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.
Most of your points were already correctly dismantled. But I’d just like to ad to
In a democracy where some 30% vote nazi, banning them won’t solve anything. Anything.
Is a sentiment I often feel too. I believe that we have to do so much more to fight against Fascists than just Vote and “use the democratic system correctly”. (I.e. fight fascism in the streets, offer actual political solutions to peoples problems…). But to say this won’t do anything is a huge understatement.
Banning the AfD will:
- Disband the party leaving them in shambles to reorganize
- Stop the money flow which is going to the AfD (and in turn to other right wing groups
- Finally delegitimize the AfD and their main actors in a Democratic setting
A ban would be an amazing feat but it would just be a little breather in the fight against fascism.
You can only ban them if they seriously threaten the democratic order. Which some of their members might claim to want to do, but so far the whole party hasn’t shown much of action in the direction.
If you do ban your political opponents because “now they need to reorganize and won’t get money”. You will only strengthen their point that the current democratic order cannot be trusted and that their voters are ignored by the system. You will turn 10% of hardcore voters and 20% of rebel voters into 30% hardcore voters.
And then good luck to you with having any democracy whatsoever. Or do you plan to maybe institute a special democratic police and jail everyone with antidemocratic views? What about jailing some 30% of a certain region of your country? How do you imagine this will go down?
Yes you can only ban them if they threaten the democratic order. Or to be more precise:
Eine Partei kann nur dann verboten werden, wenn sie nicht nur eine verfassungsfeindliche Haltung vertritt, sondern diese Haltung auch in aktiv-kämpferischer, aggressiver Weise umsetzen will.
Which (if you don’t know German) basically means
A party can only be banned if it advocates an unconstitutional position and also plans to use militant and aggressive means to reach their goals
- rough translation I might try to find a source for a better one later
Now I believe that the AfD does fit those criteria (unconstitutional position for sure, but them working together with militant neo-nazis etc. should fill the second criterium as well). But that’s just my opinion and in this situation it does not count as much. The process here is that the court will decide wether or not the AfD fits these criteria and based on that they will be banned or not banned.
This is the important distinction to what you’ve outlined. It’s not “banning political opponents” it’s banning opponents of the constitution. I’m also not saying everyone with opposing views should be jailed I’m saying a party that opposes the constitution should be banned according to the constitution.
Yes, I’m familiar with that part of your legislation.
Approximately everyone else here except for you sees AfD as a target for banning because “they’re radical far right”. No, sorry, bad idea.
Even banning an anti-democracy party at first might be a bad idea. Better go figure out why is anyone voting for them.
Banning an anti-democracy party is an absolute last-resort measure. It only exists in Germany because this is how Hitler came to power, so the idea is to prevent that scenario from repeating. I can see the point, however it is yet to be proven that such bans would actually help preserve the democratic order.
