Germany’s spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.
The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany’s constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an “intense and comprehensive” examination.
“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the BfV said on Friday.
Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.
As we say in Germany: Hope dies last
“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,”
Great news, but also ironic considering German uncritical support for Israel.
Also ironic is that banning political parties is not compatible with the free democratic order.
A democracy cannot exist when anti-democratic elements can seize power. In other words, violate the social contract and get your sorry fascist ass banned.
And banning opposition parties is anti-democratic. Can you think of any other German government that banned opposing political parties?
No. Banning opposition parties BECAUSE THEY ARE OPPOSITION PARTIES would be undemocratic. Banning opposition parties because they are anti democratic is not.
What you are saying is like “killing someone is murder”, while ignoring the fact that self defence is a thing that happens, is legal and is moral and IS NOT MURDER.
While you can argue that Individuals in the AfD are antidemocratic, I honestly do not see evidence for that on the general party level.
I read their program. Weird? Yes. Antidemocratic? No.
Paradox of tolerance and whatnot… It’s not ironic. Not only is it compatible, it is essential to its existence.
It’s anti-democratic no matter what paradox you want to try and spin it as.
This is one side who fears losing power trying to eliminate their political opponent who is rapidly gaining followers. It’s authoritarian, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s fascism. It’s LITERALLY WHAT THE NAZIS DID for crying out loud!
Democracy means the will of the people. The government banning the party that has the most supporters is the exact opposite of that.
No it’s not anti-democratic. The parties can’t ban the AFD only initiate the process. Whether the AFD is antidemocratic and a has the ability to undermine democracy is decided by the highest court. Precisely so they can’t just ban the opposition.
Banning political party is anti-democratic. When parties can initiate the process to ban other political parties, that’s anti-democratic.
When the party they’re trying to ban is also the most popular party with the people, that’s especially anti-democratic.
Banning political party is anti-democratic.
Except when it’s a nazi party. Don’t give nazis the time of day.
When the term Nazi has lost all meaning due to the left throwing it around at everything they don’t like, calling a party a “Nazi party” also means nothing and causes most people to just roll their eyes at you, and often actually look into what you’re so angry at. Maybe that’s why the AfD are gaining so many supporters?
Nothing in their policies on their website is even remotely “Nazi” adjacent.
What makes them “Nazis” in your opinion?
No existing democracy is absolute, and there’s a pretty strong argument it has to be that way.
What if I’m against immigration due to a housing bubble that is destroying the poor and dramatically increasing price to income ratios, am I a racist or a saint?
I think anyone with a brain can see that in many countries mass immigration is being used to depress wages and invert the phillips curve after QE, or to prop up GDP to avoid a technical recession in favor of a per-capita recession, which is for some reason not defined or acknowledged. It also clearly hurts the poor and benefits the rich via asset price inflation and higher rental income.
That would be a real argument, if the immigrants weren’t poor themselves and if they actually were bad for the economy as opposed to good.
The fact that you jumped in here like that in response to a barely-related comment about democracy makes me think racist.
Well I’ve just read Afd supporters posts about immigration. As far as being good or bad for the economy, I guess it depends if you hold assets that get inflated.
A landlord will definitely benefit, and that will definitely grow GDP; which left leaning people used to care about the poor rather than worshipping at the god of GDP. The fear of their own kind calling them a racist may have defeated that.
Suure, you’ve “just read” things.
What does it mean if a democracy bans a party that the voters want to elect? Better to ask what failure of the system made that party popular in the first place. We have a similar situation in the US fwiw.
We had the dixiecrats whose entire position was wholly unconstitutional.
We have them still, but we had them before too.
That’s a good parallel - AfD like the Dixiecrats and now the GOP MAGA base have a geographical stronghold (in this case the “new states” of former East Germany)
An alternate future without German reunification is interesting to imagine, ditto one without a Aus Civil War where the south just seceded
Basically.
If we’d let the south secede, we’d have a glorious north, but poor Mexico would have to deal with methed-up rednecks attacking every time college-football season ended.
