German authorities take aim at far-right party’s youth wing

CHEMNITZ, Germany — German authorities plan to step up surveillance of the far-right Alternative for Germany amid growing concern the third-largest party in parliament is closing ranks with extremist groups.

Activists for AfD, the nationalist party’s German acronym, marched in the eastern city of Chemnitz alongside leading figures in anti- migrant group PEGIDA and members of the area’s militant neo-Nazi scene in the past week, after two refugees were arrested in a German citizen’s fatal stabbing.

“Parts of AfD are openly acting against the constitution,” Justice Minister Katarina Barley told the RND media group Monday. “We need to treat them like other enemies of the constitution and observe them accordingly.”

Authorities in northern Germany’s Bremen and Lower Saxony said they have begun monitoring the party’s youth wings in the two states.

AfD immediately announced that it would dissolve the two youth sections in question to avert harm to the party and insisted its aims were democratic.

Andreas Kalbitz , a member of the party’s national leadership, accused other political parties of panicking in the face of AfD’s electoral success.

AfD’s rise since its founding five years ago has shaken Germany’s establishment and called into question the country’s postWorld War II consensus that far-right parties have no place in the mainstream.

The party, bolstered by unease in Germany about the influx of more than 1 million refugees since 2015, placed third in the 2017 national election.

CRAIG RUTTLE/AP Revelers and participants turnout for the West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Monday. The annual Carnival celebration by New York’s Caribbean community began in the 1920s, first in Harlem and then in Brooklyn.