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AfD are Nazis in all but name. How is it they remain unprosecuted in a nation where swastikas and the Hitler salute are outlawed?
They're not just nazis, they're nazis sponsored and funded by putin.
This is documented, but racists would rather support their literal enemy than dare accept changing their worldview in any way.
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Plausible deniability but they do get in trouble pretty routinely. The last big one iirc was the poster with the two kids saluting each other to form a roofline with a kitchy caption about housing.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/afd-accused-nazi-symbolism-election-germany-hm8dv7nql
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One of the main contributors is probably that the last time they tried banned an extremist party on the right (the NPD) it didn't work because they didn't present enough evidence according to the courts, that made everyone involved hesitant this time (or at least that is the excuse they used). Or rather, it failed twice, once because they had agents within the party and the other time for lack of evidence. Obviously obtaining that evidence without running into the first problem again is tricky.
Small correction: the NPD was not banned because they were largely irrelevant. They had little to no influence on politics, which is why the court argued that a ban would be inappropriate.
What does it mean if a democracy bans a party that the voters want to elect? Better to ask what failure of the system made that party popular in the first place. We have a similar situation in the US fwiw.
True, but then again we have lived through that already and know that dangerous parties can be elected democratically. That is exactly the reason why we have this mechanism in place.
An anti democratic party has no right to be elected democratically.
Exactly. Democracy is famously the only system which allows to be dismantled through its own tools. That is why the German system is called "Wehrhafte Demokratie" (defensive democracy) to not end up like the Weimar Republic.
The biggest criticism of democracy is that it might become something else.
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I fear, that many if not most people do not understand why AFD is an undemocratic party or why this would even matter for them.
I think that problem is closely related to the issue that people think it can not get much worse for them when in reality there is a long, long way down from even the poorest and least represented people in our German society to the poorest people in the worst societies that actually existed in history or even the worst society imaginable with modern technology combined with the rulers from those worst socities in history.
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I understood the post you are replying to as saying "what will AfD voters do when their party is banned?".
In the case of the Nazis, we don't know because their party was never banned. We don't know what would have happened if the Nazi party had been banned.
I would be interested to know if we have historical cases of far-right parties that could have won the elections but were banned before they had the chance.
Well, let's hope we're about to see that. My guess is mass protests all over Germany and even more massive counter protests right next to them.
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We had that situation in 1930s Germany and it was decided to address issues instead of banning Hitler’s Party even when they could.
There are other banned parties as well (such as the SRP, which was the new NSDAP basically), having large overlap with the AfD. It's not bad for democracy, if the requirements for banning are clear and enforced equally.
The paradox of tolerance. Parties that violate the social contract of mutual tolerance deserve to be banned.
The paradox of tolerance isn't a helpful answer here. Banning the party won't make the bigots within it become unbigotted, which is the real goal.
In a similar way a straitjacket won't make the patient less suicidal but it will prevent them from cutting their own wrists. It is not meant as a long-term solution.
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Better to ask what failure of the system made that party popular in the first place.
In the case of the US, it was propaganda by a hostile country, and by malefactors of great wealth whose interests aligned with that hostile country. In the former case, an act of war; in the latter, treason.
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No need to play one off against the other. Yes, there are many things that need to change systemically. Yes, the AfD is a real danger and needs to be banned. Simple as that.
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YOU DON'T SAY
entire AfD 'extremist'
No shit, sherlock, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out.
Have you even seen some of the mindblowing excuses people have for why MAGA people in USA are not necessarily extreme?
That it's for job security, or because of drug trade or all sorts of weird reasons that would absolutely be valid if they weren't based on falsehoods wrapped in fascism.
I'm actually quite surprised that the conclusion is that ALL of AfD are extremists. Maybe if USA had done the same with Trump, and he and his followers were concluded to be extremists, more would have been done to stop him?
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"The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,"
Great news, but also ironic considering German uncritical support for Israel.
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And what will Germany do about it? NOTHING!
Punch left as hard as possible.
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This is what we need to do with The Heritage Foundation and MAGA in the US. The extremes are usually bad whether they're left or right.
No, it's not whether left or right. The right are the ones trying to put people in camps.
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Saying "the extreme left is also bad", in the context of the US having a massive Republican/rightwing extremist problem that's regressing the country and plaguing the entire world, is like the captain of the Titanic going "But sand dunes are also not great!"
"But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing."
Man, this is peak modern society, and the absurdity makes me laugh. I don't mean that in a derisive way, more in a "wow, making democracy work is haaard ". Hopefully this will lead to something positive though, even if I'm anxious that banning a party like the AfD may lead to some things worsening.
Pray they find a valid legal reason to ban them soon now that they can mass spy on them :)
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this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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