Former German Spy Chief Says Intel Agencies ‘Weaponised’ Against Right Wing Populists

The former head of the political spy agency in Germany that is now targeting the populist AfD party has warned the Berlin intelligence community has been “weaponised” to target right-wing movements in the country.

Shortly after having its best-ever result in an election and surging to the top of the polls, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) announced that it determined that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party is a “right-wing extremist” organisation. The move, which is currently under judicial review before coming into effect, would pave the way for the intel agency to surveil party communications and use informants to monitor party operations.

Hans Georg Maaßen (Maassen), the ex-president of the BfV, told the European Conservative that he believes the spy agency he formerly ran either did so under direct order from then-Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, whom the agency reported to, or its current president Thomas Haldenwang, made the move based on political considerations.

He said that “under minister Faeser and president Haldenwang, the BfV has been weaponised to attack political rivals in an unscrupulous way. This damages its public reputation and undermines its core mission.”

“When I led the BfV, I was constantly under pressure from left-wing parties and the media to place the AfD under surveillance. In 2016, I made it clear: I am not a tool of the governing parties, nor is it the BfV’s job to undermine their political competitors. The agency’s mandate is to protect the constitutional order—not to carry out political vendettas,” he continued.

“In no other Western democracy are political parties monitored by intelligence agencies, because these agencies are part of the executive branch and therefore answer to the government. That creates an obvious conflict of interest. Minister Faeser chose a different path, and in my view, it was purely political. One of the key aims of her tenure was to combat the Right. For her, the AfD was a political enemy. This is a clear case of using domestic intelligence services to suppress opposition,” Georg Maaßen said.

The former BfV chief also called into question the legitimacy of the grounds by which the agency determined that the AfD is a “right-wing extremist” group.

Indeed, a leaked copy of the political spy agency’s decision reviewed by German paper of record Die Welt was found to have relied almost entirely on public comments made by party officials, rather than any damning information unknown to the public.

The political intel agency claimed that the opinions expressed by AfD politicians were “incompatible with human dignity” and claimed that they amounted to “ethnic nationalist, anti-foreign and anti-minority, anti-Muslim and anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic positions.”

The BfV also accused AfD Thuringia leader Björn Höcke of antisemtism for having criticised the influence of “globalists” and “financial elites” on the German government, which he claimed acted as their “puppets”. However, rather than pointing to the influence of Jewish people, Höcke’s comments only specified “large American corporations and for globalist masterminds.”

Georg Maaßen decried the flimsiness of the supposed evidence against the AfD, saying: “An intelligence agency can only function effectively if it’s trusted—not just by the public, but also by those it relies on for information, such as informants. I genuinely don’t know how the BfV will recover from this crisis.”

While the former German spy chief noted the particular danger of the German system, he expressed concern that such lawfare attempts to block right-wing populists from power was spreading throughout Europe, pointing to the trial against National Rally leader Marine Le Pen in France which seeks to block her from running in the next presidential election, and the barring of Călin Georgescu in Romania.

“I fear that in any country where legal and political conditions permit, secret services will be used to push conservative or right-wing parties out of public life and keep them away from power,” Maaßen warned.

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