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.
So, for the sake of argument, if AfD is banned would they not just became a paramilitary group?
What’s to stop them from devolving into something more ‘nefarious’ if they are stripped of political power?
What stoped the kpd? Or the groups that wanted to rebuild the NSDAP? Would you rather have them pull the strings instead? I mean yea a ban could be dangerous, but letting them take over the justice system, the finances and police of Germany seems like a horrible second option.
I’m guessing they’d still be under observation after they get banned because of exactly that and I also think there’s steep step between political engagement and serious criminal activity.
But that gets decided by a court and as a German I think the judiciary is the most trustworthy of the three powers. I think if it even comes to that they deal with the motion in a sensitive way.
We, Germans, cannot allow 30 Jan 1933 to 08 May 1945 to repeat itself. Also, the communists in “Die Linke” can go straight to hell with the neo-Nazis.
Fuck you trying to separate the left. That’s what happened last time and that’s what didn’t work last time.
What are you talking about lol
or sell thüringen and bayern to the lowest bidder…would work for me.
LOL! The damn Austrians would snap up Bayern. As far as Thüringen goes, break it up equally for the neighboring provinces to govern.
Exactly what we need: more social division. Good job.
Social division is quite the euphemism for racism.
The nazis thought they did a great job uniting society, but then again so did Stalin and Mao.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I dont know, you’d have to ask someone who believes that.
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
I think their party should be banned and all funds currently donated and accounts related should be redirected to counter facism efforts and education.
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.
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.
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
There is nothing to add. Well said!
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.
As an aside, I can’t be the only one annoyed by the choice to expand “AfD” to “Alternative for Germany” instead of “Alternative for Deutschland” right? I really think the best solution to this is that we all agree that AfD should fuck off into oblivion. Sound good? Great!
Alle Artikel über Deutschland sollten auf Deutsch verfasst sein. Wenn Sie etwas über Deutschland erfahren möchten, lernen Sie Deutsch.
while I appreciate the the iel jokes, this is the wrong subject. Nothing to laugh about piece of rotting shit Nazis.
“Germany” is called “Deutschland” is Germany, so using “Deutschland” has nothing to do with Nazis. You’re focusing on the wrong thing, which actually is the only thing that isn’t necessarily Nazi.
Your reading comprehension is non-existent.
Learn to better explain yourself.
You’re not replying to the original comment poster
Then I take back my words in shame.
Please. People say they’re too big now, but there has to be a right size. In Canada, at least, hate groups are always too popular and established to challenge, or too small to bother with.
Zero? Yep, that seems like the right size.
Lol, that’s not the best wording on my part. Right size to shut them down.
NeveragainFar-right parties’ main goal is excluding people from society so they should be fully okay when they’re the ones being excluded.
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.
Banning AfD is the best short term solution, it needs to be followed by a stronger social focus of the government.
One reason for conservative and right-wing sentiment is fear of the future in the populace. Fear causes people to try to isolate themselves from “others” and wanting to horde and protect their stuff instead of supporting others.
If the government is able to alleviate those fears, they will not see a need for fear anymore. But that is a long process, which constantly gets sabotaged by commercial outrage media, foreign intervention, social media, conservative/right-wing politicians, etc.
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 can’t, but Germany has always had at least 20% nazis and fascists all throughout its post war history.
Up till recently, they didn’t vote, or voted conservative, because there was no other option. So they didn’t actually threaten democracy all that much.
Banning the AfD won’t reduce the number of fascists, but it will close one avenue they have for destroying the state.
You stop allowing the lies and disinformation to spread, that’s how!
Germany did it after WWII. They can do it again.
Did they do it, though? Eg. the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency) and BKA (Federal Criminal Bureau, the federal investigative police) are somewhat notorious for having a bit of a neo-Nazi problem, and they’re not the only German federal or state entities with the same issue (see eg. this article about the BfV and BKA. Edit: PBS report about neo-Nazi infiltration in German security forces).
It’s not an uncommon view that denazification wasn’t entirely successful. Hell, they even have a word for the sort of rushed “washing clean” of Nazi officials that was done: Persilschein, “Persil ticket” (Persil is a detergent brand).
I’d argue that if denazification had really succeeded, the AfD and others like it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.
“Not entirely successful” and “not 30% of the population” are two very different things.
I’d be inclined to think that going from 30% to 20% is worse than “not entirely successful” (assuming AfD voters in general are at the very least somewhat sympathetic to fascist views, which really doesn’t seem like an unfair assumption)
20% is still better than 30%. Less momentum in the movement; more chance of discouraging others from pursuing it.
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There is a difference between conservatism and being a threat to the democratic order. Germany has conservative parties that are perfectly valid, it’s just that the AfD is not one of them.
Valid for democracy, but not valid for the problems we’re facing (i.e. most importantly climate-change)
Killing the head of a terrorist organization won’t help if you don’t fix the underlying issues.He will be replaced in short order, usually by someone worse. Likewise this kind of political movement.
What the left in Europe (well in my country at least) still doesn’t understand is that they’re not going to fix this by lecturing the populist voters about how all their thoughts and ideas are wrong.
I agree, that this move is mostly about getting some time and deeper issues still need to be addressed. However, by law, if the party is banned so are followup parties.
What the left in Europe (well in my country at least) still doesn’t understand is that they’re not going to fix this by lecturing the populist voters about how all their thoughts and ideas are wrong.
I do not agree with this sentiment though. Because for a big part their thoughts and ideas are just wrong (e.g. scientific denial (like climate or vaccinations) or hate against certain groups). We cannot say ‘well they have a point’ when they simply don’t have shit.
I agree with you that there’s no need to pretend fascists have a valid point. But those who would reason with them fail to understand that fascists are beyond caring whether they have a valid point or not. They are simply determined to have things their way. While we try to educate fascists about where they’re mistaken, they will smirk and load their guns. To them it’s funny that others are so stuck on argument when you can just use violence to get what you want. They see this attachment to argument as weakness and stupidity, and they know what to do with the weak and stupid.
That said, whether banning the party would help depends on how committed their voters are to the fascist cause, and I’m not familiar with the scene in Germany. Maybe if there are many who are just disgruntled but not particularly committed, putting obstacles in the party’s way could buy time to turn them away. But people get sucked in quickly because fascist groups know how to make people feel they belong, pander to their egos, and rapidly program their prejudices while persuading them everyone else is lying. It has cultish aspects, so there has to be a plan for how to deprogram people from a cult.
As long as it is a political party it is entitled to double digit millions every year in state party financing.
If it is forbidden, it cannot be refounded with the same people and ideology and their wealth is seized.
It ia not comparable to “terrorist” organizations, that dont need to abide by some rules of the dominant order in order to be active.
The democratic system should not actively finance and aid those who want to destroy it.
Finally the ideology is legitimised every time it can be voted for legally, as it shows the ideology to be considered part of the acceptable political plurality
Killing the head of a terrorist organization won’t help if you don’t fix the underlying issues.
And yet we don’t allow terrorist organizations to campaign for office, officially and supported by tax money, in our societies.
There is a difference between conservatism and being a threat to the democratic order.
I’m not sure I agree. More and more it’s started seeming like they’re generally just waiting for a moment to drop their masks; eg. here in Finland now that we have a fully right wing government, our “fiscally conservative” party started their term off by limiting the right to strike, and is now echoing extremist right wing talking points about eg. immigration, LGBT+ people, and the environment. They were OK with an extremist right wing minister leaving us out of Ukraine’s “Alliance for Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery” because the plan mentioned LGBT+ people, and they stood in the way of banning abusive LGBT+ “conversion therapy” even though they claimed to be against it back when they still had to be in a government with leftist parties (sorry, couldn’t find an English source for this but here is one in Finnish. For translation I’d suggest DeepL, it’s vastly superior to eg. Google). They are also blaming the opposition for “besmirching” Finland’s reputation abroad, meaning they don’t want anyone pointing out that we have literal neo-Nazis in the government and parliament.
Banning the party isn’t going to help.
Yes it will. It’ll mean it won’t be standing in elections, and that’s only fair because it’s an anti-democratic party… and it will deprive its members of broad protections afforded to parties and remove a unifying banner for them.
Banning anti-democratic institutions in a democracy is not only justified, it is conducive to the democracy’s survival. It lifts the bar for getting rid of democracy to be equivalent to not winning in an election but by establishing a second monopoly on violence, a far greater threshold and attempts at which are more straightforward to deter, prosecute and stamp out than being within every TikTok user’s first few swipes.
There’s nothing that prevents AfD voters from going to other parties, there’s plenty, or to voice their concerns in a new party that can be a legitimate part of the democratic system. Changing parties isn’t like banning a religion or a creed or a race, a party is hardly more than just a banner, the power of which can change between and during elections, at any time, through a simple act of the mind. Banning the party will absolutely help.
It sends a good message. It doesn’t send a message of wanting the silence the concerns of those who voted for the AfD in anything but the short term, it sends the message of ‘we hear you, but try again… a bit less fascist-y please’.
Note that I’m not saying the AfD shouldn’t be banned, just that banning it won’t make the people who vote for it and run it any less, well, fascist.
There’s nothing that prevents AfD voters from going to other parties, there’s plenty, or to voice their concerns in a new party that can be a legitimate part of the democratic system. Changing parties isn’t like banning a religion or a creed or a race, a party is hardly more than just a banner, the power of which can change between and during elections, at any time, through a simple act of the mind. Banning the party will absolutely help.
And that’s the thing; because the people who support AfD won’t change just because their party gets banned, how likely do you think it is that they’ll realize they need to be a legitimate part of a democratic system instead of what they’ve been doing all along?
banning it won’t make the people who vote for it and run it any less, well, fascist.
Correct. But it’s no supposed to do that. Banning a fascist party doesn’t solve every problem of a divided society, but it prevents the worst (a fascist party seizing power) and gives us time (and the chance!) to solve some of the others.
There’s basically no other option. Either a society has effective rules against fascism in place or it will stand idly by while being undermined. And if it has these effective rules, it must abide by them. ‘Fascists should not be allowed to rule the country’ seems to be a reasonable lower limit.
There will always be a subsection og the population that adheres to fascist ideas. For a liberal democracy to function, these ideas have to be ostracized to make sure that no fascist party can establish itself in a major way. Some far-right voters will vote for minor far-right parties, some will vote for more moderate conservative parties and some won’t vote at all. The key is to keep them from uniting while appearing moderate enough to win over some more moderate voters.
In Thailand they ban the major progressive party after nearly every election. Usually they’ve already formed another party even before the ban comes down. Often the party leaders are excluded but it doesn’t achieve much and creates the perception that they’re persecuted.
In Germany, political parties have been banned successfully, both the far-right Socialist Reich Party and the far-left Communist Party. While successor parties were formed, these were less extreme, at least in public, and less successful.
While the AfD is bigger than either of these parties, it still doesn’t poll any higher than 20%. Furthermore, polls indicate that the vast majority of those who don’t support the AfD, believe it shouldn’t be anywhere near power. No other party in Germany receives that level of rejection from those who don’t support it.
If you tried to ban a party with wider appeal, it would probably fail, but with the AfD it may succeed.
Like I stated in another comment banning them won’t be a solution but it will harm them and the fascist movement (just cutting their funding will do a lot).
But yes there’s a bigger problem with the growing right-wing tendencies in the society that needs more than this to be addressed
Banning a party has significant affects on far-right organizations and money-streams. Much of their propaganda will become impossible to finance and any successor parties are automatically banned as well. Fascist voters cannot become disillusioned without a ban. Their beliefs are as solid as a flat-earther or anti-vaxer and only destroying their echo chamber has a chance to take them out.
And that’s a symptom of media and social media echo chambers.
Isn’t there a lot of dirt on them? Starting with pushing for more strict laws against foreign influence and funding, covert fascism, and then dragging them (and anybody else akin to them) through courts until they are non-existent is how it should have been done a long time ago imho. Just a cold, inorganic machine of beaurocracy grinding them into a ground meat without any possible objection due to biases.
It’s being done, but the party itself never crosses a hard line into fascism. Individual party members do, even up to ministerial level in the few states where they got sufficient votes to have some official functions, but then the party distances itself from those individuals and kicks them out. That way they have taken official responsibility and are immune to prosecution themselves.
Good.
A ban is incredibly hard. Not impossible, but hard. And even if, it won’t solve the actual problem. The AfD maintained the image of a protest party and to this day people believe this crap. A great way to cut their votes in half would be educating the population so they understand that protest is good but voting for fascist scum is not.
A ban is incredibly hard. Not impossible, but hard.
Not in Germany. Spreading Nationalist or Nazi-adjacent views is a crime in Germany. the AfD not only should be banned, but many of those those involved in it should be arrested and face criminal charges for spreading Nazism. It’s literally just a matter of enforcing the law.
And even if, it won’t solve the actual problem.
It’ll solve a large part of the problem.
A great way to cut their votes in half would be educating the population so they understand that protest is good but voting for fascist scum is not.
Germany is extremely highly educated. If you want to send a message to Nazis, start throwing them in prison until the rest get the message and fuck off.
I feel like history could teach us something. How many times have banned ideologies thrived? A lot of people assume the party doing the silencing is in the wrong.
Too little, too late. You can’t ban a 30% party and expect democracy to hold.
You can’t let Nazis exist and expect democracy to hold.
Very noble, but we are at an inconsistency here. Democracy is also incompatible with not allowing people to vote. We have to get a better solution or this will explode in our faces.
The last time they tried to ban a party in Germany was the NPD (another Nazi party) and at the end the Supreme Court decided the reason not to ban them, even though they were clearly unconstitutional , was because they were to few/insignificant (in the end they banned them from receiving party funding which still has a massive effect).
So you couldnt ban them because they were to small and you can’t ban the AfD because they’re to big? Just because enough people vote for a party doesn’t mean they’re not unconstitutional.
Of course you can.
“Sorry, the Nazis are at 30%, nothing we can do. We’ll just die then.”
- What you said.
- You really should.
- You need to make sure to educate people so that they don’t fall prey to populist assholes.
- Politicians need to address people’s needs and fears instead of whatever the hell our current government is doing at the moment.
