Germany says far-right AfD party’s new youth wing maintains extremist links

Interior Ministry finds speeches at founding conference had racial, ethnocentric ‘understanding of nation,’ reflected hostility against ‘free democratic order’

By AFP 3 February 2026, 7:58 pm

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A party member walks in front of a stand during the re-founding of the AfD youth organization as "Generation Deutschland" in Giessen, Germany, November 29, 2025. (Martin Meissner/AP)

BERLIN, Germany — The new youth wing of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has clear “continuity” with its defunct predecessor, which was classified as right-wing extremist, the interior ministry said Tuesday.

The AfD last March disbanded its previous youth organization, the Young Alternative (JA), and in November founded its successor body, called Generation Germany (GD).

Speeches at the GD founding conference reflected hostility against the “free democratic order” and a racial and ethnocentric “understanding of the nation,” the ministry said in a reply to an inquiry from a Greens party MP obtained by AFP.

“There are known links between members of Generation Germany and other extremist organizations,” the ministry said in the response.

The BfV domestic intelligence agency had classified the JA as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization in 2023.

The replacement group, Generation Germany, claims to have over 2,100 members.

The ministry declined to provide further details about the alleged extremist links, citing the need to protect potential and ongoing investigations.

General view taken inside the venue with empty seats prior the start of a two-day convention of far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to establish its new youth organization at the exhibition halls in Giessen, Germany on November 29, 2025. (Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)

Marlene Schoenberger, the Greens MP who filed the parliamentary inquiry, called for proceedings to ban the AfD’s new youth wing as well as potentially the entire political party itself.

The AfD is currently the second-largest party in Germany’s lower house of parliament, having won more than 20 percent of the vote in last February’s national elections.

The party is particularly popular in Germany’s former communist east, and polls show the AfD with commanding leads in several eastern states ahead of regional elections later this year.