Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvfjsdhgfv | Hacker News Reader

The language used to describe AfD is strikingly similar to the one used to describe Trump supporters prior to the elections. The truth is, the influx of immigrants is a real problem in Germany, although in some places is felt more than in others. Normal people turn to AfD for help, not because they're aggressive or hateful. It's difficult to even have a civilized discussion about it without being labelled as "racist" or "extreme right-wing". (Fortunately, the label "Nazi" is rarely used, it's more American domain these days.)

View on HN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_for_Germany#Ideolo...

> For example, Petry, who led the moderate wing of the party, said that Germany should reclaim the German word "Volk" from its Nazi connotations, while Höcke, who is an example of the more right-wing views, regularly speaks of the "Fatherland" and "Volk", and has said that Germany should make a "180 degree" turn with regard to its sense of national pride.

You know, they do sound kinda "racist" and "extreme right-wing" from their own words.

> The party has a platform of climate change denial

And also very, very stupid.

I urge you to read the "Wahlprogramm" with Google translate, the legal text that defines what a party stands for in this election, it's ~70 pages for each party, but there is a summary for every topic. http://www.bundestagswahl-bw.de/wahlprogramme_btwahl2017.htm...

It's not much different from what the other parties aim to do. The only real one being, that the AFD wants a hard cap on immigration. If you read media covering the German election you never find them having the, you know, legally binding document of their goals. Because in reality everything is much more tame and realistic. The assaults against parties always happen because someone said something, never do they source what actually is defined by the party.

Höcke said some goddamn stupid shit, that you will barely find anyone agreeing. But his words alone were enough for all the opponents to tarnish AFD's name and it became the Nazi party forever. Last week the AFD split because of that into a new "Alternative Center" just because of that.

I won't vote for them, but how is the want to get blacklisted words like "Volk = People" and "Vaterland = Fatherland" to be reclaimed and used freely again that evil? Nobody in Germany can defend their historic achievements, because their ancestors were criminals. The AFD whishes to reverse that. The climate change part is a thing that the AFD fiercly debated for long inside their own walls, but they never claimed to deny that either. The official statement, is that the blind deactivation of Nuclear energy can lead to skyrocketing electricity prices, where they don't question climate change itself, but the human component in it. By their words, it is not clear whether man had influence or not and to act on something that is not set in stone is foolish.

I don't agree with them on that or will vote for them, but I must defend the them on simply calling them stupid and racist, because they are not, or the words of one or two people are weight more than a legally binding election plan.

Nationalist movements regularly combine widely accepted populist left-wing positions with xenophobic ideas (and proceed to disregard the left-wing ones once in power). I live in Denmark; the Danish People's Party here is also very left-wing on niche social issues and uses that to trick people into voting for them. Trump used this strategy so well that you had followers of Bernie Sanders switching allegiances to vote for him. And of course the original Nazi party adopted many socialist ideas in the beginning, stealing votes from the Social Democrats and Communists.

Out of interest, how is a cap on immigration xenophobic?

Is the mere introduction of a cap xenophobic? Or is there some set limit on the cap you could have, below which you are xenophobic?

I know the answer is probably 'X type of people want this cap on immigration, therefore the cap on immigration is X-ist!', but just wanted to make sure.

Because the cap is arbitary. It says that no matter what kind of person someone is and whether they are a partner or relative of someone who is already a national or legal resident, they are not allowed residence.

It gets even worse if you apply an immigration cap to refugees and asylum seekers as well, at which point you're saying that the arbitary immigration cap is potentially more important than their survival.

Because it's proposed out of prejudice towards these immigrants, and not out of a rational argument. Germany has a demographic problem and needs these people.

The cap, for one, would involve closing the borders, so we're talking about a cap of around 0 of people seeking asylum. A cap on immigration violates human rights law. Children of migrants born in Germany would not get German citizenship under the AfD program. EU citizens would be excluded from the social benefits that German citizens receive in Germany and other EU countries. That would also be unconstitutional.

Of course, having positions that violate present law does not necessarily imply xenophobia, but it is quite telling that the AfD only wants refugees that are qualified workers and does not want to give foreign citizens the rights Germans have.

They are voted into the Bundestag, where they must represent what they signed off to represent. You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals, or the Verfassungsschutz can fuck a party over. Honestly, read their Election program. They have many things in common with even the left parties, like SPD and Die Linke. They are for the minimum wage, they want to extend unemployment benefits to be combined with the amount someone has worked, so people that worked for long don't fall into bankruptcy just for being layed off and have to move. This will help immigrants as well, compared to parties like the FDP which are against a minimum wage for all without limiting rules.

I don't think a hardcap on legal immigrants combined with a border partrol to stop illegal ones is Xenophobic. The argument is founded, as Bavaria's social system collapsed for couple of months last year when the big immigration wave came. I'm aginst a border patrol and hard cap, but the AFD is in no way Xenophobic for wanting it the other way.

> You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals

Of course you can. You're working off the bizarre assumption that a party manifesto is binding in any way whatsoever.

One of the most famous instances is in 2005, when the SPD went into the election with "no sales tax increases", and CDU advocated for "2% sales tax increase". In the end, they formed a coalition, and arrived at the compromise of 3% increase.

There is absolutely nothing legally binding about a Wahlprogramm. Our constitution is quite clear on that, Art. 38 Abs. 1:

Members of the German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. They shall be representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders or instructions, and responsible only to their conscience.

Wait, what?

What gives you the idea that the Wahlprogramm is ever legally binding? It's basically a mission statement that primarily serves as advertising and is usually signed off by the party's federal convention.

I suggest you stop reading the advertisement materials and instead listen to the actual statements of the actual politicians. I'm not a big fan of claims of "dog whistling" but you don't even need to look for coded language to find extremely revolting statements made by actual party officials. And no, these things don't become any more palatable in context.

The AfD is ideologically diverse, yes, but there is a significant influence of quite literal nazis, supremacists and xenophobes. You know what you do if your reputation becomes tarnished by extremists you don't wish to associate your movement with? You form a new movement and strongly disassociate yourself from the extremists.

If your party is the new favorite of Reichsbürger, neo-nazis and xenophobic old men, maybe you should actually distance yourself from them if you don't want to be associated with them.

The Left's reputation is tarnished by antifa. The Greens' reputation is tarnished by pedophiles. Why do you think the AfD deserves a free pass?

The AfD is agitating against refugees and muslims in general. And even the top politicians from the AfD do regularly make rather extreme and controversial statements, not only the even more extreme members like Höcke. The most recent one is probably Gauland, one of the party leaders, who talked about disposing of Aydan Özoguz (responsible for migration in the federal government).

The AfD also has quite a few extreme policy positions that distinguish them from the mainstream German parties. They want to leave the EU and abolish the Euro. They deny that climate change is man-made.

They want to restrict certain freedoms for muslims and they cling to the traditional view of family.

Practically everything in that program is right-wing:

* strengthening the role of the president, weakening the parties (the weak presidential role in Germany is a direct result of the experiences in Nazi Germany)

* reducing the size of the members of parliament

* reducing payments for members of parliament (they currently earn around 10k/month)

* introduction of direct voting (e.g. reducing complex matters to yes/no decisions)

* introduction of a tax wastage crime

* removal of anti-discrimination laws

* higher military budgets

* return to immigration laws where descendence from German bloodlines is needed for naturalization

* higher punishments, especially for the youth

* more surveillance

* anti islam positions

* promoting population growth to counter immigrants

* removing public financial support of daycare

* anti abortion

* lowering tax rates

* forced unpayed labor for long time unemployed

the only left wing positions are:

* pro minimum wage, but no actual numbers given

* guaranteeing more personel in the health care sector

All of this isn't really surprising as the AfD came into life as a right-wing fork of the CDU, the mainstream conservative party in Germany.

* introduction of direct voting (e.g. reducing complex matters to yes/no decisions)

As a Swiss I have to comment on this.

First, is this really a right-wing point?

Where I vehemently disagree is with the sentiment carried with the "explanation" of direct democracy that you added.

Every parliament will boil down complex issues to "simple" yes/no decisions. Or how do you imagine a parliament can vote on anything?

Furthermore a right to a referendum is literally just consulting the people for a yes/no vote that already happened in the parliament. In Switzerland you need to collect a certain amount of signatures of voters within 100 days to mandate a public vote on the exact law that was passed by the parliament. Changes in the constitution mandate a referendum.

Another part of Swiss democracy are popular initiatives. You can propose a change to the constitution like adding "The State mandates a minimal wage". If you gather enough signatures the people will vote if they want to add this to the constitution. If it passes, the executive is required to propose laws that implement the change.

You have a good point! I don't have an opinion about direct voting per se, because, as you rightly pointed out, it seems to work just fine in Switzerland. In the context of German political culture, though, I'm pretty sceptical that we'd see results comparable to Switzerland. One point: Germany has very large differences in voting turnout split by income bracket in anything smaller than federal elections. Even in federal elections the difference is enormous: One example is Hamburg 2013, where about 50% of the poor voted, but 90% of the rich.[1] This obviously heavily skews the results. My impression is that Switzerland has lower differences in turnout by income bracket?

[1] = http://www.wahlbeteiligung2013.de/fileadmin/Inhalte/Studien/... - search for "Stadtbericht Hamburg"

Could you give me a source for the claim that the Wahlprogramm is legally binding?

I was always under the impression that it was more a declaration of intention, to be fulfilled on a best-effort basis. Otherwise, how would coalitions between parties work, if they can't deviate from their program?

Even if it were legally binding, that doesn't preclude making decisions on topics that weren't even covered. In those cases, you can only trust that the party has a consistent ideology they will follow. The AfD seems to be judged more for their ideological tendencies than for any demands they have formally elevated to the party line.

I'm sure the voters of 1998 would love to have seen the Greens be sued for their support of militarism, or the SPD for their neoliberal labour reforms. But alas there were merely a few protests.

If the Wahlprogramm were legally binding, there would have been plenty of opportunities to sue.

For the record: the reason the Verfassungsschutz might tear into a party is usually because the party harbors anti-constitutional ideas or associates itself with criminal organisations, e.g. the NPD with its neo-nazis or the Left with antifa.

Many Nazis support the AfD, not every AfD supporter is a Nazi. Some people are just idiots. And a not-so-insignificant amount of people are plain "protest voters" who vote for the most unacceptable party the media talks about (before AfD this was the NPD) to "stick it to the man".

I watched most of the federal convention of the AfD and the party basically unifies a number of different political interest groups, including but not limited to literal Nazis. Almost all of these groups are right-wing and almost all of them are nationalist or ethno-nationalist. The moderates are actually almost palatable (their main argument always boils down to "but think of the children") but the party tries very hard to pretend there is no diversity of opinion among its members.

FWIW, the aforementioned moderates are often extremely "conservative" (i.e. queers are destroying society and corrupting our children, gay men are pedophiles, sex education should be abstinence only, etc). There's also a disturbing amount of support for fringe conspiracy theories (chemtrails, holocaust denialism, sovereign citizens aka "Reichsbürger", etc).

Saying "but some of the things some of them say are true" is missing the point. You can't take the AfD seriously because it's a hot mess that is heavily influenced by ideologies that are bordering on being anti-constitutional.

It's like attempting to justify bringing Adolf Hitler into a conversation about healthcare because he's a vegetarian. Yes, vegetarianism might have a place in that discussion, but nobody would expect that to be particularly helpful because he'll likely derail the conversation to say something awful about Jews.

The AfD's official position on so many things is so far off the mark you can't cooperate with them on any detail without suffering their taint on everything else. You can have reasoned discussions about immigration (e.g. how we actually handle immigration has resulted in plenty of problems on all sides) but you can not base it on a stance that is inherently anti-constitutional.

The AfD is a rebranding effort of the NPD to get rid of their direct Nazi / Hitler / WW2 past. The sad thing is that it appears to be working, albeit only marginally for now.

That's not really true.

The NPD is more supportive of the lower class. Its politics (nationalism and xenophobia aside) tend to favor the poor, the unemployed and the wage slaves.

The AfD is much more bourgeois. Despite its populist rhetoric its social promises actually tend to focus on working families and traditional "values". It's the CDU to the NPD's Left.

It's a false equivalency, comparing Trump supporters to similar in other countries. The AfD gets 5% of the vote. Trump got nearly 50% of the vote. Every population has its extremist idiots, but for nearly 50% of voters to willingly cast their vote for such an obscenely obvious conman? No, the AfD situation is nothing like Trump - there is no danger of AfD 'running the show'.

It's improbable that the AfD will get enough votes to become a part of the government but I don't find it at all unlikely that they'll perform better than the polls suggest, especially considering the recent failures of polls in other countries.

The AfD is much more socially acceptable than the NPD ever was. It's largely seen as a "protest party" and the general consensus that they have no chance of being part of any government coalition only helps support that.

Much of the difference is in electoral systems, and the same around ten percent that led to Trump could be necessary for a coalition and run much more of the show than they should.

And what problems are they exactly? Are they making prior residents worse off? Or are we talking "cultural danger"?

There is no evidence of the former. In fact, a large part of why Germany has taken so many immigrants compared to other european countries is that the german workforce is stretched thin and needed an influx of young workers. Plus Germany has more infrastructure in place to integrate foreign population.

If we're talking the latter, then that's irrational fear.

    > The truth is, the influx of immigrants
    > is a real problem in Germany, although
    > in some places is felt more than in others

My belief, from what I've read, is that in most countries anti-immigrant sentiment correlates with area where there are currently few immigrants. I wonder if that's the same case in Germany?

It's more complex than that. Also, the media tend to concentrate on cases like Maria Ladenburger that are statically negligible while ignoring long-term threats that are more or less a taboo topic.

This seems to be the case. Anti-immigrant parties are more popular in sparsely populated areas that are mostly "ethnically German". This happens to also show up as an East/West divide for obvious reasons.

I don't agree with what you're saying, hence I have to call you a Nazi, Nazi

Reply on news.ycombinator.com