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, lawyers, politicians and entrepreneurs – are also […]
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
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:
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.
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.
Based on experiences in the past with Neofacist parties it could take up to 5 years to ban the party.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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).