Rightwing parties are using parliamentary queries, legal traps and policing to target NGOs and stifle dissent
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Pauline Voss, the deputy editor of Nius, a fast-growing rightwing media outlet whose ambition is to be Germany’s Fox News, believes progressive civil society groups in Germany are engaged in a coordinated campaign to “act against their own population”.
That may be why, according to research this year by the progressive pressure group Campact, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) filed 295 parliamentary queries targeting left-leaning NGOs last year – more than twice as many as in 2024.
Parliamentary queries in Germany are a legitimate form of democratic control. But campaigners say filing them in such numbers, and all insinuating the same thing – that NGOs’ protected status and public funding gives them unfair political clout – amounts to harassment, intimidation and “an attempt to impose a political narrative”.
