Its amazing how things work, the defendors of the democracy are asking to ban a political party. Do this exercise with me, imagine a country where the majority of people want a "far-right" party to rule them, they voted for them on a free and clean election. It can be for a lot of reasons, security, education, social paradox, conservative economic reasons, emigration... whatever, you choose, what would you do? Deny the will of the majority of the people from that country or let them freely choose what they want like true defendors of free will? Im not judging im just curious, i know my answer but i want to ear yours
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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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 sheΒΉ 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.
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ΒΉ I don't think AfD has enby members.
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@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.
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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. Giving in is not an option.
Banning a fascist party costs them a lot of internal cohesion and about a decade of organizing. 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.
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.
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.
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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.
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".
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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!"
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.
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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.
They are staunch defenders of rightwing policy when they are in coalitions with parties that are more leftwing than they are. See: Gerhard SchrΓΆder's Agenda 2010.
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.
Diverse views here, even within our lemmy 'bubble', suggest it's not obvious what to do about this (and similar situation in France and other european countries). Banning either individuals or parties can set a risky precedent and does not necessarily diminish a movement. I'd rather go for gradually (but rapidly) changing norms about acceptable campaigning, propaganda, use of social media, 'fake' news (lies). That includes faster-acting legal restrictions on funding, ownership, facts/fakes, algorithms, etc.. , as well as positively strengthening alternatives like our fediverse.
Would basically get rid of 50-60% of voted parties. At least 25%.
While the idea sounds good I donβt think anyone should be setting a precedent to say itβs 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 π€·ββοΈ
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.
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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).
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People are easily manipulated. There needs to be some guardrails.
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