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Comment by mitxela | Hacker News Reader

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Well, the Budesamt für Verfassungsschutz (office for the protection of the constitution -- not generally known for their left-leaning point of view) classified the AfD as proven right-extreme. On that ground outlawing that party has been considered; this hasn't been done yet, partly due to the popularity of the party in some regions -- there's the danger to further alienate the populace there, many of which are already disenchanted with the earlier established parties. Some consider it best to let them govern for a while and thereby demonstrating that they can't solve intractable problems either. Others fear that they will cause irreparable damage even in their first days in office, e.g. cancelling the contract for public broadcasting service.

The BFV was forced to walk back that classification because, again, you can't call someone far right just because they have different opinions than you.

It's practically impossible to find a definition of far-right that they don't fall under.

How can it be "far-" when they have such a large voter block? What central point is being used as the mark that they are far to the right of, if not the average voter's views?

By that semantic argument, we needn't worry about the far right gaining power because any party that wins an election cannot possibly be far right. Genius!

It wasn't a semantic argument; it was a question, or two questions.

It's possible, in fact likely, that the Budesamt für Verfassungsschutz has a clear idea of what rechtsextrem (I'm guessing that's the term they use) means but I certainly don't!

If you're just looking for the general concept of what 'far right' means and why the AfD is a far right party, then the Wikipedia article covers it.

>It wasn't a semantic argument

The poster seems to agree with my interpretation of their comment.

Yes, that is the argument I'm making. If a party wins an election they aren't far-right; they are just right. 'Far/extreme/fringe right' would be the ideology that is too far right to have much acceptance. Maybe you could call it the new right, if it's much different from the right you're used to, but it's looking like AfD is no longer far right.

A man from the past might consider the current mainstream democratic party "far/extreme left" but that doesn't make much sense to say in present day.

>A man from the past might consider the current mainstream democratic party "far/extreme left"

Surely not. "Far left" would mean public ownership of the means of production and the abolition of the capitalist economic system. The Democratic party has never supported anything like that. It's centre-right party for the most part.

More generally, you're presupposing that the only way to measure the extremity of an idea is by the number of people who hold it in a particular country at a particular moment in time. We can also bring to bear a global historical perspective and analysis of the content of the ideas themselves. Far right parties want to bring about the end of the very liberal democratic order in which ordinary left/right political debate can sensibly take place.

Was Hitler left?

Don't worry. That's not why.

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