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A heated exchange took place between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the German foreign ministry on X after the former accused the German government of “tyranny in disguise” for designating the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) as an extremist entity.
In a post on Friday, the top US diplomat lashed out at Germany after its domestic intelligence agency BfV declared the far-right, neo-Nazi AfD as an “extremist” entity, allowing it to increase surveillance of the political party. AfD leaders have condemned the move.
“Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise,” said Rubio on X. “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD – which took second in the recent election – but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.”
In response to Rubio’s remarks, the German Foreign Ministry hit back by saying, “This is democracy. This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law.”
“It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped,” it added.
US Vice President JD Vance also echoed Rubio’s remarks. “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,” he wrote.
“The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”
Notably, AfD has a history of anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and xenophobic rhetoric by its leaders, who have also called for the mass expulsion of immigrants. In the German federal elections held earlier this year, the party came second with 20.8 per cent vote and 152 of 630 seats, having risen in popularity over the last few weeks owing to Germany’s economic and security crises.
In a statement following the extremist designation, the BfV said that AfD’s categorisation of certain categories of citizens as second-class humans is not compatible with Germany’s democratic order. “It aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to treatment that violates the constitution, and thereby assign them a legally subordinate status,” it was quoted as saying in a statement.
The AfD is one of the far-right parties that the Donald Trump administration of the United States has endorsed in Europe. Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk met AfD leader Alice Weidel in the weeks leading up to the elections. The party is associated with the revival of Nazism in Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
Meanwhile, Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats have approved a deal to join a new coalition government, paving the way for parliament to elect conservative leader Friedrich Merz as the country’s new chancellor.
