Video: watson/nina bürge
Jul 5, 2026, 4:36 p.mJul 5, 2026, 4:56 p.m
After the AfD party conference in Erfurt, there was a noticeable exchange of blows on ZDF between AfD leader Alice Weidel and presenter Dunja Hayali. The two exchanged words for several minutes.
The situation escalated when Alice Weidel addressed a radio broadcast that had preceded the interview. The AfD leader said:
«I looked at your post carefully earlier. (…) I strongly reject this framing that the AfD or parts of the Alternative for Germany are right-wing extremists. We won’t allow ourselves to be labeled like that, by a submissive, instruction-bound…»
Hayali didn’t let that stand. The moderator pointed out that this assessment did not simply come from the editorial team, but from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
Video: watson/nina bürge
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution classified the party as definitely right-wing extremist in 2025. After a lawsuit from the AfD, this classification was stopped for the time being. The Cologne Administrative Court decided in February 2026: Until the main proceedings, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution may not treat the Federal AfD as definitely right-wing extremist or publicly describe it as such. At the same time, the court wrote that there was still a strong suspicion of anti-constitutional efforts.
Again, certain AfD state associations such as Thuringia, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt are listed by the responsible constitutional protection offices as definitely right-wing extremist or proven extremist.
However, how little the party thinks of these decisions has already been shown several times. Weidel has already claimed in the past that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is “not an independent authority”. And the AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla also announced on the sidelines of the party conference that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution would also be “taken care of” if there were election victories in East Germany.