AfD Politician Convicted of Incitement in Backnang

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AfD Politician Convicted of Incitement in Backnang

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A district court in Backnang, Germany, has convicted a 63-year-old local politician from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on charges of incitement. The conviction stems from a Facebook post deemed to be “far beyond permissible criticism” and likened to a “medieval pillory.” The specific details of the post were not publicly detailed in the search results, but the court found it constituted incitement.

This case is part of a broader trend of legal proceedings against AfD members for hate speech and extremist rhetoric. In May 2024, Björn Höcke, a prominent AfD figure and the party’s leader in Thuringia, was fined €13,000 by a court in Halle for knowingly using a banned Nazi slogan, “Everything for Germany!”. Höcke had used the phrase at a rally in Merseburg in May 2021. He was convicted a second time for using the slogan in July 2024, receiving a fine of €16,900. Another AfD politician, Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, had her conviction for incitement to hatred upheld on appeal in May 2024 for a social media post from August 2021 concerning Afghan immigrants. In August 2023, former Bundestag member Florian Jäger was convicted and fined €2,700 for comparing COVID-19 measures to the persecution of Jews during the Nazi era in a Facebook video posted in 2021.

Germany has strict laws against the use of symbols, slogans, and propaganda associated with banned organizations, such as the Nazi party. The domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has classified the AfD as a “suspected” right-wing extremist group since 2021, allowing for increased surveillance. In May 2024, a higher administrative court in Münster upheld this classification, ruling that there are sufficient grounds to suspect the AfD pursues goals against human dignity and democracy. The party has faced accusations of attempting to delay court proceedings through numerous filings at the German Constitutional Court.

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