Der Flügel


Der Flügel is a far-right faction within Germany's Alternative for Germany, a right-wing populist opposition party. The group was led by Björn Höcke and Andreas Kalbitz. Following the request by the AfD executive board to dissolve Der Flügel by the end of April 2020, the group's online presence went offline. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution has no reliable knowledge of an actual dissolution.

History

The Flügel's founding document, the Erfurt Declaration of 2015, describes AfD as a "resistance movement against the further erosion of the identity of Germany." Henry Bernhard of DLF wrote in 2019 that the group's radicalization were apparent at the group's annual meetings, with the group increasingly accepting "racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, historical revisionism," and the downplaying of Nazi crimes. Höcke and Kalbitz are controversial for their links to neo-Nazi groups.
The group attained a dominant position in the AfD associations of several states in eastern Germany, particularly Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia. In 2020, the group was estimated to have some 7,000 members, constituting one-fifth of the AfD's total membership. The group has been the subject of internal party battles within the AfD, where relative moderates within the party have opposed the influence of extremist elements. Leading AfD politicians, like AfD-chairman Jörg Meuthen, criticized Höcke's "personality cult" but not necessarily his far-right political positions.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the Flügel in January 2019 as a suspected case of right-wing extremism, since its "propagated policy concept was aimed at exclusion, contempt and far-reaching rights of foreigners, migrants, especially Muslims, and politically dissenting people." In March 2020, the BfV classified the Flügel as "a right-wing extremist endeavor against the free democratic basic order" that was incompatible with Germany's Basic Law, and placed the group under intelligence surveillance. Following the BfV's announcement, the AfD's national leaders demanded the dissolution of the Flügel, and Höcke and Kalbitz asked members to "cease their activities." However, the Flügel members were not asked to leave the AfD, and in their announcement of the group's disbandment, Höcke and Kalbitz wrote that, "In principle, it is not possible to dissolve what does not formally exist." The pair also retained their leadership positions in two of the AfD's state associations.

Important persons and influence