Bit by bit, the brightly lit dining hall of a countryside hotel near Potsdam fills with people. There are about two dozen of them, a mix of AfD members, followers of the Identitarian movement and members of nationalist student fraternities (Burschenschaft). People from the middle classes – doctors, ...
The revelation last week has caused an uptick in demonstrations against the AfD and fascism in Germany. Many people are now demanding that the government should initiate a case to ban the AfD at the constitutional court. A case to ban a political party can only be initated by the federal government, the federal parliament, or the federal council.
However multiple high ranking politicians has argued against forbidding the AfD, claiming to "fight them with arguments" instead. Calls like this came from Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative/right wing populist CDU, Markus Söder, the head of the right wing populist CSU, Christian Lindner, head of the liberal party FDP and current minister of Finance. CDU and FDP voted together with the AfD in 2020 to make the FDP candidate prime minister of Thuringen for one day, despite the FDP having barely 5%, which is the minimum for a party to sent delegates to a parliament in Germany. The subsequent government crisis lead to the AfD now being the strongest political force in Thuringen, according to election polls. CDU and FDP also worked together with the AfD on the local level before. Among other things they limited the amount of refugees a city would house and cut funding to organizations, who help and represent victims of hate crime.
The head of the AfD in Thuringen Björn Höcke lost a defamation lawsuit, because the court ruled, that "fascist" is a factual description of him, rather than an insult. Multiple state organizations of the AfD are considered proven to be far right extremists by the interior intelligence, as well as the youth organization of the party. All of the party is considered to be suspect of being far right extremists.
Germany is facing the risk of a another fascist power grab, yet parties that claim to be liberal and conservative refuse to defend the democracy against them, likely hopeing for their own power options under a fascist government, as well as being worried of backlash for having helped the AfD by repeating and strenghtening their political positions and topics.
While you didn't state anything incorrect, the debate is more complicated than that. E.g. Habeck from the greens (vice chancellor) said to consider the consequences should such a proposal fail. I think such a failure would have very much the opposite effect and strengthen the AFD and right wing positions in Germany in general. The probability of success needs to be carefully considered before going ahead with the popular request.
The Tagesschau wrote
Bundeswirtschaftsminister Robert Habeck äußerte sich in der Debatte nun aber zurückhaltend und warnte vor den Folgen, sollte ein solches Verfahren scheitern.
While that may be right, what good is it to have the concept of a well-fortified Democracy with laws aimed to prevent exactly what's happining right now and then not use it! The whole "The NPD shouldn't be banned, because it's to insigificant" and "The AfD can't be banned because it's to big" arguement is so bloody stupid.
If a party does break laws, and I'd say the AfD does so plenty, then they should be banned. Everything else makes a mockery of the whole state. Not to mention that it's also very dangerous.
To quote Erich Kästner:
"The events from 1933 to 1945 should have been combated by 1928 at the latest. Later it was too late. We must not wait until the fight for freedom is called treason. We must not wait until the snowball has turned into an avalanche. You have to crush the rolling snowball. No one can stop the avalanche. It will only stop when it has buried everything underneath it."
It's high time to fight the AfD with the necessary vigor now! And that requires all parties to stand together. But of course the fucking conservatives again play right into the hand of the Facists.
Which is distinctly different, from the statementsade bei CDU/CDU, FDP and FW.
I disagree with this argument though. Nobody that feels aligned with the positions of the AfD or is fenerally against democracy will not vote them necause they might be illegal. Instead i often see and hear the argument their positions are legitimate as theyd otherwise be forbidden.
They simply do not derive their voting potential from people who care for rational consideration. The AfD works by emotionalizing and deceiving.
So it wont get much worse if the court case should fail. Also it is not something that was empirically observeable with other failed cases of forbidding parties in Germany.
On the other hand it might very well be too late after this years elections as the AfD could take over state governments, have enough power in many muncipal governments and in the Bundesrat (federal council) to block everything from moving forward. They do not lose politically from things not working. Instead they win even more and can radicalize even more. Also if they take power over state polices, prosecutors and the interior intelligence, it will be impossible to collect more evidence on their fascist and anticonstitutional activities.
What we see now is similiar to the appeasement we saw in the 30s. It is weak minded politicians reluctant to take action. But this doesnt work with fascists. There is never enough for them. They will always become more radical, more violent and more powerhungry.
I'd say the biggest risk isn't losing the case, it can be made sufficiently water-tight as what yardsticks the court will use to judge are known, it's not a new area of law, the biggest risk is banning the party and then failing to address the concerns of the precariat whose legitimate feelings of betrayal and abandonment the AfD's electoral successes are based on.
I definitely have my issues with Waga Zarenknecht but big picture, yes, by and large that's the exact kind of representation the precariat needs, a thing Die Linke never managed because a) just as the SPD, where they're in government (or close to) they're bound to the labour aristocracy and b) they lacked focus.
We already see tens of thousands protest in the streets. The "silent majority" finally has enough?
As a possible side effect of a failure to ban the party could put the constitutional court in the spotlight, as a target of said majority. It might be not politically correct (for politicians) to criticise court rules, but the people is very well allowed to send a friendly reminder to the judges to do their damn job, l guess.
Du brauchst halt auch ein Zitat, das nicht von einem lokalen Hinterbänkler kommt.
Z.B. vom aktuellen Bundesvorsitzenden Chrupalla: „Die Presse ist unser Gegner. Die Feindpropaganda muss durch Änderung von Gesetzen in die Schranken gewiesen werden. Auch das Grundgesetz ist nicht in Stein gemeißelt.“
Die Einbürgerung Adolf Hitlers, der bis 1925 österreichischer Staatsbürger war, in das Deutsche Reich erfolgte am 25. Februar 1932 durch den von DNVP und NSDAP regierten Freistaat Braunschweig.
To be fair to Germany, Hitler was the clash of two trains of thought. Should you punish a country for the crimes of its ruling class through fines and territory claims?
In medieval eras the country was property of the kings and the peasants were their rightful "tools", so punishing them was seen as fair, which is where the Versailles peace agreement came from.
In modern eras, the country belongs to no one and the ruling class is just that, the ruling class. Punishing people or taking land is seen poorly in international courts, regardless of what the country did in the war.
Hitler came to power because of how the allies treated the Germans after WW1. Had the allies implemented a restructuring plan, like it happened with Japan and Germany post WW2, instead of implementing border gore and impossible to pay fines, Hitler would have never been able to do anything, seeing as he was significantly unpopular. But if you trap a population between an impossible choice, this is what you get.
So you see, Germany couldn't have produced anything. The right wing might see a substantial representation increase in the parliament because current parties have been incompetent in handling migration over the last 10 years and refuse to listen, but the conditions that caused Hitler's rise to power are not currently met. Not even close.
Which is why i think you are not right in this matter.
Banning AfD would be incredibly stupid. Votes are a representation of concerns in a population. Ignoring the issues causing the votes and banning a party does not remove the concerns, just our visibility of them.
Europe in general needs to either drastically improve the integration mechanisms for migrants or reduce migrant throughput to levels which the current existing mechanisms are capable of handling. The current methods of just ignoring the problem and not giving a crap is clearly not being effective and thinking this is just a problem of ideology is exactly what's wrong here.
Banning parties is irrelevant, banning nazi symbolism is irrelevsnt, cordon sanitaire is irrelevant, declaring fascism illegal is irrelevant. Those are symptoms and if we only treat symptoms the problem just changes faces.