SPD politician Boris Pistorius (SPD) has warned against an increasing radicalization of the AfD and warned not to miss the right time for a ban procedure.
Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) calls for more caution with the AfD. He sees an increasing radicalization of the party here and warns not to miss the right time for a ban procedure. “I think the AfD is largely right-wing extremist,” Pistorius told BILD am SONNTAG. “Something is happening in the party. Even in state associations like in Lower Saxony, which a few years ago were still considered relatively moderate, there is a clear movement towards right-wing extremism. The AfD needs to be monitored very carefully.” According to Pistorius, the time for a ban procedure has not yet come. “But we have to look, examine and collect so that we don’t miss the point.”
The state interior minister observes clear parallels between the actions of the AfD and those of the National Socialists almost 100 years ago. “In general, the AfD is trying to do the same thing that the NSDAP did in the late 1920s: to penetrate the security organs, the judiciary. The AfD does this in a very targeted and strategic way,” says Pistorius. “That’s why we have to make the police strong against such attempts by the AfD to dock there.” The police are enormously important as a “firewall against enemies of democracy”.
Pistorius is reacting to the arrest of AfD politician Birgit Malsack-Winkemann during the Reichsbürger raid on Wednesday. “Reich citizen is not automatically AfD and vice versa. But there are big overlaps – from the rejection of our state to the pro-Russian attitude to hostility towards America,” Pistorius continued. “The AfD always manages to generate fuel for its own politics from such movements. That’s why we have to take it seriously and look very closely at the AfD, which is a catalyst there.”
