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.
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.
Occasionally the court gets political in the sense of avoiding ire and loss of trust from the people so they won’t be trying too hard to find reasons to not ban. By their own precedent it’s really a slam dunk case, anyway, what I’m saying is that they’re very very unlikely to use the opportunity to come up with new requirements.
And really the last time they came up with a new requirement the whole republic had a chuckle. “The NPD is unconstitutional but also politically irrelevant, it shouldn’t be banned because it doesn’t have any chance of achieving its goals” is humiliating to the Nazis, they can’t play martyrs, which is ultimately way more effective.
(The political stuff I’m referring to is e.g. not striking the incest law off the book after their ruling on preventive detention. The detention ruling was legally correct and important, but not very well-recieved because old mistakes meant that certain prisoners couldn’t be kept in lockup. The incest law, as-is, can’t be defended in a way that either justifies eugenics if applied equally (disabled folks have a greater chance of producing children with genetic defects than 1st generation incest) or is based on “ew, icky”, which is no basis for law (but how nature avoids incest). Had the cases been further apart they’d likely have struck the law down, simply saying that the state is free to set out to discourage and prevent incest but criminal law is too harsh a measure).
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.
failing to address the concerns of the precariat whose legitimate feelings of betrayal and abandonment the AfD’s electoral successes are based on.
A lot of those “legitimate feelings” are fabricated by the AfD. Fake news, as some orange ex- and likely future president of the USA would call them.
For the rest, I don’t see any politician having the guts to tell people the truth, that climate change, foremost, costs a lot of money and sacrifice. “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei”, and everybody will have to get used to a more frugal way of life. We need somebody willing to make a “blood, sweat and tears” narrative popular. I guess the majority of the people is ready, but the politicians are some years or decades behind on that matter.
A lot of those “legitimate feelings” are fabricated by the AfD.
There’s a fucking reason I said legitimate and not just feelings. The AfD didn’t cause precarious employment relations, it wasn’t the first to agitate against welfare recipients, it didn’t cause the lack of affordable housing, it didn’t come up with Hartz IV and unconstitutional sanction regimes. It didn’t set the policy of the established parties since reunification. 30% of the workforce are in precarious employment, not counting the unemployed mind you, about 12% never know anything else. More are afraid of landing there.
What the AfD did is direct those feelings in directions that suit them and not address the actual issues (according to their programme they even want to make it worse).
For the rest, I don’t see any politician having the guts to tell people the truth, that climate change, foremost, costs a lot of money and sacrifice.
No it doesn’t. Maybe from the rich when we finally get around to taxing private planes out of existence but not in general. Making sure that there’s proper public transit means not only that people don’t need to buy a new car, they can get rid of their old one, investing in district heating would mean that people don’t need to buy heat pumps and generally make building cheaper. A lot of climate measures have the opportunity to save money and simultaneously make the life of the precariat better. More vacation days means people won’t be annoyed if you tell them to take a train and ferry to Mallorca. I diagnose you with lack of political imagination.
That addresses the precariat. To address capital there’s another equation: Not investing now will mean magnitudes more of economical damage down the line. We literally can’t afford to do nothing.
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.
have enough power in many muncipal governments and in the Bundesrat (federal council) to block everything from moving forward.
Nah it doesn’t work that way, they’d need a majority both in the council and parliament and be in government to block things as any of the three can initiate proceedings on their own. Municipalities don’t get a say at all.
I meant they can block the passing of laws. They can kill civil society actors by denying funds on the muncipal level, like organizations against hate crime or artists, museums and other institutions that are critical of fascist politics. They can stack muncipal administrations, police, and state executive branches with their own people.
If they gain power in the states, they can block some federal legislation, fuck up state legislation and of course they will always blame it on the federal politics.
If they gain power in the muncipalities, they can effectively block the implementation of federal and state legislation and create fascist control on the local level.
Also as education is handled on state level, they can rearrange the teaching of history, ethics, religion and other subjects, to follow their ideology.
Even if a banning procedure is initiated then, it is much more difficult to get rid of them and repair the damage they have done by then, than if the government would act now.
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.
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.
Fun fact: Hitler tried to seize power in a coup in 1924, was arrested, sentenced to 5 years in prison, and his party banned.
1 year later he was set free, his party reinstated at his wish, and he wasn’t deported despite not being a German citizen at the time.
He could have never seized power without the support of conservatives who saw him as a valuable asset against communism.
And we’re fighting tooth and nail against it.
We literally just had the biggest street demonstrations since the protests against participating in Bush’s Iraq war.
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.
That is true, if all the history you’ve ever learned was the history that came in your highschool books. It’s a very simplistic take of a complex situation meant to be easily digestible by teenagers. I mean no offense.
Which is fine i suppose. If you think it’s fine for you, then it is and i am happy that you are satisfied. I understand not everyone shares my curiosity for ww2 political history, however, I am very much not a nazi. I’m not even right wing. It would be nonsensical to defend right wing extremist ideology.
Criticism of the treaty of Versailles has been thoroughly written by many non nazi historians from allied countries. It just doesn’t add much to the conversation to just write “nazi propaganda”. It’s not really an argument at all. No premises whatsoever. You could have just dropped your dislike because you feel you disagree and moved on.
Although i am very willing to read your thoughts if you could develop them a little more than that. I’m always willing to listen to a strong argument in favor of the treaty of Versailles and if you have a take i find insightful, perhaps even change my mind.
Are those high-school books you mentioned from the USSR? Because all my teachers ever told me was that the French were mean to the Germans. Oh and the biggest economic crisis to ever happen occurred around the same time, but that’s completely unrelated.
Truth is, it’s not fair to call that nazi propaganda anymore, for the simple reason that the west started singing the same song. US would have struggled to expand its influence if it were linked directly linked to the origin of the problem, which may have pushed Europe to communism, France would have had to execute so many ranked military, etc.
I’m probably a lot less educated on the matter than you (as you condescendingly pointed out), but if letting a country invade everyone around is somehow being too hard on them, idk what to tell you. The right thing would have been to enforce the treaty of Versailles properly, the harsh thing would have been to let the French soldier do to the Germans after ww1, what the Russians wanted to do after ww2. No Dolchstoßlegende after that.
Well, they said that they want to deport all people who are against their way to north africa, also people with a German heritage and pass. Would be 25 million people… (source is interview with corrective guy yesterday.)
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.“
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