Germany’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), which are holding coalition talks, have proposed a law that will block people with multiple extremism convictions from standing in elections.

https://archive.ph/yNQwE

  • eee (they/them)
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    184 months ago

    Why would it suppress left politicians? It’s not like any of them have multiple extremism convictions, that’s usually rightwing politicians.

    • 🦄🦄🦄
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      504 months ago

      Because they might get convicted of something a judge would call left wing extremism. I have zero trust in this system.

      • eee (they/them)
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        144 months ago

        Ok, I see now how that could happen - I forget people would abuse a law like that.

        Thanks.

        • @WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You are much smarter than the users I encountered below, who downvoted the following examples I provided:

          It’s no different to a “means test” for voting. It sounds great initially, but falls apart if you dig deeper. The virtue of the means test is determined by who governs the means test. Once you create it, you have created the attack vector, and all the fascists have to do if they weasel their way into power is simply change the terms of the means test — you’ve already completed and normalized the hard part for them. As an example, Trump is currently using a 200 year old law to deport any immigrant an ICE agent chooses, without trial. He’s using this law because it gave the president blanket unilateral powers to apply it as they see fit.

          Another example from the US that has assisted fascism in denying blacks their right to vote; an old law declared anyone convicted of a felony ineligible to vote, then conservatives created the war on drugs to target and persecute blacks and the left. All they had to do was make non-violent drug offences a felony. As a result, millions of blacks have been denied the right to vote. All because the gov could decide who could and couldn’t vote because of X, and any future gov could control the terms of X.

          Extremists need to be defeated, but you can’t defeat fascism with the tools of fascism. If the 2nd example I gave above were never created, America may have never devolved into MAGA/fascism.

    • @Saleh@feddit.org
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      324 months ago

      For instance partaking in seating blockades on the routes of Nazi demonstrations is considered left wing “extremism” and could be charged as crime ranging from “coercion” to “breach of public peace / rioting”. Now whether it is convicted as such is a different topic, but for instance many climate activists have been convicted with prison times for glueing themselves to the streets. Many courts consider this to be violent coercion. So making yourself vulnerable and unable to act, but in the way of some car, this is violent extremism in Germany.