Representatives of Germany’s main opposition party, the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD), are at a greater risk of being violently attacked than their peers from any other political party.
In the first six months of 2025, the German interior ministry registered 68 attacks on AfD politicians but only 30 on politicians from other parties, namely the Social Democratic Party (SDP, nine attacks), the Christian Democratic Union (CDU, seven), the Liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP, six), The Greens party and the hard-left Die Linke (four each).
The ministry published the numbers in response to a request from Martin Hess, an AfD MP.
Not only were AfD politicians at a greater risk of being violently attacked, the number of attacks has increased by about 40 per cent. Between January and June 2024, the ministry recorded 48 attacks on the right-wingers.
Violent on politicians in Germany have been on the rise in general, up by about 30 per cent year-on-year.
Most have been committed by left-wing extremists, to whom 64 of the 98 attacks this year have be attributed. That meant two-thirds of all attacks and 90 per cent of the violent attacks on AfD members were committed by those from the hard-left.
Only six of the 68 registered attacks were committed by right-wing extremists. The remaining cases mostly could not be attributed to a specific ideological group, according to the interior ministry figures.
AfD MP Hess wrote on his Facebook page that the attacks on his party meant democracy was under threat: “They aim to influence political decision-making through intimidation and violence – a deeply undemocratic approach.”
He said the “aggressive and dehumanising rhetoric against the AfD” by many political opponents was fuelling violence, citing the example of Jette Niezard, the leader of The Greens party’s youth organisation, who recently called for an armed struggle against the right-wingers.
“The threat of escalation by left-wing enemies of democracy is omnipresent – and yet these conditions are either downplayed, justified or even applauded by the media and the established parties,” Hess concluded.
