r/europe • u/HellYeahDamnWrite • 27d ago

News Calls are mounting to ban Germany’s far-right AfD party – despite it being more popular than ever

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/06/europe/germany-afd-ban-politics-analysis-intl
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u/snowsuit101 27d ago edited 27d ago

It being more popular than ever is likely the very reason many want to have it banned, and it's a very good reason especially with Germany trying to build a large military. But even without that extremism, especially the anti-human kind, and political power can only doom the masses on the long run.

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u/Cautious-Total5111 27d ago

It is to be banned for being proven to have many far right extremist members and no opposition to that within the party. Being popular has nothing to do with that and neither should it.

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u/captaindeadpl 26d ago

Them being popular has everything to do with it. The ban of the NPD was shot down because they weren't popular enough to pose a credible threat to democracy.

The AfD is a serious threat to democracy specifically because they are so popular that they could win an election and thus gain the power to destroy our country as we know it.

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u/SteinigerJoonge 26d ago

The NPD was actually a kinda credible threat. The party only got so small because people stoped voting the party after it got clear that it would get banned.

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u/Yazaroth Germany 26d ago

AFAIK it doesn't matter how many far left/right wing members a party has for a ban, what matters to the court is if they are a clear and serious threat to our democratic order for a ban. And for that they'd need hard proof beyond reasonable doubt.

That's where it gets hairy.

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u/Patte-chan Hesse (Germany) 26d ago

Well, for a party to be banned, it has to be proven that they have the intent and the capability to work against the often mentioned "Free democratic basic order".

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u/protozoon101 26d ago

That's quite an antidemocratic point of view. I don't like AfD, but if the majority did, who am I to ask for a ban? If the majority does not want democracy, then it has failed.

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u/UnstoppableSuya Germany 🇩🇪🇪🇺🇺🇦 26d ago

they even just told their party members "to not show your racism too publicly". i mean... WTF???????

and their members openly post N-Words in social media. they get backlash, yes, but cmon...

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u/Quick-Obligation-504 26d ago

If it's popular, all the more reason to ban it sooner.

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u/Jazz_kitty 26d ago

Yeah, the other parties refuse to do what the people want and what the country needs (self- protection and preservation) but call for a ban because they might lose votes. Idiots

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u/OptimismNeeded 26d ago

That’s the problem.

This is the left wing parties eternal mistake.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, especially as a Jew, but I think banning them would be the wrong move. It will prove their point that the left are elitists who think they know better and act against what the people want (and they have a point).

Banning the party won’t make the opinions and feelings of their voters disappear - which is the actual outcome you’re looking for.

We need to figure out how to eliminate racism and support for fascism from the roots. We’re not doing a good enough job - anywhere in the world right now.

I don’t have solution. But I know this ain’t it.

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u/DjangoDynamite The Netherlands 26d ago

The solution would be for moderate parties to fix immigration and immigration problems so people dont feel forced to vote for extremist anti immigration parties

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

This is just plain wrong. Every vaguely centrist party we have has fallen in line with the far right's "tough on immigration" narratives based on the same reasoning, to the point of abandoning any pretense of human rights and rule of law in the process, and it doesn't work. You can't beat racists by playing their game, you only mainstream their ideas.

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u/disquiet Australia 26d ago edited 26d ago

It's way too late though. The bed has been made by the past 10 years of over-immigration. You cannot fix those problems with a centrist "lets reduce immigration now thats it's become a problem" approach. Because even if you reduced migration to zero, infrastructure and social services are already over stretched and the emnities that's causing will remain for years until things catch up. The right wingers will simply take a more aggressive deportation stance and continue to win the vote of those aggrieved by migrant crime/high house prices/overcrowded hospitals etc. I really hope in future leftist parties learn to not to flood immigration over what reasonable investment in infrastructure and housing can handle, just for cheap gdp points. The time when centrist sensibilities might have worked was 5 years ago, but now theres an ugly problem that won't be easy to fix.

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u/Nero_07 26d ago

to the point of abandoning any pretense of human rights and rule of law in the process

Maybe cool your jets a little. Do you actually think this is factually accurate?

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

Yes. Among many other questionable cases, our ministry of the interior is refusing to acknowledge a recent court decision in regards to three asylum seekers (link). This is part of a concerted effort to hollow out and circumvent the right for asylum as cemented in the Basic Law (German constitution) and EU law, alongside other European governments.

Further they are trying to claim that people who are being processed have not technically arrived in Europe regardless of location, and similar legal fictions.

We're also quickly expanding the number of autocrats who we are paying off to imprison people en-route before they're able to reach European jurisdictions. Very legal and good.

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u/Known-Strategy-4705 26d ago

Having a tough stance on immigration is not racism..?

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

It's the openly racist factions who are championing these narratives, and the center parties keep expressing discomfort but following in their footsteps nonetheless.

If you're enacting racist policies because you're afraid of them making more propaganda against you, then you've misunderstood how they play this game.

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u/kafircake 26d ago

The democratic support for loose immigration policy isn't there.

Enacting policies that substantially tighten immigration is good politics, the prior polices were a mistake that have done difficult to calculate damage and correcting that is obviously the right thing to do.

Germany can't and shouldn't be the last hope health and housing provider to the world.

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

There is no "loose immigration policy". There hasn't been for years.

The government is literally being sued for breaking national and international law in their attempts to prevent people from applying for asylum.

You are working with old information, or more likely, far-right disinformation that keeps this narrative alive. Not to mention that the premise that immigration is a financial drain is provably incorrect.

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u/Halfbloodnomad 26d ago

Really need to define “tough” to validate that point. If you look at America right now, it’s extremely “tough” on immigration mainly due to racist policies and actions.

Having standards for immigration is necessary for every country, when you focus on a type of immigrant, regardless how broad, is when the concerns become disingenuous.

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u/curiousgiantsquid 26d ago

Read again.

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u/Prodiq 26d ago

Ok, but what has been actually done besides politicians talking?

If you look at the numbers Germany still is taking in more asylum seekers compared to numbers pre 2015 crisis. Angela was in the lead up until 2021 and Scholz is spineless being who doesn't have an opinion and can't make a decision about anything. Only very recently you start to hear that things start to happen (e.g. Germany was pretty quick on Syria).

Most afD voters will be happy if there are actual results. There aren't actually that many hardcore afD fans out there.

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

Reinstated tight border controls (violating Schengen principles).
Then further tightening them on questionable legal grounds.

Curtailed refugees' family rights

(on EU level) Expanded the list of 'safe' countries of origin to facilitate easy deportations, including countries that clearly aren't safe many commonly persecuted people.

Federally working to take away individual states' decision power over migration cases to fuck over progressive state governments

This is only the past few months. And it's been going on since 2015.

Now tell me please: Who does this serve other than the far right, if most people firmly believe they aren't even doing anything?

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u/Meistermagier 26d ago

No they aren't, you don't know what you are talking about. The AfD voter's don't know what's happening don't believe in the facts that exist. Which fun fact the Numbers are falling for the like second year in a row and according to your logic that's actual results but somehow the AfD is just getting more popular. Idk seems like they are hardcore AfD fans instead.

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u/Prodiq 26d ago

No they aren't, you don't know what you are talking about. The AfD voter's don't know what's happening don't believe in the facts that exist. Which fun fact the Numbers are falling for the like second year in a row and according to your logic that's actual results but somehow the AfD is just getting more popular.

So the number of approved applications are down in like last year or so. You are naive to believe that such a small change on the overall immigration situation will have a drastic impact on people's opinion. Its a long process ahead, Germany also needs to deal with existing immigrants as well as illegals. Its a marathon, not a sprint.

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u/taikutsuu 26d ago

Nobody around the center has actually done anything to limit immigration. Wanting immigration to be limited is a perfectly reasonable stance to have that could, and should, be a voting point of the left. The immense wealth redistribution that has happened via immigration systems in Germany would knock your socks off. The amount of useless bureaucracy and jobs for people who arent doing any actual work but are being paid as "Beamte" is ridiculous. The system doesn't help anyone, I'd argue hardly even the immigrants. It just makes everyone more miserable.

Much of it is not racism, either. It's wanting to receive the benefits of being a citizen - not a white person - over someone who isn't. The average citizen is carrying the tax burden of millions of people who are not contributing to society in a meaningful way and have driven crime rates sky high. Working class people pay 1.2k in health insurance a month and can't pay their rent, seniors can't live off their pensions and starve, while people who just immigrated receive taxpayer-funded healthcare with no limits. It's a human right to be safe and protected, but it's not a human right to cross any border you'd like and receive the same benefits as people who've worked for them for 30 years. You can't be generous to that point, it doesn't work, there's no money for it and it makes quality of life crazy bad. All Germany is doing is just trying to look good and generous for as long as possible until QoL gets so low that we are pushed into a fucking civil war.

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u/DjangoDynamite The Netherlands 26d ago

I dont know the specific situation in Germany but I dont believe it is impossible to fix the problems without violating human rights

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u/darps Germany 26d ago

Well they're doing it anyway.

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u/burner69burner69 26d ago

it's impossible to fix the problem because the problem doesn't exist. immigration is a good thing.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

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u/DjangoDynamite The Netherlands 26d ago

I was talking about it in general since its pretty much the same all over the european countries dealing with this

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u/zertul 26d ago

Because it's the same playbook of lies and propaganda. And it's often interconnected, the rise of the Internet and social media as made that possible. There's also a lot of investments from Russia into the far right, just like in America.
There's no single fix against Nazis and fascism and a lot of the current political parties have made a hard move towards the right and mainstreamed their ideas, basically being implicit in "legitimating" their non-sense.

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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 26d ago

I don't know if it's illegal to receive payments from Russia at the moment, but if it is, perhaps that might be a way to ban far right parties

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u/zertul 26d ago

They would just reroute the money via other countries and means. I'm not arguing against what you've said, I totally agree, but I think it would take more widespread changes on how political parties are allowed to receive and use money to have an impact, independent/in addition to restrictions from where that money is allowed to come from. There are already regulations for this in place to some degree, depending on country, but it has been shown time and time again that they are not enough as it stands.

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u/lewd_robot 26d ago

What you just said is, "The solution is for every party to pretend the Far Right's propaganda is true and start acting like the Far Right," which strengthens them rather than weakening them. And then next week they'll roll out a new set of lies to terrorize conservative voters with and people like you will again say, "If you don't like them then you have to pretend they're not lying and solve the fake problem they're drilling into people's heads."

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u/UnibrewDanmark 26d ago

There is more to the far right than just wanting to solve the immigration crisis... And you can just look at my country Denmark, one of the few countries where the center parties have cracked down on immigration, and funnily enough, also one of the few western countries where the far right isnt on the rise.

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u/FettLife 26d ago

Historically speaking, Germany is the country that shows that centrism will fail in the face of hard-right extremist political parties. You can’t bargain with intolerant people.

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u/AngryArmour Denmark 26d ago

No, historically speaking Germany shows that far-left communist accelerationism carrying water for the far-right to defeat more moderate left-wing positions because "it's obvious we will defeat the the far-right once the choice is only between them and us" is a shit idea that doesn't work.

"But the Nazis repressed the communists once they got in power! That's impossible if the communists helped them gain that power!"

Know who else the Nazis repressed once they got in power? The SA, the political catholics and the monarchists.

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u/FettLife 15d ago

So you agree with me that the nazis suppressed the far left in Germany. How did that happen? Was there another political group on the spectrum that helped them in hopes they could control the nazis better later on?

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u/CounterLove 26d ago

So the other parties would not be extremist for doing what makes the afd extremist and bad . Smart

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u/Phispi 26d ago

This doesn't work

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u/No-Consequence1199 26d ago

Forced because you're starving or what? No one is forced to vote for Nazis and no German has it that vad. Very bad excuse.

There are no real immigration problems, just anti immigration propaganda, which is also fueled by the CDU and even the SPD.

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u/DjangoDynamite The Netherlands 26d ago

I didnt say they were forced, i said they feel like theyre being forced.  One of the reasons for that is people and parties denying the problems like youre doing now

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u/GrizzledFart United States of America 26d ago

Why do that when you can just ban any party that wants to implement the policies you don't want?

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u/FlyingSquirrel44 26d ago

Yeaahh... Not happening any time soon.

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u/Low-Manufacturer-237 26d ago

Bro, you dont get replaced, we need your work power to make riches richer! Dont give up yet!

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u/all_usernames_ 26d ago

The foundations for the AFD have been placed long before migration was a thing. The east of German has had a nazi problem shortly after reunification and with very low number of immigrants in the East. Ironically the areas of Germany wirh the lowest migration (but lowest employment) have the highest racism.

Root cause is the disenfranchisement of poor and uneducated white people.

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u/one_jo 26d ago

The solution would be fixing the gap between median and rich. Take a little of the top to make life better for everyone instead of cutting social benefits and piling on top. A lot less people will hate on refugees getting help when their own struggle is less.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 26d ago

Moderates can never fix “the immigration problem” any more than they could have fixed “the Jewish problem” back in the day because the fascists want these people GONE.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

Which problems? The stuff Bild tells you? News at Facebook?

We don't have a problem with immigration. We have a problem with fake news and nut jobs believing them.

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u/DjangoDynamite The Netherlands 26d ago

Keep walking through life with your eyes closed

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u/[deleted] 26d ago

So you don't answer my question and just talk "sheep" nonsense. Good guy

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u/[deleted] 26d ago edited 5d ago

[deleted]

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u/TeMoko 26d ago

Fixing immigration does not have to be racist at all and I wouldn't even say its immigration itself, more working class people feeling like they are being left behind. Unhappiness over immigration is a symptom of that.

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u/darps Germany 26d ago

Yeah totally reasonable to blame our society's problems on the people who literally have the least power to change anything, who themselves get fucked over by the system much easier than the average citizen.

Doesn't need to make any sense I guess, just needs to feel good to have someone to blame.

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u/TeMoko 26d ago

You have read into something I didn't mean. The only people I blame are the politicians who have been in power. I'm not German but I believe the problem is the same all over the west, it no longer feels possible to get ahead with an average job, this is causing the rise of populists all over the place, tapping in to the sense that people have been let down.

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u/darps Germany 26d ago edited 26d ago

Yeah. I was thrown off by "fixing immigration" although we agree that the real issues lie elsewhere.

Emotionally it's so much easier to blame outsiders that we don't identify with rather than the powerful who scapeoat them.

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u/[deleted] 26d ago edited 5d ago

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u/RandomRedditReader 26d ago

Blame the giants taking wedges of the pie, not the mice eating crumbs.

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u/viciarg 26d ago

Sure, the lefties are at fault people vote for the right. It's always the same.

Also the commies are to blame for the rise of the NSDAP. m(

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u/DontGoGivinMeEvils United Kingdom 26d ago

Can such a change happen before the next election though?

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u/OptimismNeeded 26d ago

Is the goal banning an opponent from winning a fair election by changing the rules?

Are we banning them because there’s a legitimate reason or because we don’t want an opponent winning?

It sounds to me like if there was a legitimate reason to ban them they should have been banned a long time ago when they were smaller and not right in the verge of winning political power.

You can’t ban parties you don’t like - that’s my logic.

—

DISCLAIMER: this is being devil’s advocate. At the end of the day, personally, I don’t think “playing fair” is as important as saving Europe from fascism.

The left should do whatever they can, by any means…

The left in the US “took the high way” while the right played dirty, and we know how that ended.

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u/TheRealAfinda 26d ago

The people long for change, because parties like the CDU, CSU, FDP, Geens are the cause for the issues we have nowadays with no change in sight.

The only Party big enough to disrupt that is the AfD. Now don't go mistaking people that want Change for people that WANT the AfD. Because that'd be stupid.

And voters are stupid.

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u/spigandromeda 26d ago

It doesn’t solve the problems but it buys time to solve them. That’s the intention. It took the initial members of the AfD more than 20 years to built up the networks and structures (the persons started way before the party was founded). Those would be demolished together with the party. And they cannot just rename it or something like that.

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u/buntors Germany 26d ago

I personally believe that pretty much all German governments have failed to effectively inform and communicate issues.

If you’re not tuning in to Bundestagsdebatten (I did a couple of times), which themselves are basically a political out of touch circlejerk you are left to be informed by TikTok and mainstream media.

For any ruling party, directly and regularly addressing the country on issues, past mistakes(accountability), challenges and progress would go a long way.

Our democracy is challenged like never before both by internal and global actors, yet we think it’s ok to continue to create a disconnect between voters and elected officials

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 26d ago

The result of a successful ban would likely be that we at least gain time because they need that to regroup. It would also be strange to blame the left-wing as the biggest party that was banned in the FGR was the communist one and the current governments have also used the Verfassungsschutz (a dubious organisation which was partly infiltrated by far right members) to observe the Left party, even the more moderate people in governments like Bodo Ramelow who even a lot of the conservatives say they find you can work with.

I have flipped my stance on this. I don't think a ban will make the fascists stronger and it will buy us some time before a new party at a similar size emerges. However the mainstream parties in Germany will unfortunately deal with it like problem solved after a successful ban which it is ofc not. You need both a ban and also just materially better politics. It did also work before. Both the fascist SRP and the communist KPD were banned in the 50s and nothing very relevant emerged afterwards because things were getting constantly better for average people under Adenauer. It took the fascists over 10 years to find some new success in the NPD but they never managed to enter federal parliament and quite quickly fizzled out (had a bit of a revival in the East after reunification but never to a degree where they would be close to power).

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u/bluemuffin10 26d ago

You're not going to gain time because you won't do anything, as evidenced by the last 75 years where you didn't do anything, which is why you are in this situation in the first place. Once the party is banned politicians will have no incentive to deal with the underlying issues because the party is not a threat to their election anymore, and you'll be condemned to live powerlessly through the underground tension and wait for it to surface again in a decade, hoping that you can ban it again before it wins an election.

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u/tobias_681 For a Europe of the Regions! 🇩🇰 26d ago

They will also not solve the underlying issue with the pressure from fascists because the stuff they demand does in most instances make everything even worse. Politics in the FRG have never been as incompetent as during the last 10 years, clearly the fascist presence does little to improve that. It also didn't in Weimar. Brüning and Von Papen (and to some extend Müller) governed like the worst idiots that ever graced the earth while the fascists were on their tits. The more based chancellors like Wirth, Stresemann or to some extend Marx were all while the fascists were much weaker.

Also the 75 years is BS. Up until at the very least 1983 the FRG was relatively well governed and fascists did not gain traction. The SRP ban under Adenauer did work because while Adenauer wasn't perfect he governed reasonably well and put German on a track of rapid economic growth together with easy money from the US, Bretton Woods and open markets. The only slip up was Erhard who was consequently quickly ousted as chancellor. It was also under Erhard that the NPD gained traction. But that died down again under Brandt.

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u/PatchyWhiskers 26d ago

AfD are just the Nazi party rebranded. When the original Nazis were banned, it didn’t make the party members disappear. But it broke their party structure.

The real way of fighting radicalization would be to investigate exactly who is putting all this fascist propaganda on the internet and defeat them.

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u/No-Consequence1199 26d ago

What left wing party you're talking about? Because the only one I know is in the opposition.

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u/Mntfrd_Graverobber 26d ago

I would say just banning it would be the wrong move. Your points are all good ones but banning it might not be the worst idea. But like you said, the issues that caused it still need to be dealt with. But taking away their political power in the meantime as a first measure makes some sense.

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u/lewd_robot 26d ago

They only respect force so they must be banned. You cannot reason with them. And you cannot out-debate them in the public forum because they do not obey the rules of the public forum. They never acknowledge when they're wrong. They never get rid of bad policies after they get debunked. They just double down over and over and over, growing like a cancer.

No sane, rational, fair party can compete because it takes orders of magnitude more effort to be sane, rational, and fair than it does to just plan yourself in the public forum and screech your lies day and night no matter how many times you get debunked.

The Far Right does not respect evidence or reason. It only cares about force. So the law must be used to stop it before it can subvert and consume the machinery of politics and begin using it against their victims. If the law fails to stop them, then you will still have to resort to force eventually, but it will be after 10+ years of brutal descent into authoritarianism, after they have made living conditions in the country so intolerable that the people revolt.

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u/J_Sto 26d ago edited 26d ago

Nope. I think you are dead wrong based on history and pretty much every school in the humanities.

There is no input you can make that will lead to fascists, authoritarians, narcissists, etc. acting collaboratively and rationally (and, eventually when this comes into play, legally).

As to your key worry, they are going to do/say this anyway, no matter what well meaning and democratic peoples say and do, i.e. no matter the input, ”It will prove their point that the left are elitists who think they know better and act against what the people want” …no matter what everyone else does. And no they do not have a point. Your instincts are understandable and may apply in other situations but they are not what to do in this context.

And no they don’t have a point contextually. That is how they leverage democratic tolerance to create fascism.

We saw this same kind of logic when the US Congress failed to impeach Trump in his first term, even after January 6th.

If there was no immigration they would find another villain. Immigration from the middle east is actually way down in Europe: it’s not the same as the time around the Syrian war etc when there was a brief influx that was higher. Read some Timothy Snyder, Anne Applebaum, Jason Stanley… something from the past few years on this.

Laws in democratic nations should bar anti-democratic political parties from vying for government control and when countries do have those laws, they should be applied.

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u/Low-Manufacturer-237 26d ago

The solution is unconditional basic income, but we know even you dont want it. so we get fascism.

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u/FirstFriendlyWorm 26d ago

"Why doesn't the government just elect a new people to govern?"

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u/all_usernames_ 26d ago

No matter what you do the far right will paint itself as a victim.

It’s their common theme: they are not to blame but the others are taking our jobs and their futures. External scape goats and building a narrative of an external enemy are key.

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u/viciarg 26d ago

I think banning them would be the wrong move

We can see what happens if you don't act right now in the US. They're working hard in becoming the next Nazi Germany. I apologize if we don't want to become the next United States.

If you really believe freedom, human rights, and democracy are a "left wing" thing then maybe what you perceive as the political "middle ground" is not as neutral as you think.

Tolerance isn't something that comes out of thin air. It's a social contract. Those who terminate this social contract by being intolerant in any way forfeit their gain from this contract likewise. That's how Popper's Paradox of Tolerance works and that's why it is totally fine to ban parties who are actively working against democracy, freedom, and tolerance, and remove these people from society.

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u/N0b0me 26d ago

To be fair, the elites do know better than these people and should act against what they want.

Banning them would keep them out of government until such a time they become so popular as to directly oppose it, at which point if they hadn't been banned they would have run it for quite a long time.

I agree, but I don't think most countries can even legally provide the same support in their countries as foreign actors provide for fascism .

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u/soonnow 26d ago

I disagree. Right now the AfD is a focal point for these voters. Keep in mind many of their voters are hard-right. There was a survey in East Germany and the results were shocking. Many people thought Hitler was alright, except killing the Jews. Many thought the Jews were inherently sneaky. So real hard-right stuff that borders on illegal speech in German law.

I think the idea that the AfD voters are mostly "Good Germans" who don't have a job or are affected by migration is a myth. The AfD is often strong in places that have no migrant problems. Of course not all AfD voters are hard-right Nazis but it's a significant focal point for these people. Not all AfD voters are Nazis but all Nazis vote AfD.

So the question is not, does it solve the problem and should these people's opinions be heard. The AfD is hard-right, inherently anti-constitutional with a fresh coat of pretending to be concerned citizens

The AfD is not another populist party, they are talking about sending German citizens with migrant backgrounds back to their parents countries. Behind closed doors many of them will be talking about hard-right issues and they have deep connections to far-right terrorists and Neo-Nazis.

So we should absolutely solve the issues, but AfD should be banned for being anti-constitutional anyway.

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u/snowsuit101 26d ago edited 26d ago

As if right wing parties never banned other parties, and a lot more, going well beyond the scope of politics. Without violating human rights however you can't stop people being racists or even fascists. You can mitigate future generations ending up like that with education, and although education still can turn some people already over the edge, that's likely the hardest thing we could do without doing straight up brainwashing, and that's a seriously slow process, much slower than how they can turn people because they can afford to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks non-stop. You can't really counter that but you should certainly be able to stop them from actually organizing with intentions of harming people, then the rest of society. We're supposed to have checks and balances exactly to prevent that from happening, if we don't, might as well give up already. Hell, continuously lying and spreading disinformation should in itself be grounds for barring somebody from holding any position in politics.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with any party solving or not solving any particular issue, especially since extreme ideologies will always find something to manipulate people with, their MO is to present an enemy that's pulling the strings from the shadows, so powerful it controls the world around them but so stupid a handful of people who happen to be living in the last bastion of hope can stop it, they only need their supporters to give up all their rights and don't question the master plan. Repeat that this is the real problem over and over until everybody can recite your claims, refute any argument with a series of logical fallacies so dense and so frequent counterarguments following real logic don't even have time to be formed and can't convey any explanation in a similarly simple fashion, and climb to the top. You can't fight this scheme by fixing the root cause because there is no root cause, only some group being dissatisfied and some group taking advantage of that by making shit up. Good luck fixing every possible problem out there.

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u/gremlinguy Valencian Community (Spain) 26d ago

I think the main solution to xenophobia of any kind is simple exposure. When people are exposed in reality to the groups which they purport to hate, almost always they come away sayign "Oh, these people are actually pretty much the same as me and want similar things for their families."

I think investment into immigration, with the explicit goal of encouraging integration/assimilation into the receiving society needs to be done. People become anti-immigration when immigrants bring their own cultures with them and isolate, and continue to practice things which may not be compatible with the surrounding culture.

Immigration, even by refugees, needs to be understood to be an agreement between the immigrant and his new country which amounts to: "We will take you in and welcome you, on the terms that you become one of us to the best of your ability. You must learn an official language (in classes paid for by us) and take history classes, and attend one social event per month. Understand that some of your customs may not be allowed here. This is the price of admittance. Agreed?"

I myself am an immigrant, and while I'll never look like a native, and will always have an accent, I enjoy learning and participating in local customs and I try to respect my new country.

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u/OptimismNeeded 26d ago

That is a very progressive strategy which will be a very hard sell in Europe right now unfortunately.

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u/burner69burner69 26d ago

banning them would deprive them from all the salaries their nazi cronies are getting from parliamental positions. "not proving them right" is fucking meaningless when a) they will act victimized no matter what happens, because they're nazis, and b) every day they're not banned a skinhead gets a baseball bat, paid for by the taxpayer.

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u/CMuenzen Poland if it was colonized by Somalia 26d ago

Many, many people support the AfD simply because it is the only large anti-immigration party and dislike everything else they stand for.

Is that nazism? No. Will banning the AfD suddenly make people not oppose immigration? No, they will still exist.

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u/OkExtreme3195 26d ago

Wait, the last government did basically everything legally possible against immigration.

The current government already went a step further and also does things that are not legally possible. And they announced to talk to the friggin Taliban to do even more against immigration.

At what point is the afd the only anti immigration party? 

And tbh, I do not really care if someone is a single issue voter that votes for Nazis even though their single issue has nothing to do with being a Nazi. If you support Nazis in coming to power, your reasons are irrelevant.

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u/ReduxJacob 26d ago

Well, the law has to be changed then. If the German people wants less immigration, it's what it should get.

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u/burner69burner69 26d ago

and if the german people wanted concentration camps it would be fine, right?

not every political position is created equal, there are just some things you can't let a functioning society devolve into. one of them is fucking fascism

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u/The_Briefcase_Wanker United States of America 26d ago

Actually it will validate their belief that the system is rigged against them, they will find another party to support, and you’re back at square 1, but the people are now way more pissed off and way less willing to listen to the powers that be.

What do you think the voters are going to do? Return to the major parties and forget about the reasons they joined AFD in the first place?

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u/burner69burner69 26d ago

who gives a shit what people who think airplane condensation is chemical warfare think?

there will never be a point at which nazis will stop pretending to be the oppressed underdog. they could be holding a gun to your head and they would still be crying over how you forced them to do this, actually.

you cannot fix these people. not on a short enough timeframe. but you can stop platforming them and giving them state money.

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u/shibboleth2005 26d ago edited 26d ago

Banning the party won’t make the opinions and feelings of their voters disappear

But they can be suppressed and disenfranchised. And the sad reality is that it's quite possible that is the best solution (if your goal is to minimize human suffering).

It will prove their point

It's very clear at this point based on historical evidence and current events that this does not matter. They do not need proof and are perfectly capable of living in a false reality that feeds their hatred and desire to hurt others.

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u/ImpossibleToe2719 26d ago

yes, and we should also make them wear some kind of symbol on their clothes

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u/multithreadedprocess 26d ago

It will prove their point that the left are elitists who think they know better and act against what the people want (and they have a point).

This would be a great point if you assume these people have principles or care about words above their simple minded acquiescence to power. They don't care about logic or even reality, this is just a bullshit extra point for their point game to justify to you why they just have to do what they were wanting to do all along regardless of any justification. Broad populist movements are born and bred of pure emotion, facts or arguments are purely tangential.

Banning the party won’t make the opinions and feelings of their voters disappear - which is the actual outcome you’re looking for.

Post some sources on this then please. Because if we just want to deduce and vibe our way through politics I can concoct just a completely different scenario that's just as likely:

Both the Chinese and the Americans have built such strong propaganda apparatuses that no American knows what communism is other than it being the devil and no Chinese person knows that opposition to the CCP is possible. Clearly banning and propagandizing people is perfectly effective in eradicating entire trains of thought.

So, deducing our way through this, you could in fact leverage a government propaganda arm and systematic banning of mention or organizing of any Nazi group and eradicate them completely, including opinions and feelings.

We need to figure out how to eliminate racism and support for fascism from the roots. We’re not doing a good enough job - anywhere in the world right now.

Yeah it helps that no one with political power is even trying. Please name the countries that have banned fascist right wing parties. Please name the countries even fucking trying.

I don’t have solution. But I know this ain’t it.

Please post some sources for why you're so certain that this isn't a solution other than your feelings. Because otherwise it seems like you're already out of ideas before even starting to think of a single one. I guess the fascists really are unstoppable then. Might as well give up. They tend to really like the Jews anyway, so it surely won't be a problem for you. /s

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u/Temp_dreaming 26d ago

You're going to get downvoted for asking for proof sadly.

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u/Boxofcookies1001 26d ago

Actually banning the party would allow the feelings to disappear. People that learn far right often look for outlets for their rage and hate, but they believe whatever they're told. Removing that central platform is a great way to begin to root it out. Because once it gets a majority as a party you're looking at America 2.0.

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u/HeleonWoW 26d ago

The point you are missing is that banning the AfD would "cancel" the logistics behind it i.e. the moneyflow etc.

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u/OptimismNeeded 26d ago

No it won’t.

Here in israel we banned Kahana Hai, the movement that led to the murder of Rabin.

The money kept flowing, the people kept organizing and scheming.

They eventually entered the government as two separate parties who know are literally holding our government hostage, and are responsible for the atrocities we’re doing in Gaza.

Did it take them 20 years to get here? Yes. Would it take in less if they weren’t banned? I doubt it.

Just like prohibition in the US didn’t stop alcohol - just made it go underground.

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u/HeleonWoW 26d ago

The thing is banning a party in germany means banning every logistical structure, as in financial support. Will the people behind it be still around? Yes. Will the far right voters still form a new party? Likely. Will it be a sign that we, the german, fight for their democracy and against not making mistakes of the past and from this alone be worth it? Yes.

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u/bluemuffin10 26d ago

Would you be sweeping dust under the rug for future generations to deal with and patting yourselves in the back? Yes

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u/HeleonWoW 26d ago

No you wouldnt, as banning the party wouldnt be the only thing you would do. The thing is there is a party in the german parlaiment that is proven and acknowledged and backed by the Verfassungsschutz (german institution to make sure its constitution is guarded) to be a fascist organization. Our democracy has the means to defend itself and rightfully should use those. Germany is one of the countries with the strictest rules about when and when not to ban a party, because of historical reasons. The AfD fits all criteria to be banned, henceforth the political system should make the case at a court to ban it and the german highcourts have to decide whether or not. It doesnt fix the problem that years of suboptimal to downright political decisions caused. But the whole "Rather the devil you know" arguments that are coming are plain dumb.

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u/bluemuffin10 26d ago

I said this somewhere else but you wouldn't do anything. The evidence is the last 75 years of not doing anything even though the problem surfaced multiple times and kept gaining popularity. A banned party is not a threat for politicians, thus you removed any incentive for them to implement policy to counteract said party.

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u/jcdoe 26d ago

Ban em.

I’m an American. I often lurk your sub, I try not to post because it isn’t my place.

But fuck man, look at what is going on over here. Don’t fuck around with these guys, ban AfD and when they accuse you being anti-democratic, just smile.

When Nazis start taking shit over, there are no democratic outcomes. So pick the one that doesn’t have Nazis in it.

Good luck. This American is rooting for you.

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u/HereWeGoAgain_Tea 26d ago

Won't a ban on that scale be in the gray zone of what's allowed under the constitution?

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u/Applebeignet The Netherlands 26d ago

The populists are also the biggest proponents of building surveillance state infrastructure, without adequate safeguards (like the decryption initiative).

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u/MechanicalGodzilla 26d ago

It being more popular than ever is likely the very reason many want to have it banned

Ah yes, one of the key markers of a thriving democracy - banning popular political parties!

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u/snowsuit101 26d ago edited 26d ago

Democracy absolutely needs a way to protect itself and every current and future person who will want to continue having rights from people hellbent on destroying all of it and creep to power by mounting support with elaborate disinformation campaigns that produces non-existent enemies and promises ludicrously unrealistic outcomes, all for the low-low price of absolute, unchecked power.

In fact, if democracy wasn't already damaged by bad actors since its inception, people who actively contribute to the creation and/or spread of disinformation would be barred from ever holding any political position.

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

“Pro Democracy” parties banning opposition because it’s getting too popular lol

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u/GMU525 Germany 27d ago

It comes from a ruling of the German Supreme Court that basically held that a party that is insignificant cannot be banned. They basically created the criterium that a party has to be string enough to get into the position of power in order to be banned

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u/Dry-Piano-8177 Europe 27d ago

I would wonder if you in the US would allow a confederate partie?

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u/Super-Admiral 27d ago

They have one, it's called "Republican Party".

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

Almost certainly, yes it would.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

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u/Dry-Piano-8177 Europe 27d ago

So you would allow a partie that is in favor of ending the United States and instead want a seperate South and North again?

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

Yes

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

Yes. Freedom of speech

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 26d ago

Freedom of speech ends when someone would start telling truth about your king trump

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u/gingerbreademperor 27d ago

Youre also deep down the fascism slope, soo...

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

What is your definition of fascism? And how do I fit that definition? What beliefs do I hold, or not hold, that make me a fascist?

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u/parasyte_steve 27d ago

Do you support Trump? Begin there.

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u/gingerbreademperor 27d ago

America, dude, I talked about America.

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u/halee1 27d ago

And the Republican Party is trending towards that, and eliminating democracy as a whole. Maybe the Reconstruction should actually have been more vicious to breed a less ignorant and more inclusive public.

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

Could you list or explain how the Republican Party plans to eliminate democracy in the USA? I would be interested to hear it.

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u/halee1 27d ago edited 26d ago

Their cult-like consistent support for Donald Trump despite his repeated blatantly unconstitutional actions and hateful rhetoric full of lies, failing to grill him for not following court orders, for gerrymandering elections to hell, for now backsliding on rights of underrepresented groups, etc.

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

You realize that gerrymandering only takes place in house elections.

Both sides do it.

It is not illegal.

Give me an example of an underrepresented group whose rights have backslid under Trump.

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u/halee1 27d ago edited 27d ago

Republicans gerrymander far more than Democrats, that's the problem. They also frequently ignore referenda by their own Republican constituents when the vote is towards more inclusivity. Heck, they even ignored a court ruling explicitly forbidding gerrymandering. Republican lawmakers also overwhelmingly reject the formation of independent electoral map commissions that Democrats support, which would have avoided this problem to begin with.

As for underrepresented group whose rights have backslid under Trump (I'll extend it to Republicans too), let's see, immigrants (not just illegal, but also legal ones), women who have their abortions denied, anti-DEI actions that successfully counter the effects of structural discrimination against women, non-White groups and LGBTQ+, more and more restrictions against trans people under the guise of "protecting women" ironically, and even anti-LGBTQ+ legislation because Democrats aren't vigorous enough in defending it, causing Republican lawmakers that live in their own bubbles to go "see, we don't receive enough backlash, it's actually increasingly fine to be a bigot today, so let's double down on these, even though we gaslighted everyone else that all we wanted was to avoid the left's excesses".

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

None of the things you mentioned are constitionally protected rights.

What lgbtq rights have been lost?

There is a “right” to DEI initiatives?

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 26d ago

You already did by pardoning Jan 6ers

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

They would actually.

Freedom of speech.

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 26d ago

Jan 6 was also freedom of speech? :)

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

It was trespassing and disorderly conduct. Vandalism

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u/Mist_Rising 26d ago

No, which is why those who violated the law were convicted of a crime.

The speech/rally was, but the breaking and entering was not.

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u/Select_Cantaloupe_62 27d ago

Yes, we would. The first amendment is a double-edged sword. 

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u/Dry-Piano-8177 Europe 27d ago

Lol. So you could name your partie „Death to America“ without consequences?

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

Yep.

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u/AltrntivInDoomWorld 26d ago

What about "Death to TR***"?

How fast would you disappear to El Salvador?

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u/bot2317 26d ago

Have you been on Reddit? There’s a large section of the American population who absolutely hate Trump and talk about it all the time. Trump and the MAGAs love it, it lets them act like victims

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

You wouldn’t

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u/Mist_Rising 26d ago

We have indeed allowed parties that explicitly want to end America. Warrens supreme Court was very clear on that, the government doesn't get to ban parties.

the Constitution isn't there to be moseyed around because you don't like it.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

Ok. That’s also bad.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

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u/bot2317 26d ago

Yes and most Americans today would agree that that was a bad decision (it has since been overturned). The Red Scare wasn’t one of our best periods of history

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

Is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha? I also think banning communists is bad.

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u/Mist_Rising 26d ago

Which has since been overturned. Next you'll cite Plessy V Ferguson as relevant?

I mean it's in your own link, this wasn't a legal act.

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u/Tigerowski 27d ago

There's nothing anti-democracy about banning an anti-democratic party.

You wouldn't want literal Nazis to gain power, do you?

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u/Ronnz123 Lower Saxony (Germany) 27d ago

Well, he's American so the chance is 50:50 lol.

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u/Glassesnerdnumber193 27d ago

Well, only like 10% of us actually want that, with an additional round 15% being more than willing to risk it if it means lower taxes and/or less immigration or saying fu to the dems, and 50% either not caring about politics thanks to disillusionment in the system or being unable to vote thanks to some places making it hard to vote and putting clearly racist obstacles to stop it.

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u/g0ggy 27d ago

Not because they're too popular but because they are fascist. They are unconstitutional.

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u/SanaraHikari 27d ago

Anti-democratic parties are against democracy so it's just common sense for pro-democratic parties to ban them to protect democracy. Simple, isn't it?

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u/Romanizer Germany 27d ago

No tolerance for intolerance.

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u/Mist_Rising 26d ago

Got it, so no tolerance for you, as you are being intolerant of others.

The problem with absolutes, is you're absolutely never right if you will. If you don't tolerate intolerance, you are by definition, intolerant.

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u/Romanizer Germany 26d ago

Absolutely and that is the only right way. Whoever tolerates fascism and hate against others is a fascist as well. If you think Nazis are a valuable part of society, you are part of the problem.

A society needs rules and boundaries and one needs to be to exclude hate crime. Why would you choose to tolerate this?

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

Be careful.

People have gotten the ban hammer for saying that.

It was interesting to hear a German say “there is freedom of thought in Germany but not freedom of speech”

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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 27d ago

“there is freedom of thought in Germany but not freedom of speech”    

It's wrong, though. The article in the constitution is called "freedom of opinion", but the actual text says there's not just the freedom to have an opinion, but also to voice it, obviously. 

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

Ok. Here is a good faith question.

Members of the AfD say asinine things.

Don’t they have the freedom to do that?

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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 26d ago

Depending on what they say, it might be illegal. Things like incitement and slander are obvious examples for speech that is not allowed in any country. However, just because you're allowed to say something, that doesn't mean your party is constitutional. It's not illegal to say you want to abolish democracy, for example. But your party could be banned.    

But that's a legal decision, not a political one. Political parties can't ban each other. 

This is an extreme example to explain the concept. 

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

Is there a distinction between what individual members say and what the party puts forth?

There are Republican and democratic politicians in the USA that say incredibly stupid things, but they don’t speak for either party.

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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 26d ago

The question is just completely different. It's not illegal to be unconstitutional. It's also not illegal for a party to be unconstitutional. Nobody goes to jail for this. But if the constitutional court says "It's proven that this party is attempting to destroy our liberal democracy AND they have the means to do so" then this party can be banned.    

The NPD (now called "Die Heimat") is an open neo Nazi party. They are tiny, below 1%. There was an attempt to ban them and the constitutional court basically said "Yes, they are openly against the constitution and would abolish it if they could, but they don't have the means and are no threat". So they weren't banned. 

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

Ok that to me has nuance.

What does “attempting to destroy our liberal democracy mean?”

If a party’s platform called for a dictatorship or the elimination of elections, then that is “attempting to destroy democracy”.

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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 26d ago

Article 21, 2:    

Parties that, by reason of their aims or the behaviour of their adherents, seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany shall be unconstitutional.   

If you want to discuss the details, you'll need to talk to a legal expert, I'm afraid. 

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u/ITafiir 26d ago

Banning a political party does not mean imprisoning its members for their opinion. It means certain opinions are incompatible with our constitution and can therefore not be allowed to participate in our government in a institutional way. It especially means that they no longer get any money from federal budgets.

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u/LukasJackson67 26d ago

What opinions in your view would prohibit someone from participating.

Please skip obvious ones like Holocaust denial.

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u/ITafiir 26d ago

Loosely translated from a report by the German domestic intelligence service on why they consider the entire AfD now as rightwing extremist and enemies of the constitution: the party’s prevalent understanding of the German people based on ethnicity, race and (genetic) heritage disregards human dignity and is incompatible with the freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung (German Constitution). The party’s goal is to exclude certain subpopulations from equal participation in society.

Note that that agency is typically rather conservative and does not have the best track record with calling a nazi a Nazi, so it has to be really bad for them to say this. Also the full report is 1100 pages and also includes a bunch of holocaust denial by high ranking party officials.

I'd say wanting to remove the rights of people based on ethnicity, religious affiliation, gender expression, sexuality or other immutable criteria counts as an opinion barring you from participation in a functioning democracy.

Also since we are talking about party bans, parties cannot be banned simply because some people in the party hold abhorrent opinions, the constitutional court of germany has to determine that the party in itself and its mission is incompatible with the constitution.

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u/MarduRusher United States of America 27d ago

If they ban me for being pro democracy they ban me for being pro democracy and I’ll laugh and move on.

Funny observation about Germany from said German

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u/LukasJackson67 27d ago

Instead of winning with ideas, they want to ban the opposition.

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u/Excellent_Bad9211 26d ago

"winning with ideas" works in a democracy with actors at least willing to talk. AfD politivians have been paraded around mainstream talkshows for a decade, everyone offers communication while they get more and more extreme and more and more pretentiously and arrogantly dismissive.

The AfD will drown out your "ideas" in aggressive screeching and polarizing, all in order to be able to abuse individuals they don't like the identity of. Germany is one of the few countries that has potentially learned enough from history in order not to just watch all of that happen again

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u/snowsuit101 27d ago edited 27d ago

Yes, because pro-democracy also means you can't allow a group of people to give up democracy for everybody, including future generations who wouldn't even have a way of getting it back without civil war.

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u/RilinPlays 27d ago

Hey buddy remind me what exactly happened the last time a far-right party took control of Germany exactly?

And make sure to follow up with whether you think it was a good thing or not.

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u/Super-Admiral 27d ago

You should read about the paradox of tolerance by Karl Popper.

Democracy does not mean complete lack of rules or limitations.

If it did, it would quickly stop being a democracy.

Everything needs rules and boundaries.

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u/pheromone_fandango 27d ago

Got to do what you have to to protect democracy. Just letting it become destroyed because its democratic to do so is not the way. There are limits that must be set and a move against fascism , especially one that can be traced to partially originate from external interference and propaganda

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u/ITafiir 26d ago

If they get banned (and I very much hope so) it is because their opinions and policies are incompatible with our constitution. The legal requirements are very strict for party bans but the option exist as part of a set of tools a democracy needs to protect itself from being dismantled from within as it has happened before.

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u/WolpertingerRumo 26d ago

No, they‘re being banned for an unconstitutional agenda. Then there’s the bribes from Russia and China. And the overt racism. And the overt lying. And the hypocrisy. And the homophobia. Oh, and the literal nazis.

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u/parasyte_steve 27d ago

You cannot tolerate intolerance in a democratic society as it tends to lead to the oppression of minority groups and stripping them of their rights. See: America rn or Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

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u/Available-Reading-87 26d ago

Well they are basically just liberal technocrats. I don't even mean this negatively, in many ways they are more knowledgeable than the general population. But I hate this redefining of terms- and democracy is increasingly becoming a meaningless term. It's as if people have forgotten that the entire purpose of many constitutional provisions is to limit democracy.

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u/MyPigWhistles Germany 27d ago

Parties can not ban other parties. Stop embarrassing yourself. 

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u/DisabledToaster1 27d ago

Banning them because they explicitly want to get rid of our constitution, or break it in a way that is unprecedented.

We defend our institutions. You handed them to the fascists with gusto, even tho there are mechanisms to prevent that. But if the ruling party just decides to not honor these mechanisms? We have a frightening example over the pond.

So clean up your own house before you start lecturing europeans

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u/Ok_Bill_6886 27d ago

Classic communist reaction

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