{"id":95806,"date":"2025-05-24T04:00:20","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T08:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=95806"},"modified":"2025-05-24T10:42:51","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T14:42:51","slug":"german-democracy-trembles-as-the-extremely-extreme-extreme-right-afd-arent-going-to-be-banned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/05\/24\/german-democracy-trembles-as-the-extremely-extreme-extreme-right-afd-arent-going-to-be-banned\/","title":{"rendered":"German democracy trembles as the extremely<\/em> extreme extreme right AfD<\/em> aren’t going to be banned"},"content":{"rendered":"

eugyppius<\/a> updates us on the continued shaky state of German democracy, as the scary extremely<\/em> extreme right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> (AfD<\/em>) party seems to have somehow escaped being banned from participation in politics due to some ridiculous “lack of substantive evidence” excuse:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week, a supersecret assessment of Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em> by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV<\/em>) leaked to the press. This document was supposed to prove, in excruciating detail, why the AfD<\/em> are so evil and so fascist and so Nazi and so Hitler, and in this way make a preliminary case for banning the party. In fact its contents turned out to be such an arrant joke that it sapped all remaining momentum within the German political class to prohibit the AfD<\/em><\/a>. I suspect even the “right-wing extremist” classification of the AfD<\/em> is now in jeopardy and may well be thrown out by the courts, that is how bad this much-heralded supersecret assessment turned out to be. <\/p>\n

It took a few days for the full impact of the report’s idiocy to really sink in. That’s how it is with really stupid things \u2013 the incredulity they inspire must first dissipate. Finally, though, on Tuesday of this week, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that the dubious evidence marshaled by the BfV<\/em> was “not sufficient” to support ban proceedings<\/a>. Dobrindt also said that the whole debate had become “counterproductive” and that it was time to begin finding ways to “end social polarisation”, whatever that means. Hours later, it emerged that Chancellor Friedrich Merz had ordered the entire CDU leadership never to say another word about banning the AfD<\/em><\/a>. If everyone will just shut up, Merz believes his party can “avoid further debate” and avoid “giving voters the impression that the CDU is aiming to eliminate a rival party” \u2013 which is of course exactly what the CDU were hoping to do until the BfV<\/em> fucked everything up with their retarded 1,108-page collection of dyspeptic Facebook-grade political takes.<\/p>\n

There’s still a few scattered calls for ban proceedings coming from the left, but their heart isn’t in it and they don’t matter anyway. Without Union votes, no ban application will ever get to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Raed Saleh, an extremely obnoxious politician who heads the SPD faction in the Berlin House of Representatives, whined to the press this morning about how “appalling and disgraceful” it is that outlawing the opposition is no longer on the table and that his party is now being asked to “engage in political debate” with the AfD<\/em><\/a> instead. Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, also of the SPD, likewise fervently hopes that the AfD<\/em> might still be banned<\/a> and she thinks the Interior Ministry should spend more time “evaluating” that BfV<\/em> dumpster-fire assessment. Since Hubig is Justice Minister and not Interior Minister it doesn’t really matter what she thinks the Interior Ministry should be doing. I don’t understand why so many are citing Hubig’s remarks like they mean anything.<\/p>\n

The implosion of this ban-the-AfD<\/em> arc seems like kind of a big deal to me. Since 2021, the party have been “under suspicion” of right-wing extremism, but despite four years of snooping the BfV<\/em> have been able to come up with nothing that is not some combination of legally irrelevant, harmless, banal, uninteresting, stupid and a complete waste of government resources. At some point, you have to put the question: If the AfD<\/em> are so evil and so Nazi and so fascist and so Hitler, why can’t anybody, anywhere, adduce any evidence of their evil Nazi Hitler fascism? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

eugyppius updates us on the continued shaky state of German democracy, as the scary extremely extreme right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland (AfD) party seems to have somehow escaped being banned from participation in politics due to some ridiculous “lack of substantive evidence” excuse: Last week, a supersecret assessment of Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland by the Federal Office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1118,28,53],"tags":[1577,766,458],"class_list":["post-95806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-germany","category-media","category-politics","tag-afd","tag-democracy","tag-parliament"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-oVg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95812,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95806\/revisions\/95812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}