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
“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.
Also ironic is that banning political parties is not compatible with the free democratic order.
A democracy cannot exist when anti-democratic elements can seize power. In other words, violate the social contract and get your sorry fascist ass banned.
And banning opposition parties is anti-democratic. Can you think of any other German government that banned opposing political parties?
No. Banning opposition parties BECAUSE THEY ARE OPPOSITION PARTIES would be undemocratic. Banning opposition parties because they are anti democratic is not.
What you are saying is like “killing someone is murder”, while ignoring the fact that self defence is a thing that happens, is legal and is moral and IS NOT MURDER.
Putting someone in prison violates their freedom.
Putting someone in prison because they murdered someone is still the right thing to do.
Not at all the same thing.
While you can argue that Individuals in the AfD are antidemocratic, I honestly do not see evidence for that on the general party level.
I read their program. Weird? Yes. Antidemocratic? No.
The Bundesverfassungsschutz has released a 1000 page report detailing their investigation and assessment. I find it unsurprising that the AfDs advertising material for an election hides their anti democratic aspects.
Look I am all for marking extremist, but it really matters on what grounds. And it matters how it is done.
Why is the report Not public? Does Not make any sense.
Why has the report not undergone internal audits as it would be standard procedure? Seems odd at least.
Its really all about „Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence“ - and no it does not matter if you personally think „it is obvious“.
Based on what I have read, hence based on what is known about the content of the report, there is no good evidence (but I could be wrong). Also no legal implications follow from this report, and based on what is known about Nancy Faeser involvment I can not deny a certain „Geschmäckle“ which is undermining the original purpose.
If you wanna do these things, they need to be done with undeniable evidence and transparency.
Paradox of tolerance and whatnot… It’s not ironic. Not only is it compatible, it is essential to its existence.
It’s anti-democratic no matter what paradox you want to try and spin it as.
This is one side who fears losing power trying to eliminate their political opponent who is rapidly gaining followers. It’s authoritarian, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s fascism. It’s LITERALLY WHAT THE NAZIS DID for crying out loud!
Democracy means the will of the people. The government banning the party that has the most supporters is the exact opposite of that.
No it’s not anti-democratic. The parties can’t ban the AFD only initiate the process. Whether the AFD is antidemocratic and a has the ability to undermine democracy is decided by the highest court. Precisely so they can’t just ban the opposition.
Banning political party is anti-democratic. When parties can initiate the process to ban other political parties, that’s anti-democratic.
When the party they’re trying to ban is also the most popular party with the people, that’s especially anti-democratic.
That is naive and reduces the entire argument to black and white.
The world is not black and white. Its not even shades of gray. It can not be simplified like that, even less the way you attempt to.
The entire argument is black and white. Democracy is black and white.
No existing democracy is absolute, and there’s a pretty strong argument it has to be that way.
What if I’m against immigration due to a housing bubble that is destroying the poor and dramatically increasing price to income ratios, am I a racist or a saint?
I think anyone with a brain can see that in many countries mass immigration is being used to depress wages and invert the phillips curve after QE, or to prop up GDP to avoid a technical recession in favor of a per-capita recession, which is for some reason not defined or acknowledged. It also clearly hurts the poor and benefits the rich via asset price inflation and higher rental income.
That would be a real argument, if the immigrants weren’t poor themselves and if they actually were bad for the economy as opposed to good.
The fact that you jumped in here like that in response to a barely-related comment about democracy makes me think racist.
Well I’ve just read Afd supporters posts about immigration. As far as being good or bad for the economy, I guess it depends if you hold assets that get inflated.
A landlord will definitely benefit, and that will definitely grow GDP; which left leaning people used to care about the poor rather than worshipping at the god of GDP. The fear of their own kind calling them a racist may have defeated that.
since you asked: ", am I a racist or a saint? "
you seem to acknowledge the functionality of undermining the working class by inviting people who have even less to work for even less. And yet you chose to be vocally against immigration (since that would help with a symptom)- while you could also be pointing out the failures of the regulatory body that allows for the many to be opressed by a parasitic few or even pointing out that the parasitic few are to be taken out of the equation. Kicking down is weak.
If you want systemic change to the economic system there’s definitely an order of operations here to follow, wouldn’t you agree?
If I want to redesign a roller coaster my first step shouldn’t be to start removing the tracks while passengers are on it.
Yeah, thats dumb.
Destroy the poor, and maybe the fallout will fix the repercussions. Is that the plan then.
Germany supports Israel but they’re also critical of it. They have active arrest warrants for Netanyahu if he ever steps foot in their jurisdiction.
For Germany the ideal outcome would be peaceful continuation of both Israel and Palestine. If protecting one means harming the other, they will take no action. Israel is an important military stronghold against eastern powers and will continue to hold special privileges.
We do? Last I checked, the arrest warrant only came from the ICC, which Germany technically has to follow, but we haven’t issued our own arrest warrant, haven’t positioned ourselves clearly in support of the ICC’s warrant, and our politicians appear to be working on legal ways to not have to arrest Netanyahu if he actually comes to visit as planned by Friedrich Merz. All parties currently part of the government, with the only possible exception being The Left, seem to be way too much in favor of Israel.
You’re correct that the warrant is the ICC jurisdiction and not any other courts in Germany. As of May of last year Steffen Hebestreit representing the Olaf Scholz administration said they would.
And that comes after he had been a vocal advocate of Israel up to that point.
What Hebestreit says here is not to be trusted. He is always beating around the bush when he is being asked these questions, and “we will abide by the law” most likely means “we will find every legal loophole to not have to arrest him”. In another press conference held on 2024-11-22, he was asked to clarify the wording on the released statement about the now actually issued arrest warrant, which was actually lacking a statement like the one from May about abiding by the law. When asked about it, he always responded with “I don’t have to answer, I will just refer you to what’s written in the text”, instead of simply stating that “we will abide by the law”. Furthermore, when asked what the federal government had to check before officially acknowledging the arrest warrant, he mentioned that “lawyers had to check if the ICC was even responsible for issuing such an arrest warrant”, even though Wagner, the spokesperson for the State Department, mentioned that “this court [the ICC] is independent and we respect this independence”. Nothing these spokespeople say makes any sense. They respect the independence of the ICC, but have to check if the ICC is actually responsible and has legal authority to issue an arrest warrant in this case? I’m not buying it. They stand behind the ICC and respect its independence, but only when it alligns with the views of the German federal government, which summarizes German politics as a whole quite well.
You can watch the full press conference here (relevant chapter: Haftbefehl gegen Netanjahu (Tilo), ~5:00-16:20, turn on auto-translation if you don’t speak German).
Tell me all the times Israelis have died to protect their Western allies.
Tell it to World Power governments, not me. Iran is in thick with Russia and China and I don’t see any middle eastern nations lining up to join NATO.