Germany’s domestic intelligence agency formally classified the Alternative for Germany as a right-wing extremist movement, meaning authorities will have enhanced powers to monitor the party as a potential threat to democracy.
The judgment by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution “is based on an extremely careful expert review spanning approximately three years” that examined remarks made by high-ranking AfD officials, according to a statement published Friday by Sinan Selen and Silke Willems, the office’s co-vice presidents.
I must have missed something. Weren’t they already declared “gesichert rechtsextrem” like 2-3 years ago?
Smaller Branches, yes. But this time it’s the big federal party
I really don’t know if this was a smart move. It reminds me deeply of the Weimar Republic and the exclusion of the right extremists. Everybody knows how it went. The reason: deep frustration in the society about the politics. It is the same now and the current parties do nothing to calm down the situation. This is so dangerous!
I do not want the same to happen again in Germany that suddenly this will lead to a strengthening of the AfD, which will push the country further to the right while the AfD is playing well the victim card. At the end there will be a Führerin Alice Weidel.
“Exclusion of the right extremists”? you mean like, when the conservatives formed a coalition with them?
Nazis play the victim card whether they are victims or not. Better actually victimizing them. The fault of the Weimar Republic was not doing that enough.
Fun fact: The last time we tried to ban a Nazi party, it failed because it had become “too irrelevant” and the ban “wasn’t necessary” anymore.
The time before that, the ban failed because too many “moles” who had infiltrated the party and were on the payroll of this same intelligence agency, were actually Nazis and had taken on an active role in the party. So it was impossible to prove whether Nazi acts were directed by “real” party members or by agents of our intelligence agency.
(There were lots of jokes back then about how the agency doesn’t need to ban the party, it would just vanish if they pulled back their agents.)This time around, the movement to ban this Nazi party faces resistance from conservatives who say the party is already too big and popular to ban, and should be countered in debate and through good governance. While on local/regional levels and behind the scenes, those same conservatives are already actively cooperating with them. Instead of good governance, they’ve decided to go for open corruption. And by “debate” they mean copying their talking points.
So… Are there any circumstances under which a Nazi party gets banned?
Usually after losing a world war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Reich_Party
The party claimed Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was an American puppet and that Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz was the last legitimate President of the German Reich, as he had been appointed by Adolf Hitler. It denied the existence of the Holocaust, claimed that the United States built the gas ovens of the Dachau concentration camp after the Second World War and that films of concentration camps were faked. […] It demanded the re-annexation of the former eastern territories of Germany and a “solution of the Jewish question”.
TL;DR: If you’re openly a nazi party in 1952 you might get banned.
EDIT: Also helps if you’re willing to ally with the soviets in 1952, it seems.
said that he would “show the Russians the way to the Rhine”
The only way a party can get banned is by a ruling of our highest court (our equivalent of the supreme court). However, they can not startathe process of banning a party unless our parliament or the Bundesrat (I dont know what’s the translation/English equivalent for this is) tells the court to investigate a party. It is unlikely that the parliament will do this and so the Bundesrat is pretty much our last and only hope.
However, they can not startathe process of banning a party unless our parliament or the Bundesrat (I dont know what’s the translation/English equivalent for this is) tells the court to investigate a party.
Bundestag : First Chamber
Bundesrat : Second ChamberComposition of Bundesrat currently:
Red is social democratic SPD, black and blue are conservative CDU+CSU, green is left-ecoliberal Grüne, yellow is neoliberal FDP, orange is ruralist-regionalist FW, purple is left-auth BSW, magenta is left-socialist Linke.
They represent the 16 federal states’ coalition governments.
The actual translations are something like Bundestag=Federal Diet and Bundesrat=Federal Council. Bundestag was originally the Reichstag in Imperial Germany (Diet of the Realm, or Imperial Diet) while the Bundesrat had the same name as it represented the state governments as it does now.
The follow-up party of the NSDAP got banned and now there’s an actual possibility of the AfD getting banned
As soon as the conservos and “social democrats” get their heads screwed on straight, it’ll happen. Promise.
Soon after WW2, they banned a party that was just the NSDAP (the original Nazi party) under a new name.
And the KPD (communist party).Nowadays, I don’t think it’s possible anymore.
So much for “Defensive Democracy” 🤦♂️
To the surprise of absolutely no one.
Good
Finally
