One of Germany’s largest political parties, Alternative for Germany, has been debanked by a major banking chain following a campaign by activist group Grandmothers Against the Right, reports the Telegraph.
Omas Gegen Rechts, or Grandmothers Against the Right, launched a petition to effectively debank the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as it warned the party poses a threat to Germany’s democratic order.
The campaign group’s Berlin faction targeted Berliner Volksbank, a major regional banking chain that ran the AfD’s donations account. Senior grandmother Bettina Kern later held a meeting with a bank board member, Carsten Jung, after handing in their petition.
The AfD this week removed the option to donate to the Berliner Volksbank account from its official website, prompting Omas Gegen Rechts to claim victory in their campaign.
“There is great news: Berliner Volksbank is apparently ending its business relations with the AfD, thereby responding to our innn.it petition, which now has more than 33,500 signatures,” the group announced.
Ms Kern, a 77-year-old grandmother, said they started the petition due to concerns that growing support for the AfD hinted at a possible return to Germany’s dark history.
“In Germany, grandmothers have a direct relationship with the Nazi past. Even if we were born after the war we know what a terrible period it was,” she told the Telegraph.
“We are of the opinion that it must never happen again and I personally believe that the AfD has now come to such extreme opinions, that the Government should ask our constitutional court to consider whether it should be forbidden.”
A spokesman for Berliner Volksbank declined to discuss the account in question. They said: “For reasons of banking secrecy and data protection, our company does not provide any information about presumed or existent accounts.”
It’s not the first time AfD have been targeted for politically motivated financial censorship. Earlier this year, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced a raft of measures she described as “instruments of rule of law to protect our democracy,” but that critics warned would chill free expression while serving the ulterior motive of reigning in the popularity of the right-wing opposition party.
One such measure is to freeze the bank accounts of those found to have donated money to any group the government declares to be “far-right.” Faeser was worryingly vague as to how this politically motivated financial censorship will work in practice, how ‘right wing extremism’ will be defined, whether Germany’s left-leaning tripartite coalition government will get to decide on that definition, and what penalties will be directed at those who donate to right-wing parties or organisations. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Office of the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) would handle the specifics, she said:
No one who donates to a right-wing extremist party should remain undetected. … Those who mock the state must deal with a strong state.
The minister also urged the German Bundestag to “pass the law quickly” in order to “combat hate on the internet … remove enemies of the constitution from public service [and] disarm right-wing extremists.” Support for the AfD has surged to over 20% of the electorate, meaning the Party is the strongest opposition to the current German government, a coalition led by the left-wing Social Democratic Party.
In several German states the foundation for this new approach has already been laid, with the BfV labelling the AfD a “definitive case of right-wing extremism,” meaning the party is subject to extreme surveillance. Last year, for instance, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla revealed that Postbank, a retail banking division of massive financial institution Deutsche Bank, had terminated his account because he is an AfD member.
Chrupalla made the claim during a televised interview on the ARD network. Asked whether he frequently encounters stereotypes about East Germans, Chrupalla dismissed the notion, arguing that they do not play as much of a role these days. However, the AfD chief went on to say that Germans living in the eastern part of the country today find themselves in a situation that feels eerily familiar to the days of the GDR, particularly with respect to the political and economic consequences that one faces for taking a position that deviates from the mainstream narrative.
“My account was cancelled by Postbank because I am an AfD member,” Chrupalla said, adding that this not only demonstrates how the AfD is “excluded and marginalised” from society, but also that people are no longer permitted to express their opinions freely in Germany. And Chrupalla’s de-banking isn’t an isolated incident: in 2020, banking giant ING terminated the accounts of Thuringian AfD chief Björn Höcke and his wife. Two years earlier, AfD MEP Nicolaus Fest’s bank account with Deutsche Bank was also closed without prior notice.
