Summary
Over 100 German legislators have proposed banning the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, citing its aggressive and combative actions against the constitution.
The proposal, which requires support from the Bundestag, the upper house, or the federal government, aims to demonstrate the AfD’s extreme right-wing activities.
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This isn’t entirely true. They are backing the check by our Bundesverfassungsgericht (our supreme court) if the AfD is against the constitution. That’s a significant difference. The article makes it sound like the Bundestag can just ban the party, but that(luckyly) isn’t the case(because if it would any political party could just ban the enemies(as it happened in the 1930s)). Instead the Bundestag, or the Bundesrat(its made of representatives from our states and) , have to order the Bundesverfassungsgericht to check if the AfD is a party hostile to the constitution.
Also worth mentioning, that if this goes through, we won’t see a result in the near future. Such a case takes about 4-6 years to be resolved.
The BVerfG can be surprisingly fast if things are sufficiently clear-cut and/or urgent. For one, the AfD will have to have sufficient discipline to not make death threats over this, siege the court, such things. I’m sure their higher-ups have game-planned this but I would be surprised indeed if fascists manage to not be, well, fascists, when backed into a corner.
The legal question isn’t actually complicated, there’s been enough cases so that the court won’t have to develop law. It’s mostly going to be hearing evidence.
Everyone involved says this will take years to resolve, furthermore it’s questionable if the evidence is even sufficient for successfully banning the AfD. This is in no way a clear cut case.
From the two unsuccessful ban trials of the NPD, I do not have much hope of this one succeeding. Sadly.
That’s reasonable
Israel has banned literal terrorist parties from running. Sometimes its a good idea to ban a party. See Nazi party.
I never said that it isn’t good to ban the AfD. I just mentioned the mistake the article makes and that its good that only the highest court is able to do that.
Yet the kahanists came back and now they’re running the National Security ministry and Netanyahu depends on them.
A sad day for civility. By trying to ban Nazi-adjacent parties, they’re being just as bad as them.
/S
Dats a big S there buddy. U got a loicense for dat?
Oi m8
It does make me remember another time they forbad a political party…
But yes, anti democratic violent hate parties should be dismanteled.
Best of luck, guys.
I know that doing things that can eliminate a political opposition are incredibly ethically sensitive, but it’s demonstrably the correct choice here. I just wish that it wasn’t a choice that had to be made. How are these far right parties getting so many votes? Where have we failed?
Where have we failed?
You know how Europe is mostly ethnically homogeneous? Well thanks to European and American escapades into the Middle East they’re becoming less ethnically homogeneous, and because of that xenophobic right wing rhetoric works on them a lot more than Americans. Add the post-covid economy and other legitimate issues where those immigrants can be scapegoated and Europeans welcome far right parties with open arms, because unlike Americans they’re not inoculated against these ideas.
Someone might point to the result of this election, to which I say there’s a reason people are angry at the DNC and it’s because they could’ve won if they were actually trying. It’s completely different from Europe where young people are shifting right.
Anyway what I wanna say is that this outcome was basically inevitable because in a parliamentary system like in most European countries the government will be too moderate to stop it.
I didn’t know that Italians and french had the same language, traditions and skin color. I had assumed that there had been riots in the streets when Italy joined the ECSC in 1951.
You’re totally right, but I hate the whole “Sweden/Europe was ethnically homogeneous” line that centrists say.
The idea of a “whiteness” that Italians are outside of is largely an American one, originating from the invention of “whiteness” as a construct to rationalise racial slavery and the subsequent waves of immigration from (largely southern) Italy. (The Irish were classified as non-white for much the same reason, even though Ireland was not known for its melanin-rich complexions.)
The Italians did have a different language and traditions than the French, but they also until recently had different language and traditions than other Italians. (Italy was not a country until 1860 or so, and “Italian” as a language came into existence when Garibaldi chose the Tuscan dialect (because Dante had spoken it) and decreed it to be the new national language of the newly united nation.)
I mean… people in Berlin are complaining that Swabians aren’t integrating. The question is less whether there ever was cultural homogeneity anywhere in Europe (there wasn’t), but how many new-comers people are accustomed to, how many can come in over some time-frame before people go “wait, this is too much, we’re getting overrun”. By and large, at least in Germany, people don’t really move between regions. It’s not common to see a Bavarian taking up a job in Holstein. The Bavarian might move to the city, or to another village around the same city, maybe to the big city, anything else is an exception.
An often quoted statistic is how in the German east, where anti-immigration sentiment is highest, there’s the fewest foreigners. That fails to mention both the outflux of east Germans towards the west, the steeper rise in percentage of foreigners in the past decade, as well as this being the east’s first immigration wave. Total number still is and probably will forever be smaller than in the west but the perception is way different, and the west never had an immigration wave following right after an emigration wave.
Honestly for the majority of people the problem would be solved if this is simply accepted as fact. That it’s not wrong to feel a bit like you should be protecting culture a bit, and then maybe join a club to practice some local tradition. If, “It is important to me that local tradition is preserved” is immediately met with “you hate brown people” then people are going to be pissed, and rightly so. As the German saying goes: “Is this available in one size smaller?” Let people run around in fancy three thousand year old masks or whatever the fuck.
Good analysis, I agree 100%.
Inside their countries they used to be. Italian migrant workers faced racist backlash in Germany at first. Then it shifted to Turkish migrant workers, then to Jugoslawian refugees, now to Arabs but also back to Turkish people as they are perceived as Muslim. Of course all minorities, European or not are facing racism, only the focus shifted.
Now we have a Nazis cooperating across Europe on two notions. The first being “Whites vs. Muslims” the other being that supposedly only ethnically homogenous countries could work, so Czech Republic for Czechs, Germany for Germans, Hungary for Hungarians, Netherlands for Dutch…
Yup, Immigration and racism have always been a huge debate in Europe.
Some Swedish wikipedia articles i recently found about pre-ww2 immigration and refugee debates:
https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Mosaisk?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US
https://sv-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/J-passen?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US
Europe has never been ethnically homogenous.
unlike Americans they’re not inoculated against these ideas
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha did you watch the election results in the US mate? The US has a system with a far right party and a slightly less far right party
This isn’t wrong but the far right party with openly fascist plans just won the popular vote in america, pretty sure europe is not there. Yet.
Lack of politics benefitting, and this is a broad term, left-behind people, be that economically or socially. The whole republic had a severe right shift after reunification with people calling themselves socdems introducing a whole new low-wage sector and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, together with the east never getting properly integrated, politically speaking, and having their economy forcibly dismantled by western competition (no those weren’t just market forces) that’s a triple whammy for them.
Voters aren’t necessarily actually ideologically aligned – they’re just out of options when it comes to protesting, and, well, they’re largely easterners they somehow don’t even consider founding whatever party they actually want to see. That is, for example, the average easterner is anti-immigration, but not anti-immigrant: They have zero beef with that black lesbian running a Kebab shop, heck in their village she might be the only one holding up the flag on a Sunday, it’s a “let no more in until we’re being taken cared of” kind of attitude. The political class by and large, both left and right, completely fail to see the distinction to xenophobia proper, there, deepening the – correct – impression that noone actually cares. That breeds a rebellious attitude, “vote where it hurts the establishment”.
Just a reminder about not tolerating intolerance.
The Paradox of Tolerance disappears if you look at tolerance not as a moral standard, but as a social contract.
If someone does not abide by the terms of the contract, then they are not covered by it.
In other words: The intolerant are not following the rules of the social contract of mutual tolerance.
Since they have broken the terms of the contract, they are no longer covered by the contract, and their intolerance should NOT be tolerated.
What about the other 620?
Didn’t bring in the motion. The Bundestag will vote on it and if it passes the Bundestag officially filed a criminal complaint so to speak with the constitutional court.
Other options would be the Bundesrat starting the procedure (vote-majority of states) or the government (cabinet majority, presumably), but the general preference is for the Bundestag to do it because it has a direct, federal, democratic mandate (government is indirect (elected by the Bundestag) and Bundesrat is state governments).
Thanks I’m not familiar with the workings on the German government
Sounds about as simple as a German car.
It only sounds complex and the workings are intricate. But the constitution is relatively straightforward in this regard. Germany uses a codified law system after all and its constitution is relatively new by comparison
Oh snap why didn’t we think of that
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