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Since the AfD entered Parliament, it has frequently tested this defensive democracy, pushing and often crossing the boundaries of acceptable public discourse. Its politicians have suggested that migrants could be shot at the border or gassed. They have dabbled in conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement, which imagines a coordinated campaign to replace Europes white population with non-European people. They have even sought to downplay the horrors of the Nazi past: An AfD leader named Alexander Gauland notoriously described the Nazi era as a mere speck of bird poop in German history.

All this comes as political violence here is on the rise. In the past two years, right-wing extremists have murdered the politician Walter Lbcke (he had argued that Germans who did not support taking in refugees could leave the country themselves); killed two people after attempting to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur in Halle; and shot and killed nine people in two hookah bars in Hanau. Although none of the perpetrators were directly linked to the AfD, its rhetoric has helped foster anti-refugee, anti-immigrant sentiments in Germany.

That does not mean that using constitutional tools to push back against an extremist political party is easy. More than five million Germans voted for the AfD in 2017, and while its support has dropped during the pandemic, it remains a significant force in the German Parliament. Whenever government agencies or other parties penalize the AfD, its leaders claim that the party is being persecuted which only bolsters the conviction among its supporters that more mainstream political parties are indifferent to their concerns.

In addition, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has sometimes contributed to the problem it now seeks to solve. It has been rightly criticized, for instance, for having a historical blind spot when it comes to the far right. One of its chiefs, Hans-Georg Maassen, lost his job in 2018 after downplaying far-right violence in Chemnitz.

Still, Germany has an arsenal of constitutional tools to protect against extremist forces, even if using them generates controversy and accusations of persecution. Defensive democracy is working, at least in the sense that the domestic intelligence service has recognized a threat and is taking steps to eliminate it. At a time when disinformation, political polarization and far-right forces are combining to endanger democracies across the West, other countries should take note.

Emily Schultheis is a freelance journalist and a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs.

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Opinion | Germany Is Treating a Major Party as a Threat to Its Democracy - The New York Times