Hacker News Reader

Comment by incomingpain | Hacker News Reader

Guess this will be unpopular.

>The AfD came second in federal elections in February, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament with 20.8% of the vote.

What does this give german intelligence the power to do?

The german government is now monitoring the telephone, internet, and intercepting emails of their political opponents?

They MAY also be using informants and undercover agents?

The federal ministry of the interior MAY confiscate all the party's assets and shutdown everything including their websites?

View on HN

1. Its in the law for decades, it is derived from the constitution 2+3: yes. After they have been declared as extremists this is permitted under the law. 4. Only after the Bundesverfassungsgericht (supreme court) officially rules that the AFD is working against the constitution and forbids them. This must be initiated from the Bundestag, Bundesrat or from the Federal Government.

And these exist specifically to prevent a repeat of how Hitler did what he did.

https://archive.is/g6ElI

> Following his failed Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, Hitler had renounced trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic by violent means but not his commitment to destroying the country’s democratic system, a determination he reiterated in a Legalitätseid—“legality oath”—before the Constitutional Court in September 1930. Invoking Article 1 of the Weimar constitution, which stated that the government was an expression of the will of the people, Hitler informed the court that once he had achieved power through legal means, he intended to mold the government as he saw fit. It was an astonishingly brazen statement.

> “So, through constitutional means?” the presiding judge asked.

> “Jawohl!” Hitler replied.

The establishment is working itself up to banning the party, since they're losing the ability to shut it out of the process democratically, and haven't had the sense to co-opt its reasonable positions to reduce its support. One of the other main parties tried to do that before the last election, showing a slight willingness to put some limits on migration, and the further-left parties went ballistic on them, so they quickly yanked that back. Their last resort will be to ban the party, which will inevitably make it more popular while preventing it from participating in the normal process. Then they'll act surprised by what happens next.

In theory, this could be used as the basis for the banning of the party. That said , I don't think the incoming government would allow it as Germany isn't super stable at the moment.

At a minimum, this will be used as the basis for removing any talk of coalitions/joint votes etc within the CDU, so Merz or anyone after him can't attempt to go around the Brandmauer(mind you, this will be enforced by the parties themselves, not via law or anything). You can expect the same thing as with FN/RN in France before the developments within the last 2 years, i.e any right wing party not voting resolutions that are submitted by AfD even if they are 95% identical to what is in their own programme.

I think the likely action is that they will attempt to "purge" the Flügel part of the party, with or without the help of Weidel.For example, Marine Le Pen purged the problematic elements of the old guard of FN by herself and "normalised" the party within 10 years.

> You can expect the same thing as with FN/RN in France before the developments within the last 2 years, i.e any right wing party not voting resolutions that are submitted by AfD even if they are 95% identical to what is in their own programme.

But I think this contributes to the general distrust of the population towards incumbent politicians.

I don't know about Germany, but in France the situation becomes ridiculous to the point of resembling a bunch of kindergarten kids: "I won't vote for your law 'cause I don't like you".

And now, whenever you don't like somebody, they're helpfully some "extremist", so they obviously can't propose anything good.

If everyone's an extremist, that word soon loses its meaning. See: the boy who cried wolf. People are getting tired of this crap and can see trying to outlaw a growing party for "extremism" as a shameless political tactic. Which means actual extremists may go unnoticed.

> If everyone's an extremist, that word soon loses its meaning. See: the boy who cried wolf. People are getting tired of this crap and can see trying to outlaw a growing party for "extremism" as a shameless political tactic. Which means actual extremists may go unnoticed.

What makes you think that the AfD isn't a right-wing extremist party?

Nothing. They could be literally Hitler or literally Gandi for all I know. I'm not in Germany and I don't follow them. The only contact I have is reading French newspapers about how some "far right" party is gaining traction over there. I did note that now that they're gaining more votes, they've become more extremist (according to the same French media). Bonus points for them being considered somewhat "close" to the French RN (which the latter have denied – don't know what that's worth).

My point was rather to note that similar things happen in France, with incumbent politicians trying to convince voters that the French RN is the more extreme the more they gain traction. But pretty much everybody who says anything else than "we should abolish borders and allow any and all immigrants who wish to come" or even "maybe we should do something about crime" is labeled "fascist", "extreme right", etc.

This has been confirmed to me when a French party (LR) which is absolutely not "far right" or anything like that and is actually one of the old "governing" parties, was labeled as such by the left when one of their ministers tried to broach the subject of immigration.

So, I'm skeptical when I see some random mainstream politician, who's party is sinking, call this or that party "extreme right", "fascist", or other loaded terms.

To me this just looks like posturing and name-calling. Nobody tries to prove that this or that party's programme sucks big time on concrete metrics (and they'd actually have a point about the RN). They just appeal to voters' sentiment. Which, after a while, gets old.

This is a lot to say that you have no idea what the AfD situation actually is and haven't looked into any of the intelligence reports or even rhetoric/behavior of the party (leaders).

Also:

> But pretty much everybody who says anything else than "we should abolish borders and allow any and all immigrants who wish to come" or even "maybe we should do something about crime" is labeled "fascist", "extreme right", etc.

Really lays your hand out.

> This is a lot to say that you have no idea what the AfD situation actually is and haven't looked into any of the intelligence reports or even rhetoric/behavior of the party (leaders).

Sure, but that doesn't mean they're not allowed to be skeptical; their skepticism comes from a lack of information, which is wise and healthy. Their comments don't seem to suggest that they are trying to promote "fascist" or "extreme right" ideas, just that they recognize those terms as dog whistles and choose not to respond like a rabid dog. That is especially healthy in outrage politics.

> Bonus points for them being considered somewhat "close" to the French RN (which the latter have denied – don't know what that's worth).

Rassemblement National denied being close to the AfD because of how right-extremist the AfD is. The AfD was thrown out of the far-right group in the EU parliament because other EU far-right parties didn't want to get associated with this right-extremist party.

Not sure what your point is. The AfD is not the first extreme right party to gain a sizeable number of seats. And yes, if they continue to win elections with an ever growing percentage of votes, at one point they will rule, and could eventually change the constitution if they gain a supermajority.

This happened before (it's a been a while though).

Until that happens, they are beholden to the law like any other political party. They do not appear to be singled out because they happen to be the opposition.

>Not sure what your point is. The AfD is not the first extreme right party to gain a sizeable number of seats.

Firstly I get the nazi thing and the laws are set to prevent another instance.

AFD obviously still exists so a court has not banned them. Innocent until proven guilty.

The flipside problem is that these anti-nazi measures can be abused, false positive type situation. The measures would of course need to be biased toward false-postives to prevent future false negatives.

>Until that happens, they are beholden to the law like any other political party. They do not appear to be singled out because they happen to be the opposition.

I guess that's where i disagree. It looks like to me that the politicians are abusing powers. That the afd growth of doubling their power since last election and AFD is now polling in first place.

So to win the next election they need to essentially remove AFD from being an option; or lose.

> AFD obviously still exists so a court has not banned them. Innocent until proven guilty.

A court can only ban them after the parliament has voted to ban them. One of the hurdles on getting the parliament to vote on this topic has been the outstanding decision by this body, if it's really "gesichert rechtsextrem". At least in many previous cases surrounding this question (mostly libel cases), courts have argued that the specific people these cases were about could be seen as "outside of the democratic spectrum".

> The measures would of course need to be biased toward false-postives to prevent future false negatives.

Certainly, that's why both the parliament and the highest court have to decide, with previous instances sometimes not coming through (for example, the NPD for not being relevant even though they were certainly Nazis).

> That the afd growth of doubling their power since last election and AFD is now polling in first place. So to win the next election they need to essentially remove AFD from being an option; or los

There would be no reason to ban a party if they could be ignored (see the NPD), you only need to ban extreme parties if they're popular. If the AfD were at 3% this would be a much smaller topic, since there would be no foreseeable risk. But even with the AfD at much lower than <15%, this was very much an area of concern, with steady (legal, as with this classification and previous ones concerning subgroups) progress towards establishing their extremist status.

> There would be no reason to ban a party if they could be ignored (see the NPD)

But this is the problem. It means that a party being illegal isn't such a big deal in and of itself. It's only a problem if it challenges the mainstream parties. You can see why people would think it's just a political maneuver if they're trying to ban X party only when many people vote for them. Bonus points for this party portending to "represent the voiceless" or whatever.

If some party is illegal for whatever reason, it should be banned right away. Just because you can ignore it doesn't mean it should be ignored. It would also be much easier to prevent having a sizeable chunk of the population vote for an "illegal" party and the headaches coming from that once it becomes big enough.

Only two parties have been banned in Germany's post-war history. Banning a party is a rightfully a huge hurdle, because it goes both ways: While it can be a part of a self-defence mechanism of democracy it is also a way in which Hitler & Co consolidated their power. Hence it can be only used after a ruling of the Constitutional Court – it is in a way a constitutional question.

> ... right away

Apart from the constitutional hurdles there is also the question of "right away": The AfD of the early 2010s is not the same party as today. Back then they were ... well cranky but not extreme. Banning it in 2013 would have been unjust. Over the decade it moved further and further to the right. Pretty much all the founders and bigwigs of the early generation left the party and distanced themselves from it. But radicalisation is a process not a binary switch from one day to the next.

> But this is the problem. It means that a party being illegal isn't such a big deal in and of itself.

Yes, this is what the constitutional court decided.

> If some party is illegal for whatever reason, it should be banned right away.

It should be hard (and is very hard) to ban a party. Thus if every party illegal should be banned right away, a large amount of effort would need to go into banning by the highest legislative and judicial bodies in the nation. It's furthermore quite hard to definitively establish a party as such, which further makes such things much slower (calls to ban the AfD have been happening for more than a decade now).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com