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.
If simply banning nazis from holding political power is enough for some of you to question, then you’re really not going to be ready for what you need to do to them once they get political power. Ban them now because y’all are far too soft to do what needs to be done if you don’t.
Don’t know what’s there to be so smug about. “Oh you would rather ban them in a constitutional process than to wait for them to seize power and fight a bloody civil war, or worse?” Yes please! I hope we all much prefer the first option.
Some of us are convinced this measure does nothing, and are unwilling to fight. It seems they only seem to oppose fascism when it can be done by magic.
Nothing? How can it do nothing? You could argue that it doesn’t do enough or not the right things, but if nothing else banning the party would obviously keep them out of the government at least for the next few years.
I dont know, you’d have to ask someone who believes that.
If you pass a law but never enforce it, the law does nothing. That’s assuming the Parliament could even pass it in a government that’s thick with AfD MPs.
That rather speaks for banning the AfD though. We have a law for banning fascist parties, so we should enforce it, or it truly would mean nothing.
Belling the Cat.
You have laws for banning use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations. These have been deployed most aggressively against Communists, Socialists, Islamists, and - post USSR - against Russian Nationalists. Currently, it is pro-Palestinian Jews who suffer the most from application of these laws.
The AfD is that its being fueled by a ton of right-wing media. It isn’t just a party springing from the soil ex nihilio. It is a consequence of right wing press flooding German society. And as the press builds support for the AfD, the AfD helps shield these press organs from censorship by the state. Its a self-replicating trend.
Can you ban a party that’s got a plurality of seats in the Parliament? Or will they be the ones banning you?
I mean, by all means, feel free to give it a shot. But it seems like you’re asking an elected government to do a thing it isn’t designed to do. MPs aren’t going to vote against themselves.
Of course. And it’s nonsensical to claim we cannot ban them, while worrying they could ban us. We can and we should, based on what you yourself wrote:
We have laws against undemocratic parties, so we should enforce them.
But it is designed to do exactly that. That’s like a core mechanism of our democracy.
The only way to argue we shouldn’t ban the AFD is if you claim that they somehow should be exempt from our mechanisms against fascism. They were enforced before, they will be enforced again. And the AFD fits the bill in every way.
Who is going to pull the trigger? Point to the opposition leader willing and able to try and dismantle a party with this many active supporters.
Which are used to target unpopular fringe groups not regional majorities. The UK would have more luck banning the SNP.
The core mechanism of democracy is to abolish political organizations wholesale?
Those of us are wrong, then. Fascism isn’t some inherently abstract force of nature, it’s people and organizations of people. Those social structures can be disrupted, and the major question whose answer determines the means of disruption is whether the earlier responses were appropriately timed and powered.
I prefer the situation where fascist-attitude people are individuals who need treatment rather than one where fascism is not just an attitude of individuals but a structural problem requiring e.g. law enforcement involvement or even a full-societal issue requiring outside military involvement.
They won’t, in no small part because the AfD has enough seats to block the attempt. Also, doesn’t help that lots of the enforcement wing of the German government (particularly in the national security services) are AfD or AfD sympathetic.
We’re well past the point at which Germans can do to the fascists what they did to the communists back in the 1990s - ban the party outright and seize their assets. Now they’ve actually got to make this a political fight, rather than a legalistic one, because they turned their backs on the AfD for far too long.
They cannot block a decision of the federal constitutional court, don’t be ridiculous. Germany has measures in place exactly for this scenario, and they are about to be enforced. They cannot be vetoed away, it’s a legal matter.
Given the concentration of AfD in the Eastern Block, you’d be inviting the region to pull a Catalonia and threaten to break away.
Riot police, sure.
Ooh the Nazis are threatening to break away? Oh no! Whatever will we do without them?!
Fuck them. They can break away and start their own little fourth Reich, which will be a pariah forever. In fact, that’s even better - all the fascists can go to the same geographical location so we can deal with them surgically.
They’re free to pull a Catalonia tbh. Glhf without Solizuschlag. It’d also be nice to have my friends move back home from Berlin.
Yeah if they got power they might try to ban their political opponents!
I think killing Nazis is the general agreed upon approach