“Höcke’s statements alone, and the use of the term Volksgemeinschaft” — the Nazi-era concept of an ethnic national community — “are enough to land the AfD in that report,” she wrote, referring to the intelligence service’s annual assessment. “Some in our party seem in a hurry to drive the AfD, deliberately or not, into oblivion.”
In May 2025, the agency classified the AfD as a “confirmed right-wing extremist organisation”, citing, among other things, an exclusionary concept of the German nation. The classification, which grants authorities broader surveillance powers, was provisionally suspended by a court in Cologne last February.
‘Wake up, for once’
The leak also features emails about a speech Höcke gave in January 2017 to the AfD’s youth wing, attacking Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance.
Höcke described Berlin’s Holocaust memorial as a “memorial of shame,” criticized the country’s efforts to confront its Nazi past and demanded a “180-degree turn in the politics of memory.”
Weidel herself brought a motion to expel him from the AfD.
The motion, obtained by WELT, accused Höcke of using “vocabulary from Adolf Hitler” and endorsing the “Führerprinzip” — the Nazi doctrine of absolute leadership authority. It described him as displaying an “affinity in essence with National Socialism.”