More than 100 members of the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, have made application for a ban on the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), conservative Bundestag member Marco Wanderwitz said on Wednesday. Wanderwitz, a member of the Christian Democrats (CDU), currently the lar...
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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".
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).