“The Designation of the AfD As Extremist Is a Political, Not a Legal Verdict”

The AfD "hates foreigners," but one of its members in the Hessian Landtag is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants? Give me a break!

From The European Conservative

By Álvaro Peñas

“Two losing parties form a coalition, despite the fact that Germans have voted to have a right-wing government. To me, this is profoundly undemocratic.”

Anna Nguyen is a member of the German right-wing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in the Hessian parliament and a councilor in the Frankfurt am Main city council. Since January 2024, she has been Chair of the State Parliament’s European Affairs Committee.

AfD has been labeled as an extremist party. What do you think about this claim by the intelligence services?

The designation of the AfD as an extremist party is a political, not a legal verdict. It is not a decision of the Supreme Court but of the internal intelligence services under the Ministry of the Interior led by Nancy Faeser, who made this decision days before she had to leave office after the defeat of the SPD. This happened on May 2nd, and the following week, with the election of Friedrich Merz as the new Chancellor, Faeser ceased to be Minister, so the political intentionality of this affair is evident. The report of the internal secret services was not sent to us beforehand, so we did not know what we were accused of, however, it was sent to several newspapers in order to generate a scandal. Now we have it and we have seen that these are public opinions, such as tweets or speeches, that is, there is nothing secret, and that they are also covered by freedom of speech; there is nothing criminal in those opinions. For example, I am mentioned in the report for tweeting “#Alice for Germany.“ That’s ridiculous. There is nothing extremist, there is truth and common sense.

Is this a desperate measure in the face of AfD’s growth?

The former head of the internal secret services with the CDU, Hans-Georg Maassen, also criticized the report. For me the intention of this report was none other than to wipe out voter support for the AfD, but so far it has had no success. If we look at the polls, the AfD remained very high even after the publication of the report, and we are now stable at 25% of the vote, tied with the CDU. Even the current Interior Minister, Alexander Dobrindt, has said that this report cannot be used as an argument to ban the AfD.

So it has actually been a political maneuver to discredit the party.  

Yes, absolutely.  It was not a legal verdict at all, and the classification has been called into question and suspended.

Nevertheless, the AfD has been banned from participating in an official visit of the State of Hesse to Croatia and Serbia, using this report as an excuse.

This was utterly ridiculous. Two days after Nancy Faeser announced the AfD’s designation as extremist, but without having been able to read the report because it had not yet been sent, the Minister of European Affairs withdrew our official invitation to Croatia and Serbia. When I received the email informing me of the cancellation of the trip, I was very amused, but I decided to respond using social media and my tweet got more than half a million views. This caused media attention and the minister, who I think wanted to make himself famous by withdrawing the invitation, became famous in a way he didn’t want. I was interviewed by the German, Croatian, and Serbian press about this, and, in general, the comments were favorable to the AfD. So, in the end, the ‘un-invitation’ gave us unprecedented media coverage.

Following the suspension of the internal secret services report, our parliamentary manager sent an email to the Minister of European Affairs requesting that we be allowed to join the trip. There was no reply to this and other emails. The truth is that it seems like a joke, but it is a situation that we have been able to play very well because it is very easy to outsmart the non-smart.

Going back to the polls, do you think that your surge after the election is due, in a way, to the fact that the CDU is ignoring its own voters?

Of course, before the elections, they promised to close the borders and deport illegals, but a couple of hours after winning the elections they were already breaking these promises. As we warned during the elections, unlike the AfD, the CDU is committed to the members of the traffic light coalition, i.e. Liberals, Greens, and Social Democrats, and forms with them a firewall that prevents it from carrying out any political changes. Because of this firewall, the CDU has been forced to collaborate with the leftists and give them a lot of power in the coalition: the coalition agreement to me is 80% SPD and only 20% CDU.

So, the SPD loses the elections but wins when it comes to forming a government.

Yes, the SPD had the worst election result in its history, and the CDU the second worst. So two losing parties form a coalition together, despite the fact that Germans have voted to have a political change: a coalition and a right-wing government. To me, this is profoundly undemocratic.

Do you think this coalition government will last or, on the contrary, will there be early elections?

I think the coalition government will last the four-year term because the SPD and the CDU are hungry for power. Moreover, they are aware that if the coalition breaks up, the AfD will come first. They are not going to risk that happening, although I am convinced that in 2029 the AfD will become the first political force in Germany.

The mainstream media says that AfD is a party that hates foreigners, so I guess you are fed up with this kind of information.

Yes, I am. Of course, it’s exhausting, but it is what it is. My parents are Vietnamese, they fled the country when the communists took over, and I was born and raised in Germany. 

Pictured: Anna Nguyen, AfD Member the Hessian Landtag