Germany’s War on Democracy

Germany just crossed a dangerous threshold. The country’s domestic spy agency, the BfV, has officially labeled the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as “definitely right-wing extremist”. This isn’t just semantics; it’s a sweeping reclassification that allows the state to place every AfD member under surveillance without a warrant; tap their phones, read their emails, and embed informants at will. The postwar social contract – rooted in open discourse, civil rights, and pluralism – is being torn up under the pretense of protection.

For years, the German establishment warned about the dangers of extremism. Now they’ve redefined the term so broadly that nearly 20% of the electorate — those who support the AfD — are implicitly branded as enemies of the state.

Millions of citizens, many of them disillusioned workers, small business owners, and middle-class families crushed by rising costs, are being treated as security threats. Not because they’ve taken up arms or plotted violence, but because they dared to vote for a party that challenged the status quo. The BfV, once tasked with monitoring actual threats to public safety, has turned its gaze away from terrorists, and redirected it towards parliamentarians, elected by the people.

Behind the smokescreen of security, the state is constructing a new orthodoxy, one that increasingly resembles ideological authoritarianism. Free speech in Germany is no longer a right. It’s a permission, granted selectively.

The country is crumbling in ways the establishment doesn’t want to talk about. Crime is rising, particularly violent and sexual crimes, many linked to the aftershocks of uncontrolled mass immigration. Public trust in law enforcement is eroding. Women feel less safe in their own neighborhoods. And in cities such as Berlin and Munich, homelessness is exploding. Tent cities and drug scenes spread across once-pristine streets.

And yet the political class, shielded from these realities, tells the people that they are the problem: their anger is “hate”, their pain is “prejudice”, and their votes are “dangerous”. They are instructed to tolerate more, pay more, and speak less. Sound familiar?

It should. This script is not unique to Germany. It is playing out across the Western world. Britain has seen people arrested social media posts. France has clamped down on protests with alarming force. Canada froze bank accounts of truckers. Wherever you look, the definition of “extremism” is stretching. The line between dissent and disobedience is being obliterated. The enemy is no longer a foreign power. It’s the citizen who won’t comply. It’s you and your loved ones.

What’s happening in Germany matters because Germany still considers itself a guardian of liberal democracy. It is a symbol, a warning, and now, a precedent. If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere. And make no mistake, other governments are watching. They are studying how Germany does it. How it normalizes surveillance. How it reframes political opposition as national security risk. How it convinces the public to cheer as one party is branded “dangerous” and shoved outside the Overton window.

And this is the most concerning part: it works. By casting the AfD not as a political rival but as an existential threat, the establishment doesn’t just silence them, it pressures everyone else to fall in line. Who wants to be the next target? Who dares question the narrative when the consequences include being investigated, smeared, or losing your job?

This is how democracy disappears. Not with boots in the streets, but with words. Labels. Administrative tweaks. Legal justifications. Each step defended as necessary. Each step sold as safety. Until suddenly, the state decides what views are permissible, what speech is safe, and what kind of citizen you’re allowed to be.

Ask yourself: when the state uses its most powerful surveillance tools, initially designed to identify terrorists and spies, against a legal political party supported by millions, what comes next? If warrantless wiretaps are justified today, why not preventive detention tomorrow? If reading someone’s email is fair game, why not banning them from jobs, banks, or schools? The slope isn’t slippery. It’s vertical.