Germany’s Social Democratic Party says first legal steps should be taken to ban the far-right AfD party as unconstitutional. Conservative lawmakers are less keen on the idea.
A number of Germany’s conservative lawmakers have called for a cautious approach after the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the junior coalition partner, on Sunday passed a motion calling for preparations to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The debate on whether to ban the AfD, which forms the strongest opposition force in parliament, has gained momentum after it was reclassified by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency in May as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” group — an assessment that is now under court review after a legal challenge by the party.
It’s a very American viewpoint to believe that sentiments just spring up organically with no influence from political leaders and their role in the whole process is to take opinion polls and only then decide what they believe.
Taking away the microphones of hate-mongers doesn’t make hate cease to exist, but it pushes it back into the shadows and cuts off an avenue for it to breed. The US would be a less hateful and less fascist place if Donald Trump was in prison. Leaders can drive the conversation and mainstream fringe ideas. The Democratic establishment just chooses not to.
Gigachad Romania
Ban them, and make a sweet, sweet deal with Nayib Bukkake in El Salvador to house these terrorists in CECOT. He’s still smarting from being called out for housing innocent Venezuelans in that concentration camp, plus he needs the money real bad.
Yeah, guess what? We should have banned them long before they became the “strongest opposition force in parliament”. Now that they poll over 20%, of course its tricky. Who would have thought?
Yeah. Previously it would have been seen as banning an extremist party. Now it would be seen as election tampering.
We just had elections, now is the time.
Do the Murdoch’s have their media empire setup there too? If so Lachlan is your problem and the solution is an Italian plumber. Really the crux of any solution is almost certainly a plumber.
Not really but we have Springer which isn’t much better
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Döpfner
I was genuinely surprised not to see a link about his father(professor?) or grandfather(dunno, I was expecting SS and with citations). Non-jewish Zionist was also surprising.
Then further down his wife is the daughter of a Deutsch Bank exec and his son is Peter Thiel’s chief of staff. So yes you have a plumbing issue.
Banning thought never works. Find why people are upset. Analyse it. Find a solution.
They can do more than one thing though. Germany should be able to treat both the root cause as well as the acute symptoms.
Agree. However, banning a party, who represents a huge portion of the country is just going to make things worse.
The party exists for probably only certain issues for most people. Not far right issues at all. However, they are also covering those base issues, and the other parties are not.
So, find these issues. Discuss them honestly. Find a solution.
It will make things significantly better in the short term.
Their entire infrastructure would immediately crumble. Nothing could be re-used. All successor parties would be banned automatically.
This means basically all their high ranking members are permanently banned from joining or collaborating with any future political party.
I don’t think I need to elaborate why this would set far right organizations back significantly.
Yeah, but in the meantime ban them because otherwise the accumulate power and that makes it even harder to change the underlying systems.
Just ask the US how it’s going for US act when you can…
Well you don’t ban the thought you ban them from assuming political positions and from taking government funding. They may have nazi thoughts which you can’t stop them from having but you don’t need to finance their plots to overthrow democracy and murder political opponents and ethnically cleanse the country.
Of course a .lm account would advise against banning that fascist party. A process that is, btw., completely within the the lines of democracy.
While I agree with the goal, this doesn’t make the underlying voter sentiment go away. What is the German government doing to address the underlying reasons for AFD’s rise? Regardless of their veracity, those thoughts are prevalent enough to cause this problem. While they might lessen, they won’t simply go away with the party if it’s banned. They have to be addressed, one way or another. I’m in the US, and I would argue that, out side of his base, most Trump voters don’t like the guy at all. Yet the Democrats’ “We’re not them” message has so far not been an consistent winner!
This completely ignores the fact that the AfD is a key part of encouraging that sentiment. They get paid tax money to promote hate and undermine democracy. Millionaires get tax credit by funding them. Media is forced to give them space. All this ends when they’re banned. Will the same people try again and again? Yes, but democracy is about fighting again and again for your rights.
Outlaw tax credit to political parties. Outlaw hatespeech and enforce it. Outlaw media monopolies and promote healthy journalists that will challenge the ideas expressed on their station.
I think most of us are struggling with this issue, but I’m really not sure what to do about it. Is banning them outright bad? Maybe? I just don’t know.
We’re all stuck in a planet scale tolerance paradox, and I don’t think any current solution is particularly convincing or palatable.
In the early 90s something similar happened in Belgium (1).
What lessened the extremism in the following couple of elections was investment (in infrastructure, healthcare, economic opportunities, etc) outside of the cities as well.
It turned out that for every tax frank gathered, 80 cents were spend on prettifying the larger cities and the major port. People were mostly (rightly?) pissed off that government represented a terrible ROI for the same group of people for decades. They would’ve been better of without a federal government. They saw their lives get worse, whilst at the same time that government applauded themselves for the great things they achieved.
I’m not sure how feasible the same solution is today, as there’s very little investment budget anyways. Most of tax revenue goes to pensions and healthcare of a reversed population pyramid.
Peoples opinions are very much shaped by social pressure.
those thoughts are prevalent enough to cause this problem.
Can take people out of the soviet, but can’t take soviet out of the people (1).
Sadly it’s a system of thought that isn’t concerned with observable reality. It’s a sentiment I recognise in most (political) extremists: the idea that your problems must be someone else’s fault (the brown, women, billionairs, … pick your poison).
And, as you noticed, banning it will indeed only validate that sentiment.
(I grew up in DDR, luckily left in early 90s. A solution is therapy, as those people are stuck in generational trauma, which is known to lessen or completely void you of empathy. But that doesn’t scale to halve a country).
Exactly. This is a bandaid / plaster.
Deal with the real problem. Be honest about why people are upset. Let them actually speak their minds without judgement. Then, analyse it. Find solutions.
Banning a social movement of this scale is madness.
Deal with the real problem. Be honest about why people are upset. Let them actually speak their minds without judgement. Then, analyse it. Find solutions.
Exactly. The solution to people saying “Foreigners are taking our jobs” is not to outlaw saying “Foreigners are taking our jobs” (though the AfD has done enough other things that warrant a ban), it’s not to get rid of foreigners, it’s not even to create more jobs. It’s to make sure that people have at least their most important needs (housing, food, transport, access to information, basic entertainment) covered even with a part-time job or no job at all. Instead the CDU/CSU tries to brand everyone who doesn’t work 60 hours per week until they’re 70 as lazy. Guess what? There are way more people out there who would like to work but can’t (for whatever reason) than ones who actively try to cheat the system. And no increase of weekly working time, no mandatory Excel training for unemployed people and no right-shift of politics will solve that.
Show people that the left and center are able to provide what they need and they will have no reason to blame minorities for their problems.
Billionares existing while people are forced to slave away practically all of their life is obscene. For billionaires to then go on to use that wealth to do anything and everything to the point of wearing down the fabric of society and fundamentally disrupting peace just to perpetuate this system is maddening and unacceptable. It’s on leftist parties to fix this problem peacefully.
Show people that the left and center are able to provide
I wonder if they can, with the reversed population pyramid most EU countries experience.
The capitalist class can’t make the machine run without unnecessary suffering and death. They used to be able to keep it out of sight in the global South and Asia. Through greed, they kept bringing more and more to the global West. Too many westerners still handwave it away and bury their heads, but as population, and thus unnecessary suffering and death increases, so too the population that doesn’t look away and entertain themselves to stop thinking and talking about it. We are a threat, so expect worsening conditions to be rapidly escalated. That said, hold hope and keep working for a more equitable day.
The voter sentiment that got them this far isn’t going to go away, is it?
Also doesn’t help that SPD betrays their voters every chance they get, consistently as long as I can remember. Hallo geht raus an cum-ex würfel Olaf
A sentiment that wants to end democracy has no right to participate in that democracy. Yes, that sentiment has to be fought with ideas as well. But Germany knows too well from history that a democracy can be ended through democratic means. That is why these instruments were implemented in the first place.
I concur with other comments, you can’t wish voters away.
