Evidence for the legal opinion: This is why the AfD is unconstitutional

The AfD is unconstitutional. This is shown by the analysis of around 2,500 documents. This is based on more than a year of work by lawyers, right-wing extremism experts and data analysts from the organization “Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte” (GFF). Your legal opinion shows: With its goals and actions, the AfD systematically disregards fundamental concepts of the constitution: the principle of democracy and human dignity.

For its report, the GFF collected, cataloged and legally assessed more than three million pieces of publicly accessible data from AfD factions, associations and officials, including election programs, speeches and social media posts.

It is the most comprehensive report of its kind to date and a crucial contribution to the debate about a possible ban on the AfD. Based on its findings, the GFF considers it likely that a valid application for a ban would be successful. Because the lawyers specifically examined the constitution and previous decisions of the Federal Constitutional Court – for example in the ban proceedings against the NPD – the report could become a blueprint for a ban proceedings. An application to ban the AfD would have to come from the Bundestag, Bundesrat or the federal government.

We want everyone to be able to see for themselves the basis on which the report comes to the conclusion that the AfD is unconstitutional. That’s why we publish all social media evidence used there: in our AfD database with more than 2,000 entries. In this article we show exemplary evidence from the database for the main arguments of the report. The report, including appendices, is more than 3,000 pages long and is based on further arguments.

Suppression of political opponents

Around 220 pieces of evidence show that the AfD wants to suppress political opponents and prosecute them for political decisions. The corresponding statements come from 88 people from all levels of the AfD – from federal spokeswoman Alice Weidel to members of the European Parliament, Bundestag and state parliament, to local elected officials. In addition, from ten associations and factions.

The AfD repeatedly brands politicians from other parties as “enemies of the people”. The federal government would orchestrate problems for the benefit of “foreign powers” ​​in order to oppress the German population with “solutions thought out long ago,” writes AfD member of the Bundestag Nicole Höchst in a post in December 2023.

The purpose of such conspiracy stories is to justify tough action against politicians – including through abuse of criminal law. The AfD is calling for the criminal prosecution of at least 22 politicians for their political decisions, including Angela Merkel, Jens Spahn (both CDU), Nancy Faeser (SPD), Claudia Roth, Winfried Kretschmann (both Greens) and Marco Buschmann (FDP). Mostly it’s about Corona or migration policy. For example, Sven Tritschler, a member of the state parliament in North Rhine-Westphalia, shared an AI-generated imagewhich shows Angela Merkel in handcuffs and alludes to the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Civil society should also end up in court if the AfD has its way. The EU parliamentary group of the AfD not only wants to bring the sea rescue organization Sea-Watch to justice for its commitment, but also the entire Evangelical Church because it took part in sea rescue operations. The AfD even wants to abuse criminal law against employees of the constitutional protection authorities.

Anyone who wants to use criminal law to counter democratically legitimate decisions and bring political opponents to court is violating the foundations of democracy. “Demands for the criminal prosecution and punishment of political opponents indicate an anti-democratic objective if they are clearly politically motivated and actual crimes are not to be punished,” write the experts.

Racism, especially anti-Muslim sentiment

A central principle of the Basic Law is human dignity. It is the top priority in the German constitution for good reason. “Human dignity is inviolable,” says Article 1. But according to the GFF, the AfD disregards this principle systematically and in several areas. This becomes particularly clear in racist and especially anti-Muslim statements and demands. Muslims are portrayed as a threat in countless messages and poststhe AfD often uses vocabulary that is reminiscent of wars.

Accordingly, the AfD is calling for bans on building mosques and calling muezzin calls, or a ban on headscarves in public institutions. The experts argue that this would violate Muslims’ legal equality and ultimately their human dignity.

At the same time, according to the GFF report, the AfD’s policy aims to politically and legally privilege a certain part of the population: the people who are considered Germans according to the AfD’s ethno-cultural understanding of the people. German citizens with a migration background are not included. This is a clear contradiction to the concept of the people in the sense of the Basic Law.

Among other things, the AfD demands privileges when children are born that correspond to their understanding of being German. In Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD could come to power in autumn 2026, the party is calling for “special classes” for children of refugees.

The AfD also wants to denaturalize Germans who have committed criminal offenses. if you have a second nationality. However, expatriation in this case is against the constitution, argues the report. Those affected would be treated unequally compared to people with only German citizenship.

And apparently the AfD’s call for expatriation is not tied to the fact that someone has actually committed a crime. The documents contain demands for expatriation even against ten prominent Germans with a migration historywho have politically different opinions than the AfD.

The AfD’s hostility towards those seeking protection is particularly clear. Before the 2025 federal election, the AfD Karlsruhe district association distributed flyers that looked like airline tickets with the title “Deportation Ticket” on them. The flyers were also passed on to other district associations; according to media reports, they were circulating for the first time At the beginning of 2025 at the AfD federal party conference in Riesa.

In addition, various levels of the AfD have produced and distributed a “deportation calendar”. The calendar contains pictures of twelve aircraft, which the state parliament member Miguel Klauß describes as the “twelve most beautiful deportation planes”.

The report sees such actions as a clear sign of undermining the constitutionally guaranteed right to an asylum procedure. “Anyone who frames deportation as a competition or celebration threatens to no longer treat the individual as a legal subject whose situation should be examined,” write the lawyers. Instead, people are just objects that have to be removed by any means possible.

Anti-queer behavior

The report also names hostility towards queer and especially trans people as a characteristic of the AfD. The database contains around 100 pieces of evidence in which people’s right to respect was disregarded. In addition to general denigration, the AfD often negates people’s gender identityfor example through deadnaming or misgendering.

Not all statements are unconstitutional according to the Basic Law

The report also analyzes other discriminatory and derogatory statements made by the AfD. For example, there are structurally anti-Semitic or anti-disabled tendencies. However, according to the GFF, these statements are not sufficient in their systematic structure and accumulation to classify the AfD as unconstitutional in this regard. Likewise, there are currently only isolated indications, but no structural evidence, that the AfD is demonstrably pushing to abolish parliamentary democracy itself or to restrict judicial independence.

The last ban proceedings against a German party failed before the Federal Constitutional Court in 2017. At that time, the judges found that the right-wing extremist NPD was unconstitutional, but at the same time the party was too insignificant to pose a real threat to democracy. With regard to the AfD, the GFF team comes to a different conclusion in the report. The AfD’s actions are planned, the authors write. The party sometimes aggressively delegitimizes the state and maintains contacts in the USA, Russia or the right-wing extremist front. “It has the potential to achieve its goals,” is the experts’ warning assessment.

→ To the AfD database

→ To the AfD report