Germany’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), which are holding coalition talks, have proposed a law that will block people with multiple extremism convictions from standing in elections.
Yes we could, but the inner security is stalling the investigation and the conservatives and liberals think they could get the nazi votes and lean heavily into the rethorik. Yeaaah doesnt work out. Never did
The CDU thinks they will get their votes but they won’t.
This absolutely needs to be a thing in every country. Ban far right parties, ban far right media
Do it. Honestly I’m a little surprised you didn’t do it 80 years ago
In a way we did. Anticonstitutional parties are generally not allowed. The problem is that courts and judges must be absolutely convinced that a party is anticonstitutional to actually ban them.
Exactly! I mean, a far-right uprising in Germany… which is at the moment re-militarizing itself… doesn’t anybody else F-king see what’s going on?!
That’s a point we are really worried about here in Germany too. The armament of the nation feels wrong in itself too many of us (even though most of us don’t have any better ideas when looking at Putin-Russia). But the outlook that the AfD (our stupid Nazi party) could inherit the upgraded army and it’s arsenal one day is really frightening.
While I understand the point, won’t this just make politicians run on lies even more?
I love how the commenters on that page hating all on the “far-left”, despite the left has exactly nothing to do with that idea. dumb fucks as far one can see.
It’s classic whataboutism and trying to draw false equivalencies to muddy the waters. They want to put everyone else on defense about the decision to ban Nazis by making you waste time explaining why someone else isn’t a Nazi.
To sum up: fuck them. Nazis are bad. Please continue punching them, both metaphorically, legally, and physically as needed to keep them in their hidey holes.
For what it’s worth, I wish we would do the same thing.
But with a proper definition where “center” is pretty far right.
This will 100% be used to suppress left politicians.
Just ban the fucking AfD already.
Why would it suppress left politicians? It’s not like any of them have multiple extremism convictions, that’s usually rightwing politicians.
For instance partaking in seating blockades on the routes of Nazi demonstrations is considered left wing “extremism” and could be charged as crime ranging from “coercion” to “breach of public peace / rioting”. Now whether it is convicted as such is a different topic, but for instance many climate activists have been convicted with prison times for glueing themselves to the streets. Many courts consider this to be violent coercion. So making yourself vulnerable and unable to act, but in the way of some car, this is violent extremism in Germany.
Because they might get convicted of something a judge would call left wing extremism. I have zero trust in this system.
Ok, I see now how that could happen - I forget people would abuse a law like that.
Thanks.
You are much smarter than the users I encountered below, who downvoted the following examples I provided:
It’s no different to a “means test” for voting. It sounds great initially, but falls apart if you dig deeper. The virtue of the means test is determined by who governs the means test. Once you create it, you have created the attack vector, and all the fascists have to do if they weasel their way into power is simply change the terms of the means test — you’ve already completed and normalized the hard part for them. As an example, Trump is currently using a 200 year old law to deport any immigrant an ICE agent chooses, without trial. He’s using this law because it gave the president blanket unilateral powers to apply it as they see fit.
Another example from the US that has assisted fascism in denying blacks their right to vote; an old law declared anyone convicted of a felony ineligible to vote, then conservatives created the war on drugs to target and persecute blacks and the left. All they had to do was make non-violent drug offences a felony. As a result, millions of blacks have been denied the right to vote. All because the gov could decide who could and couldn’t vote because of X, and any future gov could control the terms of X.
Extremists need to be defeated, but you can’t defeat fascism with the tools of fascism. If the 2nd example I gave above were never created, America may have never devolved into MAGA/fascism.
I’m not sure I agree with your. Acting like your 2nd example wasn’t created because of the fascist nature of the US government, I have a bridge to sell to you.
US has never stopped being fascist, they just got beaten by Germany at the world stage with the reveal.
So no, US was always going to MAGA, mostly because every civic institution was ran over by money.
And can be stop pretending that fascists follow laws? It’s not like they won’t create new ones if the existing don’t fit their narrative. Or just do whatever, not even pretend to hide behind excuses.
You are not arming them with laws, you are arming them with making general public needlessly suffer, like no social safety nets, uncontrolled rent hikes, inflation through the roof etc.
Yes, and that’s how it should be if a politician of any party is convicted for serious offense, eg violence or hatred. Laws should apply equally to all.
Which means such law should be carefully crafted to prevent its abuse for partisan purpose, supressing the opposition, etc.
For instance making it a judicial process, not an arbitrary administrative/executive decision. Restricting this to specific well-defined offenses. Making it a time-limited ban, not a lifetime ban.
In countries where banning parties is a thing, such parties usually have another on the shelf ready to go.
It’s usually the party leader that gets banned and the party can’t re-register or something.
So when the leader gives their thanks goodbye speech they usually mention the new party.
Germany’s law on party bans automatically bans successor organisations. And membership in a forbidden organisation is a crime that will bring all sorts of repercussions.
TIL. Thank you!
Yeah we did learn a thing or two with the nazis and made our laws that way. Sadly many people (especially east germans) didnt
That is roughly correct, although:
The successor organization would still need its own proceeding where proof needs to be provided that the successor organization is actually successor of a banned party. But that’s all that is needed to ban a successor org.
Maybe also consider bribery convictions and we might get rid of a few CDU/CSU politicians as well 🙃
By far not the same level as extremism.
Fck little sister of whataboutism, the self-elevating sarcasm.
So you’re OK with a plutocracy?
This is a slippery slope fallacy I believe. Stop with the fallacious reasoning
Not really. Governing through bribery is a way to implement plutocracy.
To be clear: “I tolerate plutocracy but I draw the line at fascism” is a valid opinion, even if I don’t agree with it. I was just asking if that’s the opinion held by our fellow lemming.
I’m not okay with saying extremism is the same as taking money for influence.
Who said that? They’re suggesting that, since you’re putting restrictions, you might as well add other restrictions that also make sense.
The comment I‘m commenting
Won’t do much if nobody ever gets convicted for bribery/ corruption
Less inequality and better education are really the only solution.
People reach for extremism when they feel let down by the existing system.
Less inequality and better education are really the only solution.
People reach for extremism when they feel let down by the existing system.
Whatever actual or perceived grievances a person may have (even though merely being born in Germany already constitutes winning the global class lottery) - that only ever causes vulnurability.
That person then turning to actively undermining democratic systems and the international community is something that only happens if some con artist used that vulnurability to convince the person that it constitutes a solution to their problems.Equality and education are great. Letting con artists run around freely is a completely separate issue. Letting folk get scammed out of their life savings is just as detrimental to a healthy society as letting folk get scammed out of their vote.
Greece did something similar a few years ago.
The Golden Dawn far right wing party was declared a criminal organization (after some violence that lead to a few stabbings and at least one death) and their leaders were thrown in jail.
From the ashes of Golden Dawn and a few other populist/Christian conservative/nationalist parties rose a few new ones, with more careful rhetoric and open support from the now jailed golden dawn leaders and high ranking church ministers.
They are collectively holding 26 of the 300 seats in the parliament and are expected to get better results on the next election cycle.
You can ban them all you want, they can still reform into a “we are not far right, wink wink” party after the ban itself verifies their far right status and rise to power all the same.
A party ban in germany results also in a pohibition to form follow up parties. That’s why we should aim for the party and not single members
Yes - but if leading AfD figures were stripped of their right to vote, then such ruling would hit that person _regardless_ of which party he or she¹ is in. And it would also prevent those people from running as independent candidates. So I think going after individuals vs. going after parties is not an either-or. It would make sense to do both.
-–
¹ I don’t think AfD has enby members.¹ I don’t think AfD has enby members.
What does that have to do with anything?
I wrote “he or she”. @MaggiWuerze
Ah, that footnote was not rendered properly in my app. Thought it was just a random statement
@MaggiWuerze @Zer0_F0x thats right but does really someone believe, that this won’t happen? There are members of the afd who are clever enough to form a new party thats just “new enough” to be legaly not a follow up party. I don’t think we will get rid of this party or to be more clear, of that spirit that lives within this party. Especially with the CDU/CSU at the moment, which is doing everything at the moment to destroy the trust in the democratic partys and this system.
I usually assume left people to be smarter than people from the right wing, yet the communist party has not been able to reform in almost 70 years
Same here, the same people couldn’t run again but they asked all their supporters to vote for a specific candidate with a clean rep but essentially a puppet
You can ban them all you want, they can still reform
Then make them do that work.
And investigate any ties between the banned party and the new one. Ban the new one as well, if they’re just the same people with a new name.
Every time they are forced to rename and reform, that’s effort they can’t use to further their other goals.
Every time they need to “wink wink” a little harder, they risk losing part of their extremist base.
Make them do the work!Exactly. People act like it’s useless because it doesn’t permanently solve the problem.
Well guess what. Fascism cannot be solved permanently. It needs to be opposed in every generation, consistently. Giving in is not an option.
Banning a fascist party costs them a lot of internal cohesion and about a decade of organizing. It’s absolutely necessary and worth it.
Especially since a ban includes seizing all property belonging to that organization.
All IT equipment, offices rented, employees…
I agree with you, we should stop them at every corner. I’m trying to point out that banning them isn’t a fix-all solution, something needs to be done about their voters as well.
In Greece some members of older, more moderate but still far right parties were absorbed by the center right and are now ministers of the government.
Essentially the center right parties tend to steer to the far right a little to gain the far right vote without being labeled a far right party.
This also needs to be addressed.
We are already in that second phase. We threatened to ban the NPD, it fell into irrelevancy.
And out of the Ashes rose the AfD, wrapping their NPD rhethoric in a cozy CSU blanket.
Think of it like washing your laundry. Yes, you can and should be careful to not get it dirty in the first place. Yes, if you wrestle in the mud, your clothes will be muddy. Either way you will need to wash them from time to time. Now whether that time is often or only rarely is something you can influence, but the washing itself remains necessary.
We need some strong detergent for those shit stains but I agree, the fight needs to be persistent
That’s astonishing bullshit. There is already a process for ban political parties with political alignments incompatible with the constitution, which has to be initialized by o e of the two chambers of parliament and decided by the constitutional court. Having a political instrument in addition to that will automatically reduce the hurdle of dismantling political movements, for blurry definitions of “sufficient amount of extremists in a party”.
It can also be initiated by the federal government. Something that both the past and the likely upcoming government have rejected, because they are happy with the Fascists from the AfD moving the country to the far-right, so they can get their own right wing positions in better.
In that sense the article calling the current SPD center-left is already out of touch with the current time. In many positions the current SPD is right to where the CDU was under Merkel. The CDU and their Bavarian partner CSU have embraced a heavy far right populist position, with the CSU befriending Trumps republicans, Orban and other far right/authoritarian leaders. The CDU ran on a platform of racism and dismantling human rights. The SPD has a hard on for authoritarianism and wants to dismantle many civil rights, such as privacy, protection of the flat, freedom of sciences and arts, freedom of opinion, right to asylum…
As much as I’m a fan of keeping Nazis out of government, holy fuck is this a bad idea!
A judge shouldn’t be able to ban anyone from running for office.
This is what Russia does. Ban you from running if you’re convicted of “extremism”, then define that to include opposing the government.On the topic of cordon sanitaire (the practice of never forming a coalition with far-right parties, no matter how well they perform in elections):
Me pre-2016: “Isn’t that kinda counter to democracy?”
Me in 2025: “Outlaw and deport the fuckers, please!”
Removed by mod
Calling the SPD anything but a luke warm pudding is a lie.
They are literally neither right noir left. They just bend to whatever coqlition they get into.
They are staunch defenders of rightwing policy when they are in coalitions with parties that are more leftwing than they are. See: Gerhard Schröder’s Agenda 2010.
Nope. The SPD defending the AFD. Faeser stops the publication of a report, which would label the whole AFD as a party fighting the constitution. They actively work sending refugees to countries like Afghanistan, help to criminalize climate and Palestine activists and so forth.
The only left leaning thing they actively fought for in the last term in government was raising the minimum wage a bit. Everything else which was decent left leaning policy was brought through mainly by the Greens. Sometimes even the FDP had to rightly fight the insane policies of the SPD.
Diverse views here, even within our lemmy ‘bubble’, suggest it’s not obvious what to do about this (and similar situation in France and other european countries). Banning either individuals or parties can set a risky precedent and does not necessarily diminish a movement. I’d rather go for gradually (but rapidly) changing norms about acceptable campaigning, propaganda, use of social media, ‘fake’ news (lies). That includes faster-acting legal restrictions on funding, ownership, facts/fakes, algorithms, etc… , as well as positively strengthening alternatives like our fediverse.
DO IT! JUST DO IT! 🧍
