The AfD has long converted the use of parliament into an abuse of parliament. The strategy of undermining and disabling Germany’s parliaments — its 16 state parliaments and one federal parliament, plus numerous local councils — has been practiced by the AfD ever since it entered Germany’s state parliaments in 2014 and its federal parliament in 2017. In all this, the AfD follows zealously, consistently, and continuously one of its great heroes — Goebbels, who once made it clear that

it will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy,

that it gave its deadly enemies the means

by which it was destroyed.

Under the pretext of controlling the “evil state,” the AfD is deliberately destabilizing and eventually aims to terminate the functioning of Germany’s democratic parliament. In one strategy, the AfD casts doubt on the decision-making ability of parliaments by pestering ministries and administrations again and again with almost identical requests.

In other words, the truckloads of neo-Nazis it has employed as tax-money-financed staffers enable the AfD to flood parliament and the administration with nonsensical requests in order to paralyze it. In short, the German taxpayer pays for the destabilizing of its own parliament.

This is not all. There are also highly targeted violations, such as deliberate interference in plenary debates. The AfD engineers interruptions of the parliament and its working groups [Ausschüsse] to provoke conflict. It uses votes to delay proceedings. These are just three examples from the destructive repertoire the AfD uses to fulfill its hero’s dream of destroying Germany’s democracy once again.

The abuse also reaches actual parliamentary sessions when, for example, AfD members start singing the bullying fairy-tale “Heidi’s song” as soon as the spokeswoman of the reviled progressive party Die Linke, Heidi Reichinnek, reaches the speaker’s podium to give a talk. Meanwhile, SPD deputies of the social-democratic party have been openly abused as “social fascists” — a term used by the Nazis during the 1930s.

Insults, abuse, agitation, verbal cruelty, and heckling are part of the party’s attack strategy to discredit Germany’s democratic parliament. If any loophole offers an opening for further abuse, the AfD takes it. Nor is this behavior limited to the front bench of the AfD; instead, there is a competition among its members over who can be loudest.

These outbursts are immediately edited and shown right after a parliamentary debate in the AfD’s media echo chambers, to give its followers the impression that the AfD is doing something about the “hated state.”

So far, the increase in fines for misconduct inside Germany’s federal parliament, introduced in 2025, has had no significant impact on the AfD’s strategy. It is a bit like asking a Kapo — the SS’s henchmen for unspeakable brutalities in Auschwitz — to be nice to you.

Strategy 1: Symbolic Blocking

Back in today’s Germany, one can distinguish between three strategies of AfD obstruction. The first might be called symbolic blocking. It is one of the AfD’s most frequently practiced tactics. In some cases, voting is delayed until the late evening to challenge the quorum needed for a parliamentary decision. In other cases, a roll-call vote (voting by name) is demanded.

From entering Germany’s parliament in 2017 up to 2019 — just three years — the party demanded roll-call votes nine times, succeeding three times. By comparison, over the preceding 30 years, all of Germany’s democratic parties combined had done so a total of ten times. At that rate, the AfD would go on to engineer 90 or more such demands, severely obstructing the work of the German parliament.

What is remarkable is not even the sheer number of such demands, but their systematic exploitation for the sole purpose of blocking and sabotaging a democratic parliament. It gets worse: even after the AfD has lodged complaints about a missed late-night quorum, its entire parliamentary group leaves the chamber, leaving Germany’s democratic parties to deal with the complaints.

Next, the AfD produces photos of the half-empty parliament — a situation the AfD itself created — to claim that democracy is not working. All its supporters see on AfD-run online platforms is the final picture, not what made that picture possible. And it gets worse still: because of this AfD-engineered (if unseen) dysfunction, the AfD then presents itself, in a third step, as the defender of democracy on its own Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube channels.

At the same time, Germany’s democratic parties — smeared as the “old parties” — are denounced, and Germany’s democracy is portrayed as standing on the abyss. All of this is a true masterpiece of propaganda. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would have been proud.

It is not concern for democratic political culture in parliament, or for decent and civil coexistence, that motivates the AfD — it is, first and foremost, the opportunity to undermine Germany’s democracy for content on its own social media channels.

Symbolic blocking also means that AfD parliamentarians constantly overrun their allotted speaking time. When reprimanded, the AfD wrongly suggests that the speaker of the house is targeting them to keep them quiet.

Since the AfD’s ranks entered parliament, there has been a sharp increase in warnings and reprimands against the party — one not interested in democratic debate but in the destruction of democracy.

From 2021 to 2025, about two-thirds of all reprimands went to the AfD, even though the AfD holds not even one-third of all parliamentary seats. In other words, the AfD’s disruptive behavior is not only noted, it also blocks parliament from functioning — which is precisely the AfD’s intended goal.

All of this costs Germany’s democratic parties time, energy, strength, and nerves, as intended. What matters to the AfD is that it delays and even blocks democratic decisions. Members of the democratic parties do not always resist the temptation to retaliate, which only gives the AfD more grounds for even louder indignation. The fundamental difference between the AfD and Germany’s democratic parties is this:

• One group of parties engages in democratic debate.
• One anti-democratic party engages in the annihilation of democratic debate.

To this end, the AfD manufactures escalation for the sake of escalation, which it can then use — in heavily manipulated form — in online propaganda videos claiming that democracy isn’t working. Beyond that, AfD-fabricated conflict often further delays parliamentary proceedings, serving the AfD’s strategy of symbolic blocking.

Worse, the AfD then claims there is a decay of morals in Germany’s parliament, complaining about aggression from Germany’s democratic parties while presenting aggression and hostility as a normal part of the democratic process. This shades from symbolic blocking into something more systematic.

Strategy 2: Systematic Blocking

The second strategy is systematic blocking. It comes into play because the AfD, while it may win elections, has so far not become part of a government. Even so, the AfD often holds enough seats to block certain decisions — for example, those requiring a two-thirds majority.

This includes changes to the constitution, the appointment of committees and parliamentary oversight bodies, and the appointment of constitutional judges. In the eastern German states of Thuringia — the home state of Björn Höcke, alias Landolf Ladig, his neo-Nazi pseudonym — and Brandenburg, the AfD achieved exactly this blocking position in the 2024 state elections.

The AfD now holds such a blocking minority there. In neighboring Saxony — Germany’s most backward and conservative state — the AfD fell just one seat short of a blocking majority. In Thuringia‘s Erfurt state parliament, the party holds not only more than a third of the seats but is also the largest party, outnumbering each of Germany’s democratic parties individually.

Even before it could use its veto power to systematically block decisions, the AfD staked its claim to power — a Machtergreifung — at the very first session of the state parliament. As the strongest force in Thuringia’s state parliament under Björn Höcke, a former neo-Nazi, the AfD held the exclusive right to nominate a candidate for the office of parliament president. Yet there was no automatic path to the position, as the AfD had hoped; it is, of course, decided by democratic vote.

Rather than accept a democratic vote, the anti-democratic AfD tried every trick available to push its candidate into the position. The AfD’s plan was that, as long as Germany’s democratic parties refused to accept its newly won power, it would block the election of a parliamentary president altogether. In the end, a ruling by Thuringia’s constitutional court against the AfD ended this undignified spectacle — from the self-styled party of “law and order,” no less.

Continuing its systematic blocking, the AfD went on to block the election of committee members responsible for appointing judges in Thuringia for years to come. This sabotage appears to be working: public confidence in the state parliament erodes, democracy is shaken, and the state judiciary — because of the AfD’s sabotage — comes to be seen as incompetent.

It takes little imagination to picture how the AfD, should it ever take power, would install loyal followers in such positions, following the Hungarian model under Viktor Orbán. Until then, it will continue to present itself as a force of resistance.

In short, the AfD abuses its power only to accuse the state when it introduces measures to protect democracy against that very abuse. In the AfD’s two-pronged sabotage, democracy cannot win:

• If the state fights back, it plays the role of an “evil state” going after the AfD.
• If the state does not fight back, the AfD goes after democracy and destroys it.

Yet when Germany’s democratic parties are caught off guard by this dilemma and react weakly or in confusion, they only end up empowering the AfD.

Strategy 3: Legalized Blocking

While the first two forms of blocking — symbolic and systematic — mainly target the paralysis of parliamentary processes, the third centers on “abuse of process.” Here, the AfD focuses specifically on overloading democratic institutions and state administration.

This kind of blocking resembles the tactics of the German extremist “Reichsbürger” movement, which — when not attacking police officers — overwhelms authorities and public offices with excessive submissions and frivolous claims.

In parliament, the AfD applies a similar strategy, especially through the instrument of parliamentary oversight. Its main tool is the official request (Kleine Anfrage), which ministers, elected officials, and state administrations are legally obliged to answer. The AfD uses these parliamentary inquiries to overwhelm ministries and administrations and block them from functioning.

The problem is not the government’s duty to provide information — that is, in fact, a vital mechanism of democratic oversight over state bureaucracy, meant to ensure transparency and prevent abuse of power by the state. But the AfD has corrupted this instrument for its own goal of blocking, and ultimately destroying, democracy.

This democratic instrument becomes an abuse when it is turned into a form of exaggerated, systematic requests that grind down the government without any genuine aim of gaining knowledge or information.

To answer such inquiries, subordinate authorities must collect data and review and provide legal and official documents. These requests take priority, while other administrative tasks are pushed to the back burner.

A recent review of parliamentary inquiries between 2021 and 2025 shows the scale of the AfD’s abuse of this mechanism. In one recent year, for example, of 4,569 total requests for information, nearly half came from the AfD — a party that at the time held little more than ten percent of parliamentary seats. In other words, the AfD abuses parliamentary inquiries to block Germany’s parliament from functioning, exploiting a legally mandated process for a purpose it was never designed to serve.

This abuse is especially pronounced in East German state parliaments, reflecting the AfD’s local strength in its strongholds – the promised land. And it is not only the sheer volume of these inquiries that constitutes the abuse.

Worse still is the level of detail the AfD demands, often far exceeding the working capacity of parliamentary administrations. In one case, the state was forced to produce an 87-page document on the economy and a 128-page document on climate change in response to a single AfD inquiry. This is the legalized blocking of Germany’s democratic state.

Worse yet, the AfD frequently issues such inquiries as standardized, mass requests. Under German parliamentary rules, these inquiries must be answered within 14 days. To make matters worse, the AfD deliberately times such requests to land shortly before the Easter break or just a week before school holidays begin. In other words, the AfD adds a bit of extra spite to its strategy of blocking Germany’s democracy.

From all three blocking strategies, the AfD reaps a threefold benefit. First, the day-to-day work of Germany’s parliaments is held back and blocked, serving the AfD’s aim of destroying what it calls the country’s “elite cartel” — whatever that might mean.

Second, the state becomes increasingly disabled, losing its capacity to carry out its official duties. This breeds frustration among state employees while weakening the effectiveness of Germany’s administration. Third, AfD followers are led to believe, through the party’s own self-staging, that it is a zealous guardian against the supposed abuses of power by “those up there.”

Ultimately, the deliberate failure of large parts of Germany’s state apparatus and democracy is designed to bring about the collapse of Germany’s democracy altogether. The AfD’s three-pronged sabotage strategy is meant, in the end, to bring about the total collapse of Germany’s entire democratic system.

This is the AfD‘s ultimate goal. In pursuing it, the party follows its ideological master, who once said that it will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed.

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