The populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) has slammed the left-wing Social Democrats (SPD) after the party came out in full support of the far-left Antifa extremist group, following U.S. President Donald Trump’s move to designate it as a terrorist organisation.
Both the official Twitter account for the SPD along with the Twitter account for co-leader Saskia Esken tweeted support for the terrorist group on Monday, both saying that they were members of Antifa.
AfD Federal spokesman Jörg Meuthen slammed the comments, stating in a press release on Tuesday: “The SPD leader Saskia Esken is committed to the extreme left Antifa, which uses fascist methods to spread fear and terror among dissenters.”
“So ‘of course’ she is committed to a terrorist group that covered parts of Hamburg with street terror at the G20 summit and massively attacked and injured emergency services,” Meuthen added, referring to the 2017 Hamburg riots in which Antifa members wounded hundreds of police officers.
“Esken is ‘of course’ committed to a terrorist group that has attacked countless times politicians, members and sympathisers of our civil party, who regularly threatens and harms hosts, who want to provide us with venues, and which flares up our cars and smeared our house facades,” he added.
The AfD has catalogued hundreds of violent Antifa attacks on their members and supporters in recent years. The AfD-linked website “Look to the Left” continues to record both attacks and Antifa’s links to other organisations across Germany.
“The SPD leader is ‘of course’ committed to a terrorist group that is no longer afraid of the most brutal, potentially fatal violence, as the cowardly attack by extreme left-wing Antifa thugs on three dissenting trade unionists in Stuttgart made clear recently,” Meuthen said.
“Those who ‘naturally’ profess to be a political terrorist group like Saskia Esken are completely out of place at the head of a democratic party,” he added.
Hans-Georg Maassen, the former head of the Federal Office for the protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, echoed Mr Meuthen’s remarks.
“It is not sad. It is a scandal. We have a democratic problem if a previous pillar of our parliament declares solidarity with extremist groups such as Antifa and Rote Hilfe,” Mr Maassen said. Rote Hilfe, or Red Help, is classified as an extremist organisation by the BfV.
Maassen had been forced into retirement in November of 2018 after warning of “radical left-forces” within the Social Democrats.