AfD Kompakt, August 1, 2023.
It is not yet four weeks that we of the AfD national committee needed to warn the President of the BfV [Federal Office for the Defense of the Constitution] of fully unfair election recommendations, neither appropriate nor permitted to his office. At the beginning of July, he already publicly insinuated, “Not alone to the Constitution Defense” does it “belong to reduce the polling results of the AfD”; and “I believe this is a circumstance [of the AfD] which German voters should also have in the back of the mind.”
And the present, renewed, over-reaching, false statements, in no way substantiated by Haldenwang during the current nominations convention for the European election, are by us in no case acceptable. Haldenwang, with his babble of “extreme right conspiracy theories”, wants to have direct influence, quasi “live”, in an important intra-party process, and again express a warning to citizens against an AfD election. That is plainly not permitted according to Art 21(1) GG [Basic Law], Art 11 EMRK [European Convention on Human Rights] and §16(1) BverfSchG [Federal Constitution Defense Law].
That the German government attempts to manipulate, well beforehand, elections in Europe by means of its government defense authorities, is obviously unworthy of a democratic state of law. Haldenwang attempts to one-sidedly influence the sovereigns’ voting behavior. That a Geheimdienst [intelligence service] of this type meddles in the democratic determination process, would seem to be unique among democracies – and is of course illegal. Already in 1977, the Federal Constitutional Court quite unmistakably forbade precisely such conduct (BVerfG, Urt. V. 2.3.1977, Az 2 BvE 1/76). And also the founding legislation, BVerfSchG §16(1), quite clearly ordered: “The BfV is not to be an institution of political formation”. Neither the giving of election recommendations nor commentaries on current democratic processes is a duty of the Geheimdienstes.
The accusations again raised by Haldenwang concerning so-called “extremist right conspiracy theories” were already a part of the charges against the AfD of the Constitution Defense report of 2022. The President of the BfV was expressly questioned on this in the Interior Committee of the German Bundestag. And to repeated questions there, Haldenwang could neither explain what his legal definition of a “conspiracy narrative” generally is, nor which such narratives are then generally incompatible with the Constitution. Just as little could he explain which of these narratives are judicable or pose a danger to the FDGO [free, democratic basic order]; no more, permitted expressions of opinion… The long since confirmed suspicion that the BfV is operating primarily a partisan political defamation campaign opposed to the AfD has thereby become a certainty. Its President is not in a position to substantiate, genuinely fact-oriented, objectively comprehensible, his serious accusations. On account of the evidently purely political motivations of the Constitution Defense’s entire work against the AfD, “inter alia Faeser”, in our opinion all categorization and observation measures of the AfD are to be halted.
[trans: tem]
