Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
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Search complete. 26 mentions across 17 episodes found for "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution".
Sep 15, 2026
Jack the InsiderHOST
This is, again, the American Jewish Committee.
Jack the InsiderHOST
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Jack the InsiderHOST
In May 2025, the BFV designated the AFD a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation.
Jack the InsiderHOST
AFD figures have invoked terms such as globalists, hello Elon, and Vladimir, and cosmopolitan elites.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Ten people who are not suspected of crimes are currently being treated as witnesses.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, has been involved in the investigation alongside regional police authorities.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The arrests come as German officials face growing pressure to protect advanced research and industrial know-how from foreign intelligence operations, particularly in sectors with possible military relevance.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Concerns over technology transfer to China have become more pronounced in Berlin over the past several years.
Darren GerdesHOST
Right.
Philipp KneisGUEST
Means it has access to some of the federal infrastructure, which means it has access to an organization that's called the Constitutional Defense, the Verfassungsschutz.
Philipp KneisGUEST
That's like MI5 a little bit in Britain, like the, and like the parts of the FBI.
Philipp KneisGUEST
They make sure that extremists who are against the constitutional order cannot succeed.
Andrew MuellerHOST
This may prove challenging.
Andrew MuellerHOST
Germany's Domestic Intelligence Service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BFV, lists the AFD entire as a suspected right-wing extremist organisation.
Andrew MuellerHOST
The Saxony-Anhalt branch of the BFV considers the Saxony-Anhalt AFD a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation.
Andrew MuellerHOST
On top of which, other German parties have long maintained around the AfD the so-called Brandmauer or firewall, a resolution by respectable parties that they will not consort with an outfit which stokes memories of Germany's, indeed the world's, darkest hours.
Pascal LottazHOST
Yeah.
Pascal LottazHOST
I mean, the CDU is also considered right-wing, or at least right of center, a conservative party, right? Now, why is it that people call the CDU, you know, right conservative and the AFD extreme right? Why is it that your Verfassungsschutz, your Office for Constitutional Protection or the Protection of the Constitution, is officially investigating them or keeping them under observation for...
Pascal LottazHOST
right extremism.
Pascal LottazHOST
What is that part of the AFD that so many people associate with something very bad? Can you describe
Stefan EbnerGUEST
that? I'm happy to.
Stefan EbnerGUEST
Nobody takes the Verfassungsschutz, the protection forces for the constitution, seriously in Germany anymore.
Stefan EbnerGUEST
It is something you only find in Germany.
Stefan EbnerGUEST
You hardly find any other country globally that has something like that.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
If I may add just one point, because as you were saying, Germany also for a long time prided itself on this thing called militant democracy, where they said this is one clear lesson from the interwar period that you sometimes have parties that use democracy to gain power in order to then abolish democracy.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
And we need to find out who they are, hence this quasi-political police, this Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which for some people sounds pretty Orwellian, And there is the possibility of banning a party.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
And that has happened in the past.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
And there's now been much talk of banning the RFD as well.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
But of course, you again might say it's too little, too late.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
The real point, however, is that there was always something very double-edged about this machinery of Milton democracy.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
Because A, of course, it allows those who, for instance, are being observed, as the phrase goes, by this Office for the Protection of the Constitution, to present themselves, again, as victims, as martyrs.
Jan-Werner MüllerGUEST
You know, this is the last thing the establishment can come up with.
Kate LaycockHOST
A visibly shaken Chancellor Merz told the German parliament on Wednesday that the AfD's policy of remigration, the mass deportation of people based on an ethnic rather than a legal definition of nationality, amounted to ethnic cleansing and would not be allowed to happen.
Kate LaycockHOST
Germany's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies sections of the AfD, including the victorious Saxony-Anhalt branch, as confirmed right-wing extremist, a finding which seems to have done nothing to deter its voters.
Kate LaycockHOST
Whereas other far-right parties in Europe have achieved political success by polishing off their edges and courting the mainstream, the AfD revels in its radicalism.
Kate LaycockHOST
If you tuned into the AfD TV YouTube channel on the night of the election party, for example, you will have had the chance to hear an electronic version of "Erika", a Nazi marching song.
Alison Kaplan SommerHOST
But how can you have a firewall? How can you boycott a party that's in charge of a whole state? It seems, you know, feasibly impossible.
Ofer WaldmanGUEST
Well, first of all, the German secret ser- secret service, the, uh, Verfassungsschutz has said, uh, already a few years ago, uh, in an official, uh, announcement that the AfD within Saxony-Anhalt is, uh, a Gesichter recht extremistic, which is a confirmed right extreme.
Ofer WaldmanGUEST
There is actually such a document referring to the entire AfD, uh, within like the, the, the national AfD to be Gesichter recht extrem, but it has to still to be discussed by the German constitutional court, and there are more and more voices within Germany who say this party should be banned.
Alison Kaplan SommerHOST
Again, back to, you know, Israel, our own frame of reference, you said that there's difference between the grassroots sentiments in, uh, Saxony-Anhalt, you know, the, the ground about Israel versus the more complicated picture that the elites of the, uh, AfD, uh, have.
Hanno HauensteinGUEST
I think with the, quote-unquote, "migration crisis," with, like, millions of refugees coming to Europe and, and Germany, uh, in 2015, the AfD really started capitalizing on, on, like, the, the anti-immigration rhetoric much more heavily and turned ever more extreme.
Hanno HauensteinGUEST
Up to the point that at this point, even the Verfassungsschutz, the, uh, something like the, the internal, uh, constitutional protection service, whi- which is like an intelligence service in, in Germany, is, is calling the AfD f- right-wing extremists.
Hanno HauensteinGUEST
And, um, I think at this point, because you asked about, like, what does this mean for German democracy, right? I think it means something that we really normalize the far-right party, which, which really has clear fascist undertones, I would personally say.
Hanno HauensteinGUEST
And the election just now, you know, shows that, like, this is no longer a fringe phenomenon.
Sam SederHOST
Uh, my understanding is that, um, the, that there is, if not an explicit ...
Sam SederHOST
I mean, obviously, uh, uh, you cite the, I can't say that word, uh, of the [laughs] of, uh, uh-
Hanno HauensteinGUEST
Verfassungsschutz? Yeah.
Sam SederHOST
Yes.
Tom NicholasHOST
This includes bans on the showing of far-right insignia, significant education efforts to warn German young people about the horrors which far-right politics enable, as well as agreements on the part of all other political parties to refuse to ever form coalition governments with the far right.
Tom NicholasHOST
Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, has even labeled the Alternative for Deutschland a right-wing extremist organization, giving it the ability to closely surveil the party's operations, although that designation was paused earlier this year by German courts.
Tom NicholasHOST
All those efforts now seem like they might have failed, with this weekend's result representing a doubling of support for the AfD over the past five years.
Tom NicholasHOST
So what does this mean for Germany? Is the country retreating back to fascism, and what does it mean for far-right parties elsewhere in Europe and across the world? Let's take a look.
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