The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has gained ground in three recent state elections, caused an uproar in the Thuringian parliament and triggering another debate on whether to ban the party outright.
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FINALLY. And to everyone who is like “tHiS wiLl MaKe ThInGs WorSe!!11” or “bAnNiNg ThE pArTy WoN’t hElP”. SHUT THE FUCK UP.
These are LITERALLY Nazis. Even more than the US Trump-Rep’s.
And since Russia is not willing to throw 25 Million People on them again and is much more keen to join them, since they are heavily involved with the AFD:
-https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/putin-afd-zusammenarbeit-100.html
-https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/politik/deutschland/petr-bystron-afd-russland-100.html
-https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2024/kw15-de-aktuelle-stunde-russland-afd-997398
-https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2024-04/afd-russische-regierung-strategiepapier
I’m not willing to take any chance on that. We have Laws for EXACTLY this scenario, time for our government to grow a spine and starts protecting democracy!
We did it once, we can do it again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Reich_Party
If discourse and argument fail to quell the intolerant, a tolerant society must be willing to use censorship and even violence to defend itself. If we let them trample all over our values, tolerating them for the sake of being the “better person”, we’ll be the better corpse sooner rather than later and history will remember us “Look how nobly they did nothing!”
If our history is ever written, that is.
I think their party should be banned and all funds currently donated and accounts related should be redirected to counter facism efforts and education.
They banned NPD and AFD happened.
All you’ll get is a new party filling up the political vacuum and their audience being even more die-hard radicals.
In a democracy where some 30% vote nazi, banning them won’t solve anything. Anything.
No, I won’t shut up, because you and people like you are part of the problem. If you think the solution is to jail and ban your political opponents, I got bad news for you.
Nearly everything you said is just plain wrong:
- The NPD never got banned (supposedly because the party was “insignificant”).
- They renamed themselves “Die Heimat”.
- If banned, a follow up party from the AfD would be automatically banned too.
- You make it sound like 30% of Germans vote AfD, while they get that many votes mainly in the eastern states.
- You talk about democracy and call Nazis “political opponents”. I got news for you: Those fascist scums’ only goal is to get rid of democracy, sell Europe to Russia and maybe start a third world war.
So keep on talking as much as you like, everyone with half a brain can see right through you.
There is nothing to add. Well said!
ah, ok, tell me please, what exactly do you see right through? I wanna know. For research purposes. (And to report it to the headquarters, so we could improve our sabotage operation).
I guess he was just polite, assuming someone making all those false claims would at least do it with some purpose.
Oh yeah, that last implication certainly is full of polite implying. I’m honored.
You know what I see? Someone who’s afraid that their world order will change. And their solution is “lock them up while we’re in the majority”.
You know what I also see? A failed German re-unification, extreme arrogance of the west Germans towards east Germans, a bouquet of additional socio-economical problems that have been ignored for decades. And a consequent voters’ revolt.
And their solution? Tell all those angry people that they’re nazi and their problems will continue being ignored. I’m sure that will solve it.
The party in question, AfD, is fuckin scary. They, in fact, are openly nazi. And, yet, I promise you, banning them and continuing to ignore the underlying issues will only make things worse.
– Your Polite But Malicious Kremlin Bot
Most of your points were already correctly dismantled. But I’d just like to ad to
In a democracy where some 30% vote nazi, banning them won’t solve anything. Anything.
Is a sentiment I often feel too. I believe that we have to do so much more to fight against Fascists than just Vote and “use the democratic system correctly”. (I.e. fight fascism in the streets, offer actual political solutions to peoples problems…). But to say this won’t do anything is a huge understatement.
Banning the AfD will:
- Disband the party leaving them in shambles to reorganize
- Stop the money flow which is going to the AfD (and in turn to other right wing groups
- Finally delegitimize the AfD and their main actors in a Democratic setting
A ban would be an amazing feat but it would just be a little breather in the fight against fascism.
You can only ban them if they seriously threaten the democratic order. Which some of their members might claim to want to do, but so far the whole party hasn’t shown much of action in the direction.
If you do ban your political opponents because “now they need to reorganize and won’t get money”. You will only strengthen their point that the current democratic order cannot be trusted and that their voters are ignored by the system. You will turn 10% of hardcore voters and 20% of rebel voters into 30% hardcore voters.
And then good luck to you with having any democracy whatsoever. Or do you plan to maybe institute a special democratic police and jail everyone with antidemocratic views? What about jailing some 30% of a certain region of your country? How do you imagine this will go down?
Yes you can only ban them if they threaten the democratic order. Or to be more precise:
Eine Partei kann nur dann verboten werden, wenn sie nicht nur eine verfassungsfeindliche Haltung vertritt, sondern diese Haltung auch in aktiv-kämpferischer, aggressiver Weise umsetzen will.
Which (if you don’t know German) basically means
A party can only be banned if it advocates an unconstitutional position and also plans to use militant and aggressive means to reach their goals
- rough translation I might try to find a source for a better one later
Now I believe that the AfD does fit those criteria (unconstitutional position for sure, but them working together with militant neo-nazis etc. should fill the second criterium as well). But that’s just my opinion and in this situation it does not count as much. The process here is that the court will decide wether or not the AfD fits these criteria and based on that they will be banned or not banned.
This is the important distinction to what you’ve outlined. It’s not “banning political opponents” it’s banning opponents of the constitution. I’m also not saying everyone with opposing views should be jailed I’m saying a party that opposes the constitution should be banned according to the constitution.Yes, I’m familiar with that part of your legislation.
Approximately everyone else here except for you sees AfD as a target for banning because “they’re radical far right”. No, sorry, bad idea.
Even banning an anti-democracy party at first might be a bad idea. Better go figure out why is anyone voting for them.
Banning an anti-democracy party is an absolute last-resort measure. It only exists in Germany because this is how Hitler came to power, so the idea is to prevent that scenario from repeating. I can see the point, however it is yet to be proven that such bans would actually help preserve the democratic order.
It only exists in Germany because this is how Hitler came to power,
That’s correct but in my opinion that’s a great argument to push for a ban. As you say that’s how Hitler came to power with the NSDAP, so it would only be correct to use this law to try and prevent history from repeating itself. If we find out in the court that the law currently doesn’t apply it will be a win for the AfD of course but I believe and hope that it won’t be and that they will be banned. But if we don’t try and enact the law now how long do we wait? Till they are in government? Till they enacted emergency laws …
Also, again, I do not believe this a definite solution to the “problem” of AfD and right wing movements in Germany. I do however believe it will be a big blow to the Right and might give us some room to move into with progressive ideas.
If simply banning nazis from holding political power is enough for some of you to question, then you’re really not going to be ready for what you need to do to them once they get political power. Ban them now because y’all are far too soft to do what needs to be done if you don’t.
Don’t know what’s there to be so smug about. “Oh you would rather ban them in a constitutional process than to wait for them to seize power and fight a bloody civil war, or worse?” Yes please! I hope we all much prefer the first option.
I hope we all much prefer the first option.
Some of us are convinced this measure does nothing, and are unwilling to fight. It seems they only seem to oppose fascism when it can be done by magic.
Some of us are convinced this measure does nothing
Nothing? How can it do nothing? You could argue that it doesn’t do enough or not the right things, but if nothing else banning the party would obviously keep them out of the government at least for the next few years.
I dont know, you’d have to ask someone who believes that.
How can it do nothing?
If you pass a law but never enforce it, the law does nothing. That’s assuming the Parliament could even pass it in a government that’s thick with AfD MPs.
That rather speaks for banning the AfD though. We have a law for banning fascist parties, so we should enforce it, or it truly would mean nothing.
That rather speaks for banning the AfD though.
We have a law for banning fascist parties
You have laws for banning use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations. These have been deployed most aggressively against Communists, Socialists, Islamists, and - post USSR - against Russian Nationalists. Currently, it is pro-Palestinian Jews who suffer the most from application of these laws.
The AfD is that its being fueled by a ton of right-wing media. It isn’t just a party springing from the soil ex nihilio. It is a consequence of right wing press flooding German society. And as the press builds support for the AfD, the AfD helps shield these press organs from censorship by the state. Its a self-replicating trend.
Can you ban a party that’s got a plurality of seats in the Parliament? Or will they be the ones banning you?
I mean, by all means, feel free to give it a shot. But it seems like you’re asking an elected government to do a thing it isn’t designed to do. MPs aren’t going to vote against themselves.
Can you ban a party that’s got a plurality of seats in the Parliament? Or will they be the ones banning you?
Of course. And it’s nonsensical to claim we cannot ban them, while worrying they could ban us. We can and we should, based on what you yourself wrote:
If you pass a law but never enforce it, the law does nothing.
We have laws against undemocratic parties, so we should enforce them.
I mean, by all means, feel free to give it a shot. But it seems like you’re asking an elected government to do a thing it isn’t designed to do.
But it is designed to do exactly that. That’s like a core mechanism of our democracy.
The only way to argue we shouldn’t ban the AFD is if you claim that they somehow should be exempt from our mechanisms against fascism. They were enforced before, they will be enforced again. And the AFD fits the bill in every way.
Those of us are wrong, then. Fascism isn’t some inherently abstract force of nature, it’s people and organizations of people. Those social structures can be disrupted, and the major question whose answer determines the means of disruption is whether the earlier responses were appropriately timed and powered.
I prefer the situation where fascist-attitude people are individuals who need treatment rather than one where fascism is not just an attitude of individuals but a structural problem requiring e.g. law enforcement involvement or even a full-societal issue requiring outside military involvement.
Ban them now
They won’t, in no small part because the AfD has enough seats to block the attempt. Also, doesn’t help that lots of the enforcement wing of the German government (particularly in the national security services) are AfD or AfD sympathetic.
We’re well past the point at which Germans can do to the fascists what they did to the communists back in the 1990s - ban the party outright and seize their assets. Now they’ve actually got to make this a political fight, rather than a legalistic one, because they turned their backs on the AfD for far too long.
They won’t, in no small part because the AfD has enough seats to block the attempt.
They cannot block a decision of the federal constitutional court, don’t be ridiculous. Germany has measures in place exactly for this scenario, and they are about to be enforced. They cannot be vetoed away, it’s a legal matter.
They cannot block a decision of the federal constitutional court
Given the concentration of AfD in the Eastern Block, you’d be inviting the region to pull a Catalonia and threaten to break away.
Germany has measures in place exactly for this scenario
Riot police, sure.
Ooh the Nazis are threatening to break away? Oh no! Whatever will we do without them?!
Fuck them. They can break away and start their own little fourth Reich, which will be a pariah forever. In fact, that’s even better - all the fascists can go to the same geographical location so we can deal with them surgically.They’re free to pull a Catalonia tbh. Glhf without Solizuschlag. It’d also be nice to have my friends move back home from Berlin.
Yeah if they got power they might try to ban their political opponents!
I think killing Nazis is the general agreed upon approach
Banning the party isn’t going to help.
Like I say of Trump, the AfD isn’t the problem, they’re a symptom. Conservatism and conservatives themselves are the problem – the question is how should we deal with them, and I really don’t know the answer to that.
Edit: just to clarify, I’m not saying the AfD shouldn’t be banned, just that banning the party won’t change the people who vote for it and run it.
There won’t be democracy in Germany if the AfD gets into power. You need to stop the wound from gushing before you can worry about setting the broken bone.
100% Correct. These are Nazis just like they are depicted in textbooks.
I don’t disagree with that sentiment at all, I’m just not sure how to set this particular broken bone. How do you make ~20% of the population less fascist?
You stop allowing the lies and disinformation to spread, that’s how!
Germany did it after WWII. They can do it again.
