- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Germany’s spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.
The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany’s constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an “intense and comprehensive” examination.
“The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order,” the BfV said on Friday.
Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.
As we say in Germany: Hope dies last
Greece banned golden dawn as a criminal organisation and while a lot of members splintered into other parties it was overall a success in nearly removing all their influence as a political organisation from Greek politics - so, overall banning the fascist party, at least in one instance, worked.
Wow W Greece 💯🙌🏻
Germany banned the NSDAP in 1923 and it didn’t work out.
Maybe don’t pussy out this time. It’s not like the ban wasn’t effective, it’s that they lifted the ban.
Pretending to know history ass looking MF out here advocating for the continued existence of the Nazi party based on some half knowledge he picked up from a trivia box.
I’m not advocating for not trying. Just saying that “it worked once” is not a good argument. I think the only ideology of a party that was banned in Germany that actually doesn’t matter in today’s political landscape is communism. But there still are nazis even though the NSDAP was banned twice, there still are social democrats even though they were banned for 20 years, etc.
There’s also that more recently, Germany failed to ban the NPD twice and that was this century.
I think the AfD should be banned, but the people voting for them also need to become less stupid, and a ban alone will not do that.
I mean, it political bans usually work. Troskyism died in Stalin’s Russia, and pretty much every late Cold War junta was successful at suppressing their local communist movement, even if large. Germany itself has successfully banned far-right parties in the past.
Sure, the martyr effect exists, but it’s hella overrated, basically just because people are starting with the conclusion that you can’t ban things (which may or may not have merit) and working backwards. I’m not actually aware of any case where a banned movement has succeeded alongside non-incumbent legal movements, and even in autocracies revolutions and coups usually fail.
You raise fair points, but I want to circle back to intent. Because what you’re advocating in your last sentence is hurt by your original comment.
The whole point of “it’s happened once before” is to show that something is actually possible. It’s not theoretically possible, there’s a real world example to show it.
Bringing up counterexamples does not change that.
You can show one counterexample. Ten. A hundred. A thousand examples of when something didn’t work. They don’t negate the one time it did.
And to go even further, you should frame all those counterexamples as simply learning lessons. Examples on how not to do it. Because the framing here matters. If you want someone to be smart and try to find a solution, you frame history that way.
If you’re trying to discourage others from trying, you do it the way you initially did.
IMHO, if you’re discouraged by reality, that’s not my problem. I don’t like it when people just scream “ban” but don’t actually have a plan beyond that to get 30% of the voters to not vote for the next party that uses the nazi talking points.
You say that all the counterexamples don’t negate the one time it worked, but there is no successful example of banning a nazi party in Germany. They keep coming back. Learning some lessons is exactly what is needed here, because so far the NSDAP has been banned twice, the DVFP has been banned once, the SRP has been banned once, the FAP has been banned once, the NL has been banned once, attempts to ban the NPD failed twice before they lost funding in the third attempt, and now here we are and another nazi party is polling close to 30%.
Last time Germany banned a successful far-right party they tried this, but the new party was also quickly banned. They’re miles ahead of you on this, which makes sense given that the laws were written by people just liberated from the OG Nazis.
Which “successful far-right party” are you referring to that was banned? The only right-wing party banned by Federal Germany is the SRP, and that one was fairly small. All the other attempts ended in a different resolution (i.e. not a party ban).
The NSDAP was banned by the Allied Control Council. Denazification was the Allied Control Council too.
None of this got rid of nazis. The AfD is only the current iteration. For my entire life, there’s always been some right wing extremist party that was big enough to be regularly mentioned on the news. Sometimes they randomly disappear and then another one rises. I even remember cases where one tried to become less extremist and then disappeared as a result of that (e.g. REP).
I’m all for banning them but it’s been 80 years that WWII ended and we still don’t have a real solution that actually works.
You’re right, I actually have that backwards. The SRP, which was banned, was itself a successor to the DRP. Sorry!
I don’t know if it had any seats, but Wikipedia says there were 10,000 members. Interesting to hear there there’s been more that have been worthy of media coverage since then.
I’m not sure one is even possible. Fascism is primally appealing, and every generation assesses the world from scratch. Unless we merge with AI or stop reproducing or something it will always come back. We just have to keep putting it down.