfD wins democratically, the established parties are reportedly working behind the scenes to sabotage its ability to govern. According to the NYT, “Government leaders across Germany are publicly and privately exploring ways to curb the power of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, if it wins control of a state government in elections on Sept. 6.”

DW News continued:

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Baden-Württemberg’s state premier, Cem Özdemir, called for bans to be initiated swiftly in a joint guest op-ed in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

“We once again strongly urge that proceedings to ban the party be initiated as soon as possible, with a particular focus on the AfD’s clearly ethno-nationalist state branches in Thuringia, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Brandenburg,” Pistorius and Özdemir said.

Their comments come just days before the September 6 election in Saxony-Anhalt, where an AfD victory could result in a far-right party leading a German state government for the first time since the end of Nazi rule in 1945.

Pistorius and Özdemir argue that it is important to distinguish between different factions within the AfD.

The two politicians say that the party’s more radical, ethnically based wing rejects the constitutional principle. In their view, this wing should be subject to legal scrutiny.

They refer to this faction of the AfD as “völkisch” — a German adjective derived from das Volk, meaning “the people.” The völkisch movement was an ethno-nationalist movement and precursor to Nazism. Today, the AfD is often accused of holding völkisch views because its officials repeatedly distinguish between Germans with and without a history of migration.

The AfD, which won 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 21% of the total vote in the 2025 election, is presently leading in nationwide polls with 29%, 9 points ahead of Germany’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU, CSU).

The same poll, released on Saturday, shows that 22% of respondents threaten to leave Germany if the right-wing party were to come to power in Berlin. The AfD, on its part, wants to deport “millions” of illegals if it wins the general election.

The AfD owes its popularity to its reasonable immigration policy. Since Chancellor Angela Merkel opened Germany’s border to mass immigration in 2015, terror attacks and violent crime have risen rapidly. Recent crime figures show an average of 80 knife attacks per day in Germany.

In May 2025, the German domestic intelligence agency, the Verfassungsschutz, designated the AfD as ‘extremist,’ paving the way for a possible ban. So far, the German government, comprising conservatives and social democrats, has shied away from initiating the proceedings to ban the party. Banning the biggest opposition party, which is rapidly approaching a third of the popular vote, would plunge the country into its deepest political crisis since the collapse of Communist East Germany 37 years ago.

[Disclaimer: The author is a former member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU)]

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Comments

The German left acts a lot like the U.S. Dems. Do you think they share the same play book?

    MAJack in reply to Q. | August 30, 2026 at 6:10 pm

    The Communist Manifesto

    Spike3 in reply to Q. | August 30, 2026 at 10:23 pm

    “Zis ist KAOS. Ve don’t AfD here.”

    fscarn in reply to Q. | August 30, 2026 at 11:32 pm

    Islamphobia

    [is-lah-muh-foh-bee-uh]
    noun

    A healthy survival instinct triggered by not wanting to be murdered by 7th-Century cosplayers [costume players] who hate dogs, gays, Jews, Christians, music, you and your entire civilization

    Synonym: basic pattern recognition learned from 1400 years of observed behavior

    isfoss in reply to Q. | August 31, 2026 at 9:18 am

    Yup. If you don’t like something or someone, ban it/cancel it/dox it/impeach it or whatever it takes to get rid of it.

How democratic of them. They don’t like the message so instead of countering it that want to ban the messenger;

    CBStockdale in reply to ztakddot. | August 31, 2026 at 12:27 pm

    They are either so arrogant or so stupid (or stupidly arrogant) that they don’t see that the pro-German party, if in power, may follow their example and declare their party to be illegal.

Seeking to outright ban your mainstream political opponents b/c you’re scared their gonna win doesn’t seem like fair play. Enough with the lefty scary stories about any political organization to the right of the average EU bureaucrat. Its a bad look for Germany, France, Britain the Dutch among others. Either allow political and policy disagreement to be settled at the ballot box or don’t. Then accept that deferring the resolution of the disagreement might work short term but longer term, without the pressure release valve of elections, the resentment only burns that much hotter and sooner or later the previously banned groups will also give up on elections as the way to settle political disagreement. No whining when they also choose to stop having elections.

Typical leftist bitch-move: ban or otherwise-cancel the opposition.

starlightnite50yrsago | August 30, 2026 at 4:46 pm

Shades of World War II behavior? I know a German lady that has become a US citizen recently, she hates what has happened in Germany, calling it a shit hole. Her words not mine. The rest of Europe isn’t far behind, if not ahead. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

‘Petulant leftist’ is an oxymoron.

OwenKellogg-Engineer | August 30, 2026 at 4:50 pm

Communism (aka Socialism) has always been a one party approach.

If the ‘established parties’ pull this off, there will be trouble in the streets and it won’t be the Islams doing it.

“… an AfD victory could result in a far-right party leading a German state government for the first time since the end of Nazi rule in 1945.”

Is National Socialism “far-right”?

    mailman in reply to gibbie. | August 30, 2026 at 5:53 pm

    No. National Socialists were all hot for State control of every facet of German life, they wanted full and utter control over everything.

    They were your typical leftists, wanting to control every aspect of your life.

    Dolce Far Niente in reply to gibbie. | August 30, 2026 at 7:30 pm

    Stop bringing up inconvenient truths!! Everyone knows that right-wing = evil, therefore, Nazis were right-wing, no matter how left-wing they actually were.

    tmiker in reply to gibbie. | August 31, 2026 at 2:02 am

    After the Nazis killed or drove out the communists, they were the furthest left political party in Germany.

“We must BAN the most popular political party in Germany in order to protect democracy!

Yes, they’re literally using that excuse.

Germany is typically ruled by coalitions — where a bunch of parties who individually get less than 50% of the vote combine (cabal) together to present a united front and drive legislation through. This has worked so poorly for native Germans that AfD is on the cusp of receiving an absolute majority vote in some regions (particularly the old East German ones, where the people know a thing or two about socialist governments), which means they would need no one else’s cooperation to govern. The German Greens and proggies are having a klong, and deservedly so. There is a long train of past abuses to be settled.

After the February 2025 elections, Alternative für Deutschland became the second-largest party in the Bundestag, with 151 MPs; the Social Democrats booked historic losses and landed in third position, with just 120 MPs. The AfD assumed their second-place finish would entitle them to the second-largest party caucus room. This chamber, officially designated “3S 001”, has been occupied by the Social Democrats since 1999; they christened it the “Otto-Wels-Saal” after one of their political heroes. Despite their shrunken numbers, however, the SPD refused to relinquish their room, and ultimately the establishment parties used their combined votes on the Bundestag’s cross-party steering body (the “Council of Elders,” or Ältestenrat), to compel the AfD to accept a substantially smaller chamber. Despite their reduced numbers, the SPD continues to caucus in their overlarge “Otto-Wels-Saal,” while the AfD have been granted a supplementary room to ease crowding. Their legal challenges have thus far failed.

eugyppius (the whole article is worth reading)

I. for one, hope their payback is a b*.

Not much in Germany has changed in the past 90 years apparently.

Sounds very similar to how democrats have obstructed Trump.

Saul Alinsky, time and time and time and time again gets very boring to those with a brain. In other words, those not democrat or labour party.

George_Kaplan | August 31, 2026 at 1:14 am

Declaring a new Reichstag Fire won’t change the opposition to the current establishment. Worse, even if the AfD party/label is banned, the members can simply reassemble under a new banner and campaign.

Unless the establishment declares the individuals enemies of the state, they can’t stop them. And if they do, then the AfD can accuse the state of going National Socialist, being illegitimate, and promoting mass civil disobedience.

If a plurality of Germans actively oppose the current regime as Nazi, and demand the AfD become the democratically elected government, things could get rather messy!

I am guessing that “Cem Özdemir” is a Turk, not a German. Show me a politician in Turkey with a German name. The dhimmitude is off-the-charts; it’s nauseating.

    Quartermaster in reply to guyjones. | September 1, 2026 at 10:26 pm

    Back in the 50s and 60s many Turks went to Germany because of a serious labor shortage. Rather than being treated as the guest workers they were, most were allowed to stay. Thus the guy in Baden-Wuertemburg.

    My father ran a USAF DFAC at Echterdingen Airfield for two years. He had to hire a set number of German workers to staff the facility. They were only able to find one German, and made up the other two they had to have with one Italian and one Turk.

    The German guy was a really character. He was rather popular among everyone there.

My God! We can’t let the people decide for themselves! What do you think this is, a free country or something?

BierceAmbrose | August 31, 2026 at 3:16 pm

Well, they’ve already tried “To dissolve the people
And elect another.”