Active in the Bundestag

AfD has more than 100 right-wing extremist employees

Die Fraktion der AfD im deutschen Bundestag

(Bild: AFP)

According to a report published on Tuesday by Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), the right-wing populist party AfD employs more than 100 people in the Bundestag who are classified by German constitutional protection agencies as belonging to the far-right spectrum.

Among them are activists from the Identitarian movement, ideological masterminds from the "New Right" and several neo-Nazis. BR bases its findings on "internal lists of names" from the Bundestag and directories of AfD parliamentary group staff. The party sharply rejected the report and spoke of a campaign directed against it.

According to BR, these are people who are mentioned by name in reports on the protection of the constitution, who hold leading positions in organizations under observation that are classified as right-wing or who have appeared as speakers at the Institute for State Policy (IfS), which is classified as right-wing extremist. A representative of the "Ein Prozent" association, which the German domestic intelligence service classifies as part of the new right, is also among them.

Many recruited from AfD youth organization
According to the BR research, the majority of the more than 100 employees in question come from the AfD youth organization Junge Alternative (JA), which is classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, or from the AfD state associations in the German states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia.