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.
This will 100% be used to suppress left politicians.
Just ban the fucking AfD already.
Why would it suppress left politicians? It’s not like any of them have multiple extremism convictions, that’s usually rightwing politicians.
Because they might get convicted of something a judge would call left wing extremism. I have zero trust in this system.
Ok, I see now how that could happen - I forget people would abuse a law like that.
Thanks.
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.
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.
Being against genocide in Gaza is “extremist” in Germany.
Yes, and that’s how it should be if a politician of any party is convicted for serious offense, eg violence or hatred. Laws should apply equally to all.
Which means such law should be carefully crafted to prevent its abuse for partisan purpose, supressing the opposition, etc.
For instance making it a judicial process, not an arbitrary administrative/executive decision. Restricting this to specific well-defined offenses. Making it a time-limited ban, not a lifetime ban.
In countries where banning parties is a thing, such parties usually have another on the shelf ready to go.
It’s usually the party leader that gets banned and the party can’t re-register or something.
So when the leader gives their thanks goodbye speech they usually mention the new party.
Germany’s law on party bans automatically bans successor organisations. And membership in a forbidden organisation is a crime that will bring all sorts of repercussions.
TIL. Thank you!
Yeah we did learn a thing or two with the nazis and made our laws that way. Sadly many people (especially east germans) didnt
That is roughly correct, although:
The successor organization would still need its own proceeding where proof needs to be provided that the successor organization is actually successor of a banned party. But that’s all that is needed to ban a successor org.
Maybe also consider bribery convictions and we might get rid of a few CDU/CSU politicians as well 🙃
By far not the same level as extremism.
Fck little sister of whataboutism, the self-elevating sarcasm.
So you’re OK with a plutocracy?
I’m not okay with saying extremism is the same as taking money for influence.
Who said that? They’re suggesting that, since you’re putting restrictions, you might as well add other restrictions that also make sense.
The comment I‘m commenting
Yeah but clearly the original comment is ironic since it addresses CDU as corrupt. You know, one of the two parties that would be main drivers behind the suggested extremists banning?
Soo it kind of looks like whataboutism.
The comment is very unlikely to be sarcastic. CDU is known to have deep ties into every single incumbent industry in Germany and Merz himself is a former chemical lobbyist and was a chair of the German BoD of BlackRock.
Yeah but that’s what i’m saying, given that this same CDU is one of the two parties behind the coalition talks for banning far-right politicians. Only a sarcastic comment would suggest them to do a similar vote against bribery which would get rid of a lot of CDU politicians themselves. Why would they do that if they are corrupt, vote against their own interests?
So, then why suggest this at all? Clearly to steer the discussion away from the original topic - banning far- right politicians.
I do appreciate the info tidbit there that CDU are corrupt, but I don’t appreciate the distraction. Or that was my point, anyway.
This is a slippery slope fallacy I believe. Stop with the fallacious reasoning
Not really. Governing through bribery is a way to implement plutocracy.
To be clear: “I tolerate plutocracy but I draw the line at fascism” is a valid opinion, even if I don’t agree with it. I was just asking if that’s the opinion held by our fellow lemming.
Won’t do much if nobody ever gets convicted for bribery/ corruption
If the thing that user asked to happen doesn’t happen then the thing won’t happen?
Do you smell burnt toast?
If the thing that user asked to happen doesn’t happen then the thing won’t happen?
My understanding was that they asked that politicians with bribery convictions are blocked from running in elections (aka the topic of this thread).
Which can not happen if the prerequisite bribery convictions - which is something different from being blocked from the elections - have not been met.
I can see what your line of thought was now, ty for elaborating
I love how the commenters on that page hating all on the “far-left”, despite the left has exactly nothing to do with that idea. dumb fucks as far one can see.
It’s classic whataboutism and trying to draw false equivalencies to muddy the waters. They want to put everyone else on defense about the decision to ban Nazis by making you waste time explaining why someone else isn’t a Nazi.
To sum up: fuck them. Nazis are bad. Please continue punching them, both metaphorically, legally, and physically as needed to keep them in their hidey holes.
For what it’s worth, I wish we would do the same thing.
But with a proper definition where “center” is pretty far right.
Greece did something similar a few years ago.
The Golden Dawn far right wing party was declared a criminal organization (after some violence that lead to a few stabbings and at least one death) and their leaders were thrown in jail.
From the ashes of Golden Dawn and a few other populist/Christian conservative/nationalist parties rose a few new ones, with more careful rhetoric and open support from the now jailed golden dawn leaders and high ranking church ministers.
They are collectively holding 26 of the 300 seats in the parliament and are expected to get better results on the next election cycle.
You can ban them all you want, they can still reform into a “we are not far right, wink wink” party after the ban itself verifies their far right status and rise to power all the same.
A party ban in germany results also in a pohibition to form follow up parties. That’s why we should aim for the party and not single members
Yes - but if leading AfD figures were stripped of their right to vote, then such ruling would hit that person _regardless_ of which party he or she¹ is in. And it would also prevent those people from running as independent candidates. So I think going after individuals vs. going after parties is not an either-or. It would make sense to do both.
-–
¹ I don’t think AfD has enby members.¹ I don’t think AfD has enby members.
What does that have to do with anything?
I wrote “he or she”. @MaggiWuerze
Ah, that footnote was not rendered properly in my app. Thought it was just a random statement
@MaggiWuerze @Zer0_F0x thats right but does really someone believe, that this won’t happen? There are members of the afd who are clever enough to form a new party thats just “new enough” to be legaly not a follow up party. I don’t think we will get rid of this party or to be more clear, of that spirit that lives within this party. Especially with the CDU/CSU at the moment, which is doing everything at the moment to destroy the trust in the democratic partys and this system.
I usually assume left people to be smarter than people from the right wing, yet the communist party has not been able to reform in almost 70 years
Same here, the same people couldn’t run again but they asked all their supporters to vote for a specific candidate with a clean rep but essentially a puppet
You can ban them all you want, they can still reform
Then make them do that work.
And investigate any ties between the banned party and the new one. Ban the new one as well, if they’re just the same people with a new name.
Every time they are forced to rename and reform, that’s effort they can’t use to further their other goals.
Every time they need to “wink wink” a little harder, they risk losing part of their extremist base.
Make them do the work!Exactly. People act like it’s useless because it doesn’t permanently solve the problem.
Well guess what. Fascism cannot be solved permanently. It needs to be opposed in every generation, consistently.
Banning a fascist party costs them a lot of internal cohesion and about a decade of organizing and building public support. It’s absolutely necessary and worth it.
Especially since a ban includes seizing all property belonging to that organization.
All IT equipment, offices rented, employees…
I agree with you, we should stop them at every corner. I’m trying to point out that banning them isn’t a fix-all solution, something needs to be done about their voters as well.
In Greece some members of older, more moderate but still far right parties were absorbed by the center right and are now ministers of the government.
Essentially the center right parties tend to steer to the far right a little to gain the far right vote without being labeled a far right party.
This also needs to be addressed.
Think of it like washing your laundry. Yes, you can and should be careful to not get it dirty in the first place. Yes, if you wrestle in the mud, your clothes will be muddy. Either way you will need to wash them from time to time. Now whether that time is often or only rarely is something you can influence, but the washing itself remains necessary.
We need some strong detergent for those shit stains but I agree, the fight needs to be persistent
We are already in that second phase. We threatened to ban the NPD, it fell into irrelevancy.
And out of the Ashes rose the AfD, wrapping their NPD rhethoric in a cozy CSU blanket.
Do it. Honestly I’m a little surprised you didn’t do it 80 years ago
In a way we did. Anticonstitutional parties are generally not allowed. The problem is that courts and judges must be absolutely convinced that a party is anticonstitutional to actually ban them.
While I understand the point, won’t this just make politicians run on lies even more?
A far-right uprising in Germany, which is at the moment re-militarizing itself. Doesn’t anybody else worry about that?
That’s a point we are really worried about here in Germany too. The armament of the nation feels wrong in itself too many of us (even though most of us don’t have any better ideas when looking at Putin-Russia). But the outlook that the AfD (our stupid Nazi party) could inherit the upgraded army and it’s arsenal one day is really frightening.
Wake us up when it’s “have”.
They’re not gonna
A similar system has been there to prevent Nazism rise. Sadly, AfD and other right wing parties found a loophole a decade ago.
Yeah, sadly there is only one way to defeat Nazis and it’s not easy or liked by most.
If you’re talking about the option of banning the entire party: The “loophole” that Afd is exploiting is that this action needs political support and gonservatives are unwilling to give political support for banning a(nother) right-wing party. Is that really a loophole?
That’s astonishing bullshit. There is already a process for ban political parties with political alignments incompatible with the constitution, which has to be initialized by o e of the two chambers of parliament and decided by the constitutional court. Having a political instrument in addition to that will automatically reduce the hurdle of dismantling political movements, for blurry definitions of “sufficient amount of extremists in a party”.
It can also be initiated by the federal government. Something that both the past and the likely upcoming government have rejected, because they are happy with the Fascists from the AfD moving the country to the far-right, so they can get their own right wing positions in better.
In that sense the article calling the current SPD center-left is already out of touch with the current time. In many positions the current SPD is right to where the CDU was under Merkel. The CDU and their Bavarian partner CSU have embraced a heavy far right populist position, with the CSU befriending Trumps republicans, Orban and other far right/authoritarian leaders. The CDU ran on a platform of racism and dismantling human rights. The SPD has a hard on for authoritarianism and wants to dismantle many civil rights, such as privacy, protection of the flat, freedom of sciences and arts, freedom of opinion, right to asylum…
The proposal doesn’t ban the party, it suggests banning extremist individuals convicted of things like inciting hatred from running for office. In effect, it puts a damper on extreme individual members of a party that doesn’t itself reach the threshold for prohibition as a party. So I can see the logic behind it. But I agree it’s a dicey proposal and ripe for political abuse. Still, it would be contingent on court decisions so it could work with a strong (just/uncorrupt) court system.
Well reading what’s actually is there and not what I already concluded to be there has never been my strong suit. The proposal feels like sidestepping the actual problem, that the rise of the far right must be countered, by putting a weak barr on political discussion and political discours to mitigate broader problems. Which to be fair is the politics of center parties.
Less inequality and better education are really the only solution.
People reach for extremism when they feel let down by the existing system.
Less inequality and better education are really the only solution.
People reach for extremism when they feel let down by the existing system.
Whatever actual or perceived grievances a person may have (even though merely being born in Germany already constitutes winning the global class lottery) - that only ever causes vulnurability.
That person then turning to actively undermining democratic systems and the international community is something that only happens if some con artist used that vulnurability to convince the person that it constitutes a solution to their problems.Equality and education are great. Letting con artists run around freely is a completely separate issue. Letting folk get scammed out of their life savings is just as detrimental to a healthy society as letting folk get scammed out of their vote.
This absolutely needs to be a thing in every country. Ban far right parties, ban far right media
Considering the CDU could be considered a far right party themselves, they just wanna eliminate their competition, so i wouldn’t get my hopes up.
They literaly had an election poster with the slogan “You don’t have to vote for the AfD to get what you want. There is a democratic alternative: the CDU!”.
As long as privately owned press and corporate social media algorithms try to shift the overton window as far right as it can go that’s not gonna happen.
Yes we could, but the inner security is stalling the investigation and the conservatives and liberals think they could get the nazi votes and lean heavily into the rethorik. Yeaaah doesnt work out. Never did
As much as I’m a fan of keeping Nazis out of government, holy fuck is this a bad idea!
A judge shouldn’t be able to ban anyone from running for office.
This is what Russia does. Ban you from running if you’re convicted of “extremism”, then define that to include opposing the government.Disappointing that this isn’t the overwhelming response; and shows how dangerously close to fascism a lot of the supposedly ‘anti fascist’ respondents actually are.
To ban a thing, you’d better first clearly define what it is.
Right/Left are poor descriptors of often complex political stances, with ‘far right’ being no easier.
Clearly a dangerous path. Those beying for ‘a ban on far right’ need to take a pause and think, it’s like they’ve forgotten what nuance is.
Better to a) fund the teaching of critical thinking and humanistic morality through the education system; and b) foster domestic economic policies that maximise opportunities for your citizens so they don’t feel disenfranchised in large numbers.
That will help prevent the emergence of tribalistic, insular, moral-absolutist behaviour closer to the root.
Then they’ll ban far left politicians from running.
Then they’ll ban anyone they don’t like.
And eventually, they’ll ban everyone who isn’t them.
Right wing lunatics are repulsive in almost every sense, but this isn’t the way you beat them. When you put the machinery in place to do something like this, it will inevitably be abused in the opposite direction in future.
It’s much harder to be abused when you ban the only party abusing it.
On the topic of cordon sanitaire (the practice of never forming a coalition with far-right parties, no matter how well they perform in elections):
Me pre-2016: “Isn’t that kinda counter to democracy?”
Me in 2025: “Outlaw and deport the fuckers, please!”
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Calling the SPD anything but a luke warm pudding is a lie.
They are literally neither right noir left. They just bend to whatever coqlition they get into.
Nope. The SPD defending the AFD. Faeser stops the publication of a report, which would label the whole AFD as a party fighting the constitution. They actively work sending refugees to countries like Afghanistan, help to criminalize climate and Palestine activists and so forth.
The only left leaning thing they actively fought for in the last term in government was raising the minimum wage a bit. Everything else which was decent left leaning policy was brought through mainly by the Greens. Sometimes even the FDP had to rightly fight the insane policies of the SPD.
While the idea sounds good I don’t think anyone should be setting a precedent to say it’s okay for elected governments to ban opposition parties from running based on their political views. Ultimately the people should hold the power.
Because that hasn’t caused us any problems up to now has it? Maybe we should be setting a minimum standard for a political office, and maybe that minimum standard should include not being committed of certain crimes as is being proposed here 🤷♀️
Nah, that’s the paradox of tolerance. A democracy cannot allow fascists to run without dismantling itself. Also fascism and other “political views” that dehumanize are not a political view, they are chargeable criminal offenses in many countries.
That is a dangerously reckless and ignorant take of the paradox. The paradox is a rejection of protecting the intolerant, and their use of an argument they do not adhere to themselves. It does not mean we should build the tools and laws of fascist oppression to combat fascism.
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.
No. The tolerance paradox generally is interpreted to mean that any tolerant society that tolerates intolerance destroys itself. See Wikipedia first paragraph tolerance paradox. Any serious democratic constitution bases itself on humanism and the idea that human rights cannot be infringed on except to protect the human rights of others. Allowing participants in political discussions who question that is outright fucking stupid. They must be excluded, deconstructed, and fought in the streets if necessary. Using the US as an example for anything democracy related is on the same level as using China as an example for well implemented communism.
So you agree that whoever is currently in government — which are highly-influenced by their oligarchy, everywhere, to varying degrees — should be able to dictate who can and cannot be involved with politics?
Congrats! You’ve made the EU great again! You’ve now given the majority the ability to eliminate political opposition, all challenges to the status quo, and supported a current/future populist achieve their goal of dictatorship. Time to pat yourself on back, now off to the gulag!
Why are you arguing in favor of parties that want to infringe on people’s human rights?
I fail to see how any movement of change within the spectrum of a constitution based on human rights would be negatively affected by the deligtimisation of anti-humanist factions.
What do oligarchs have to do with that anyway?
How does any of that lead into dictatorship?
What about separation of power?
What about other means of political influence, like wide spread worker strikes, those wouldn’t be affected by the dismantling of political parties.
Why the fuck are people spouting libertarian nonsense in defense of fascism?
And pertaining to the gulag: no you.
Why are you arguing in favor of parties that want to infringe on people’s human rights?
- Denying people their right to vote is LITERALLY “infringing on people’s human rights”. You are arguing in favor of this!
https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-democracy-and-human-rights
- I’m not defending the AFD. I’m defending human rights and civil liberties. There’s a major difference that you don’t seem to understand.
You are the one arguing that infringing “extremists” human rights is valid to protect everyone’s human rights, ignorant of the fact that all the government has to do to disenfrachise entire groups of people is redefine what “extremism” means (e.g. like declaring protests and property damage of Tesla to be “terrorism”). You are using the exact same logic fascists use to seize control.
Do you think you get to decide what “extremism” is? To me, many global leaders are/were “extremist” and should be serving life in prison for their crimes – multiple members of the Bush admin in the US, numerous members of Israel’s government and military, etc – but most of worlds dominant political classes do not agree that wars and genocide (which have killed thousdands/millions of people) are “extremist” enough, or “extremist” at all. How can they justify these crimes? Because they committed these crimes fighting terrorists/extremists!
What do oligarchs have to do with that anyway?
Oligarchs own the lion-share of the media, corporations, capital, and political financing – everywhere – therefore they heavily influence the definition of terms like “extremist”, “terrorist” or “anti-humanist”, both socially and legally.
How does any of that lead into dictatorship? What about separation of power? What about other means of political influence, like wide spread worker strikes, those wouldn’t be affected by the dismantling of political parties.
I’ve given you concrete examples. I suggest you read up on modern history and how dictatorships are formed, and what civil liberties and human rights actually are.
Why the fuck are people spouting libertarian nonsense in defense of fascism?
You don’t know what libertarianism is. Libertarianism is not libertarian politics, political parties, or the fascists/conservatives who bastardize it for power/profit. It is the opposite of authoritarianism. If you believe that democracy, human rights, and civil liberties should be protected, you are a libertarian. You can’t be anti-libertarianism, without being pro-authoritarianism; just like you can’t be anti-ANTIFAscist, without being fascist.
For what it’s worth I don’t believe you are arguing in bad faith, but I do believe you are uninformed/misinformed. You can either admit that there are major flaws with your argument, and that it has a potential to cause more harm than good, or you can dig in and continue resorting to logical fallacies.
I don’t argue for the implementation of the legal changes discussed in the article, I argue that we already have the required means.
I argue for using these means to protect from fascism.
The better political means would be to enact changes that fix stuff for people so they don’t get the feeling the only party that cares for them are fascist, but the topic is legal means.
As I wrote before, the infringement of human rights can be justified to protect others human rights. Barring people from voting for the prospect of genocide is a balanced approach I fully support.
How these legal instruments are used in practice is a different topic from what they are meant for.
Oligarchs are a societal problem which exists independent of constitutional balance of power. Since I try to argue within the idea of legal systems this seems to me as an unrelated, while still very real problem. But that must be dealt with outside of the question of the legality of political parties. To underline my intent here, I believe that the problem of oligarchy can be fixed by parties which adhere to the humanitarian political playing field which the constitution describes. This includes for example radical leftists that use the constitutional legal construct of seizing property in the name of the state (means of production aka money) from those who abuse the property.
Democracies don’t die because they restrict political speech based on a constitution which in the case of Germany is pretty solid, they die because they disservice their population while spouting nationalist or other BS and declaring everyone else the enemy and shifting the legal framework to dismental the rule of law.
The idea of cutting these parties and movements of from gaining political traction seems blatantly obvious to me.
Libertarian BS is not the same as Libertarism. People arguing for free speech which allows for speech which is anti-humanist is libertarian BS. Libertarism in itself is a problem because it advocates for the freedom of the individual over the freedom of the collective. Which some find attractive and I myself egoistic. But that is not the the point I’m trying to make here.
In a working legal system, in a constitutional framework of sperated powers within a democratic society we cannot allow BS in the political discours, because it aims to dismental the political discours. Similarly to playing chess with a geese, you will get bit.
The only political discussion I’m willing to have with fascists is over the barrel of a gun, but since the societal contract we are born into asks of me to give my ability to exercise violence in the the hands of the state so it excersises violence in the most just way possible I demand the legal ability and the application of those means to barr fascists from everything.
And that is the point here. Fascism is not a valid political opinion, it’s a crime. Other political or mixtures of religious and political thought qualify as well and I don’t want them anywhere near a parliament.
The point I don’t understand and that might be due to my mental limitations, is why would anyone want these in a political discussion. Why give those free speech that want to abolish it?
The abuse of these legal frameworks is a problem, and that is real, but their existence is required to have a line of defense against anti-humanist BS. And towards the point that you are arguing in favor of civil rights and not for the AfD, it’s still an argument that allows for the AfD and I won’t accept that as a basis for discussion of fundamental legal frameworks of a society.
Niemals wieder is not only a phrase it must be the very spirit of any serious democratic framework and rule of law.
Wehrhafte Demokratie macht BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
There allready is precedent for banning parties. History and current events both show that people are fully ready to vote fascists into power. And also, you know what’s one of the big reasons so many people vote for fascists? Fascist propaganda. Banning fascist parties will help have fewer fascist citizens around (at least after a while).
@FourGreenFields @twinnie. add populists to that
People are easily manipulated. There needs to be some guardrails.
It’s not based on their views but after multiple convictions for extremist activities. That sounds reasonable (on paper) to me for now. Not that I won’t be surprised if anything useful comes of this.
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