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.
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.
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:
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
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:
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:
Which (if you don’t know German) basically means
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.
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.