Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week classified the largest opposition party, the AfD, as “confirmed right-wing extremist.” This has intensified debates over whether or not to ban the party.
On Friday, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was classified as “confirmed right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Now, there has been a first fallout: two AfD politicians and parliamentarians are not allowed to accompany Hesse’s Minister for European affairs, Manfred Pentz, on a trip to Serbia and Croatia. Pentz explained that he could not expect international partners “to sit down at the same table with representatives of a party that has been confirmed as right-wing extremist.”
Further measures also threaten the radical right-wing party: several federal states want to examine whether being a civil servant, including judges, police officers, teachers, or soldiers, is still compatible with being a member of the AfD.
Germanst will ban every group protesting against genocide before they ban the people doing a Nazi salute.
Banning the AfD is just not enough - right-wing extremism doesn’t disappear if you ban the party. We need policies that improve the populations state of living to avoid them falling for another populist party.
It’s a start though. As long as they can’t legally get elected, they can’t change the system from the inside. The NSDAP was a legally elected party.
Sure, but it’s a bandaid, not a long-term solution.
The other way around, banning AfD is a very harmful thing to do.
The good thing to do would be to put its important figures in jail for mafia activity, which would also lead to many people outside of AfD, be a non-conditional improvement for the society and kill that party very quickly.
There is that mafia activity and it will be found if it’s looked for.
Ban the shit out of these fascists mfers.
That’s what we needed to do with MAGA.
Fuck no!
They’re self-identifying.
We needed to execute Trump for treason, then everyone with a Maga had should have been tracked for life as potential security threats.
Trump should serve as a warning. Get the fascists before they get you. These far-right parties will all be looking to emulate Trump’s actions if they get a sniff of power.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but they already got us
Good thing nothing is permanent in politics.
The fall of democracy in USA could have reset the 250 years countdown, so even if what you have said is true we might have to wait another 250 years.
Is the 250 year countdown how long societies are supposed to last or am I missing something?
Specifically for empires it’s their average lifespan.
That’s what we needed to do with the Republican Party. They’re one and the same at this point.
While I don’t disagree with you in principle, the reality of having only 1 political party after this also doesn’t look particularly good.
Ideally if it happened the dems would just become the right wing party and other actually left wing parties would appear. But with how screwed up the election system is in America we’d just end up in same place 😭
It’s likely to blow-back domestically. Like other countries around the world, Germany’s far right nationalist party has strong domestic support right now. This may silence some politicians, bit t doesn’t address the underlying issues, nor the reasons that ppl are wandering towards fascism.
My opinion is that general failures of liberal parties to actually make life better, and reduce corruption. People have lost faith.
“My opinion is that general failures of liberal parties to actually make life better, and reduce corruption. People have lost faith.”
They absolutely have lost both faith and hope. Our institutions lack integrity.
I think that is the global phenomenon
Never in my life hage I known people (in Germany, but probably everywhere) to he happy with politics. I would also argue that for the vast majority (again, here in Germany) life has improved over the past decades.
IMO the reason for right wing surges aren’t actual real-world problems or failings of ruling parties (though flawed they are), but the new forms of propaganda and outreach that right wing parties have mastered, and left wing parties have failed at.
I would say it more like “forms of propaganda (lies) that extreme right wing parties are willing to stoop to that left wing parties are not”.
I don’t live in Germany, so won’t disagree. I think that propaganda wouldn’t work if people weren’t already looking for someone to blame.
Germany decommissioned their nuclear plants for being scary with wind apparently being the future despite not having 100% uptime, and then spent a half a trillion dollars trying to generate power when they got cut off from Russia.
While all this is happening they lower barriers to immigration to depress salaries to try to counteract the inflation they caused, then you wonder why people are turning to the right. If I lived there I’d be miserable as well, these people running the country are incompetent. Trying to ban political the party for anti-immigration and trying to link them to the nazi party and is further idiocy, the party was created when Germany brought in a million poor refugees. If Germany managed integration better it would not even exist, there should just be a cap on country of origin like the US has, Germany does have a culture that is worth attempting to maintain.
Here is the kind of comment I was referring to. General distrust leads to propaganda like targeting connecting general incompetence to anger inducing “enemy” targeting.
All of the 1st world rely on immigration to keep population growth - but in Germany it has created an enemy? Here is how the ADD garners support.
All of the 1st world rely on immigration to keep population growth
No they don’t. They rely on them to meet skills shortages and sometimes use them to lower the going wage.
Killing nuclear was the biggest own goal in political history.
They literally made themselves economically dependent on their worse enemy.
Big brain move right there.
They have strong domestic support because they have been poisoning the public debate with always jumping on migration and inventing stories as well as blowing things out of proportion and the media and other parties playing along. The more politics shifted to the right because of the AfD, the stronger the AfD became.
Their ideas and the way they conduct themselves was normalized, so people approve of it, because they think it is normal and legitimate. If you make it clear that it is neither, it will defuse the far right. Also by banning them, their organizations are dismantled, their politicians thrown out of power and their assets seized.
If you want to stop a fire you need to stop fueling it with self-igniting fuel. Only then can you extinguish the fire.
It’s the same shit as the economist arguing against le pen being banned from running in France. Heaven forbid she and her party broke the fucking law and are being held accountable. They think the public somehow knows better.
Newsflash- we have laws for a reason. Laws without punishment are useless and so is a government that refuses to respect them. They will sow their own destruction with abdication.
The Germans have gone through their MAGA phase already though, so the hope has always been they’d have their shit sorted if it happened again. Here’s hoping that proves to be true.
2025: AfD is banned
2026: New party is forned, Germans for an Alternative, or Deutsch für eine Alternative (DfA)
🙃
(You know what this means: The only good nazi is a dead one)
If they are banned they cant form a party or join another party again, this is by law
It still sucks up a lot of their money and disables funding through taxes for a time
Any follow up organization is also banned. So if a new organization forms it will be much easier to see if they are a follow up organization and dissolve it right away.
You can’t just “dissolve” fascism though. Until the underlying problem is fixed it’ll keep resurfacing.
Yes and until then we will ban them so they don’t ger funding from the state they want to destroy.
I’d love to see a conversation of smart people discussing how we solve the underlying problems of fascism
Solve anxiety. The hatred, the desire to put down others, all that is caused by anxiety short-circuiting people’s minds, acting on, put very hand-wavily, reptilian instead of higher mammalian instincts, including social ones1. Without underlying anxieties fascism has nothing to latch onto, and nothing to make even worse so it can propagate and perpetuate itself.
Key anxieties to address nowadays, and feel free to add your own, are economical security, “will I be poor in the future”, as well as social alienation, “can people be trusted”. Both require overcoming neoliberalism. Also, yes, solve anxieties regarding the future of the planet but that’s more about saving the planet so we may continue to live on it than anti-fascism for the simple reason that eco-fascism is overall negligible as a political force.
How? First of all, stop acting from anxiety.
1 Is that where the “lizard people” thing comes from?
Propaganda feeds the anxiety. We have to understand that propaganda is not free speech, and shut it down.
The other big source of anxiety is the capitalist tendency to drive working people into a situation of precariousness so that they remain compliant. Mitigating that requires a social safety net similar to that provided in northern-tier social democracies.
Exactly this happened with the extreme right in Flanders (Belgium). They were convicted for racism and promptly refounded themselves under a new name.
Ineffectual regulation doesn’t work. There needs to be more resolve.
And where are they now?
Still being kept out of government roles, still being dangerously big. Last municipal election they got an absolute majority in one town and got included in one or two coalitions. Last Flemish elections, they were tied as the biggest party with about 25%. While the other big party is also right wing Flemish nationalist btw
The problem I see is people accepting to form coalitions with them. That is centrist (read: milder fascist) behavior.
That’s what fascism is about. Do not tolerate them, do not reason with them. Ban them and (if necessary) kill them.
deleted by creator
Please germany, please be based 🥺❤️ (and bad the asdf)
It will only serve to make AfD supporters even more convinced they are right. The leaders of the party might stay quiet but they are not that important, nobody on the top really believes their own ideology.
But the perception of being silenced by the government is a great motivator for those who feel emotionally connected to those ideas which seems to be about 20% of the German voters.
Do you reason with pedophiles, trying to convince them of why what they do is wrong?
Or do you at least stop them from getting material and close to kids first?
It will only serve to make AfD supporters even more convinced they are right.
Caring what the fascists think is a recipe for failure. All they respect is power. You don’t persuade them, the best you can do is behavior modification.
This only works if fascists are not the majority. But they are.
The often mentioned “silent majority” are actually latent fascists who were previously apathetic. They are awake now and have the momentum, the cultural power, and the dominant position in public discourse. Any move that validates them is dangerous.The often mentioned “silent majority” are actually latent fascists who were previously apathetic.
You saw the silent majority on the streets when that “remigration” talk leaked out of closed AfD circles: The streets were literally not big enough to contain them. 70% oppose any other party going in coalition with them (unsurprisingly, the rest are AfD, BSW, or FDP voters), about half want to see them banned, which is a question more nuanced than “I want them gone”.
I guess that after a ban, the BSW could gobble up most of that support for them. And while Wagenknecht is a clown and at least veering towards Nazbol she’s far less of a danger to democracy.
They’re convinced they’re right regardless of what we do. You can’t reason with people like that.
Precisely. They’re going to be claiming to be victims regardless. You don’t reason with that.
It will only serve to make AfD supporters even more convinced they are right.
So let them.
At the very least it will buy us a few years before the next far-right party establishes itself. Don’t see the downside.
nobody on the top really believes their own ideology
Source?
But the perception of being silenced
They are constantly invited to talk shows, news interviews, get frontpages of national magazines etc. and they are still convinced they are silenced.
