It was supposed to be the killer blow to a party which has stalked the nightmares of Germany’s political elite: a bombshell intelligence report with proof that Alternative for Germany [AfD] was a Nazi-style extremist group.
Running to more than a thousand pages, the report by Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency announced that the AfD was a “confirmed Right-wing extremist organisation”, opening the door to a total ban on the party.
But instead of turning the AfD into a pariah, the report has triggered a furious row over the rise of censorship in Germany, and damaged relations between its new government and the Trump administration.
It means success.
