Germany’s Social Democratic Party says first legal steps should be taken to ban the far-right AfD party as unconstitutional. Conservative lawmakers are less keen on the idea.
A number of Germany’s conservative lawmakers have called for a cautious approach after the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the junior coalition partner, on Sunday passed a motion calling for preparations to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The debate on whether to ban the AfD, which forms the strongest opposition force in parliament, has gained momentum after it was reclassified by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency in May as a “confirmed right-wing extremist” group — an assessment that is now under court review after a legal challenge by the party.
It’s a very American viewpoint to believe that sentiments just spring up organically with no influence from political leaders and their role in the whole process is to take opinion polls and only then decide what they believe.
Taking away the microphones of hate-mongers doesn’t make hate cease to exist, but it pushes it back into the shadows and cuts off an avenue for it to breed. The US would be a less hateful and less fascist place if Donald Trump was in prison. Leaders can drive the conversation and mainstream fringe ideas. The Democratic establishment just chooses not to.
Yeah, guess what? We should have banned them long before they became the “strongest opposition force in parliament”. Now that they poll over 20%, of course its tricky. Who would have thought?
Do the Murdoch’s have their media empire setup there too? If so Lachlan is your problem and the solution is an Italian plumber. Really the crux of any solution is almost certainly a plumber.
Not really but we have Springer which isn’t much better
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Döpfner
I was genuinely surprised not to see a link about his father(professor?) or grandfather(dunno, I was expecting SS and with citations). Non-jewish Zionist was also surprising.
Then further down his wife is the daughter of a Deutsch Bank exec and his son is Peter Thiel’s chief of staff. So yes you have a plumbing issue.
Banning thought never works. Find why people are upset. Analyse it. Find a solution.
Edit. Downvoted for the idea of analysis, and solutions. Awesome. Is this Reddit?
While I agree with the goal, this doesn’t make the underlying voter sentiment go away. What is the German government doing to address the underlying reasons for AFD’s rise? Regardless of their veracity, those thoughts are prevalent enough to cause this problem. While they might lessen, they won’t simply go away with the party if it’s banned. They have to be addressed, one way or another. I’m in the US, and I would argue that, out side of his base, most Trump voters don’t like the guy at all. Yet the Democrats’ “We’re not them” message has so far not been an consistent winner!
Exactly. This is a bandaid / plaster.
Deal with the real problem. Be honest about why people are upset. Let them actually speak their minds without judgement. Then, analyse it. Find solutions.
Banning a social movement of this scale is madness.
I think most of us are struggling with this issue, but I’m really not sure what to do about it. Is banning them outright bad? Maybe? I just don’t know.
We’re all stuck in a planet scale tolerance paradox, and I don’t think any current solution is particularly convincing or palatable.
In the early 90s something similar happened in Belgium (1).
What lessened the extremism in the following couple of elections was investment (in infrastructure, healthcare, economic opportunities, etc) outside of the cities as well.
It turned out that for every tax frank gathered, 80 cents were spend on prettifying the larger cities and the major port. People were mostly (rightly?) pissed off that government represented a terrible ROI for the same group of people for decades. They would’ve been better of without a federal government. They saw their lives get worse, whilst at the same time that government applauded themselves for the great things they achieved.
I’m not sure how feasible the same solution is today, as there’s very little investment budget anyways. Most of tax revenue goes to pensions and healthcare of a reversed population pyramid.
