On March 3, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency placed the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) under observation as a suspected far-right extremist organization. This move is only the latest step in a two-year process of increasing government scrutiny of the AfD’s activities. In January 2019, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV)—whose role is comparable to MI5 in the United Kingdom—first began monitoring the hard-right nationalist elements of the party, referred to as the Flügel or “wing.” Reports indicate that the BfV was collecting open-source evidence to build its case against the entire AfD over the same time period.