Secretary of State Marco Rubio threw a temper tantrum after a German intelligence agency classified a far-right organization as “extremist.”
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency labeled the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as a “proven right-wing extremist organization.” The party’s platform is based on anti-immigrant ideology. Several AfD leaders have repeated Nazi slogans and threatened to deport German citizens of non-ethnic-German heritage.
But Rubio slammed the agency’s decision on X and urged the country to “reverse course.”
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“Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition,” he said. “That’s not democracy—it’s tyranny in disguise.”
He added: “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”
The decision was announced Friday by Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which gives German authorities increased oversight over AfD. This is the first time in modern German history that a party with nationwide representation on the federal level has been labeled extremist.
But its popularity is growing.
The party won a record 152 parliamentary seats in the February federal elections and took over 20 percent of the vote.
President Donald Trump and his inner circle have been vocal in their support. AfD co-leader Alice Weidel was invited to Trump’s inauguration, and Elon Musk spoke at an AfD election campaign event in January.
Musk said that banning the “centrist AfD” would be an “extreme attack on democracy.”
Musk, who went viral for making a gesture on Inauguration Day that resembled a Nazi salute, posted in December “only the AfD can save Germany.”
In February, Vice President J.D. Vance denounced European leaders for isolating far-right parties. On Friday, he reshared Rubio’s X post and added some commentary of his own.
“The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany,” Vance wrote. “Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
He added: “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt—not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.”
The German agency that classified AfD as extremist spent three years investigating the party and released a 1,000-page report that confirmed the party’s violations of core constitutional principles.
AfD leaders have trivialized the Holocaust, revived Nazi slogans, and condemned foreigners. A quarter of the electorate currently supports the party, although German lawmakers have considered banning the party altogether.
Weidel has denigrated Muslims for being “headscarf-wearing girls” and “knife-wielding men on welfare.”
Previous party leader Alexander Gauland described the Holocaust as a “speck of bird poop” on years of successful German history.
Another AfD member said that the S.S., the elite guard of the Nazi regime, were not criminals. The S.S. ran the Nazis’ concentration camps.
Rubio’s disagreement came immediately after Germany made its decision.
“Germany should reverse course,” he posted.
