AfD plans to turn Germany into authoritarian state, vice-chancellor warns
AfD plans to turn Germany into authoritarian state, vice-chancellor warns
Robert Habeck tacitly backs calls to ban far-right party after it participated in meeting to discuss mass deportations
Weird how the government that is absolutely hated by the majority of Germans and continues doubling down on the policy vast majority of people disagree with is screeching about authoritarianism
This is the best summary I could come up with:
As a fifth night of anti-AfD protests saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets of German cities, with more expected later on Wednesday, Habeck appeared to support calls to outlaw the party, while stressing the risks of such a move “dangerously backfiring” were it to fail.
The AfD has shifted to the right since its founding in 2013 and has seen a steady increase in its popularity in recent months, in some cases outpolling the government parties.
Over the past week, media and political observers have scrutinised the evidence as to who was among the AfD members, neo-Nazis and rightwing extremist Identitarian movement attenders at the November gathering in Potsdam.
But the Werte Union, which seeks to restrict immigration, bolster the German military and reduce taxes, accused the investigative bureau Correctiv, which revealed that the meeting had taken place, of exaggerating the nature of the agenda.
The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, tweeted on Wednesday: “I am grateful that tens of thousands of people have been going on to the streets of Germany in recent days to protest against racism, rabble-rousing, and for our liberal democracy.
Tareq Alaows, one of the organisers who has been building the alliance since the summer in reaction to the AfD’s rising poll ratings, told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung: “If the political parties can’t succeed in stopping the rightwing extremists, we have to create a human firewall against them.”
The original article contains 682 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 66%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Said guy whose government is arresting people for protesting genocide this government support.
This might have some truth to it, but you're derailing.
Derailing from what? The genocidal support govt actually being "authoritarian" right now on the streets, trying to scaremonger people by their political opponent being more "authoritarian" in theory and in the future?
This is by itself 100% derailing tactic against the critiques falling on them. Maybe if they try to address the actual issues they wouldn't have to fear far-right party which was marginal few years ago.
And a government that is backing a genocidal regime in the ICJ, and selling them arms.
Nobody was arrested for protesting against Israel or genocide in Germany. That's a blatant lie. Some people are being arrested temporary for their call to murder all Jews. There is a clear difference: There are thousands of people protesting peacefully against Israel's war - only a few of them are overstepping hard while doing so. Stopping these select people from committing further crimes in accordance with the state of law is called nuance.
Don't commit crimes in Germany (call for murder) and nobody will arrest you.
Nobody was arrested for protesting against Israel or genocide in Germany. That’s a blatant lie.
You are spreading blatant lies.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/germany-palestine-protest/
The German state’s show of support has led to an outright banning of most pro-Palestine protests.
On October 13, Berlin police declared uttering the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” forbidden and indictable.
minors arrested for wearing the colors of the Palestinian flag, a woman of Jewish-Israeli descent detained for carrying an anti-war message in Herrmannplatz, a central square in Neukölln.
Habeck and his Green party have been scapegoating and criminalizing Muslims for supporting Palestine. They've changed their immigration policy to align with European fascists. They've sent weapons to Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and to Israel's far-right government, while they are committing genocide. This guy is not an anti-fascist at all, and so his warning rings hollow.
Habeck and his Green party have been scapegoating and criminalizing Muslims for supporting Palestine.
Wait for it…
They’ve changed their immigration policy to align with European fascists.
Any minute now…
They’ve sent weapons to Ukrainian Neo-Nazis
Ah, there it is. Downvote.
Please put more effort into your comment.
Permanently Deleted
Democratic parties adopting right wing policies will not benefit from them. The people will vote for the original.
Right wing parties also don't have any real policies that are going to help the part of the population that is voting for them. So it makes no sense objectively to implement this.
Democratic parties will lose their values and gain nothing in terms of votes.
The so-called democratic parties are trying to do that. They're now in favor of:
- More border security so Frontex can drown even more migrants in the Mediterranean.
- Detaining the ones who make it over in concentration camps.
- Making it easier to deport people.
- Criminalizing Muslims for supporting Palestine.
These "democrats" are doing all this hate-speech, Hetze, and blatant violations of human rights. They took these policies directly from the far-right, and now pretend to fucking oppose the AfD? Fucking hypocritical assholes.
It won't work either, because none of that has anything to do with people's economic prospects, which is the real reason most of them are angry. So they're still going to be angry with whoever is in power, no matter how many foreigners they deport and murder and scapegoat.
While yes, that is part of the solution, there are also people that simply think that way. They think they are better, that they deserve X, and thus vote that way. Unless you fundamentally change their mind or promise then what they want, you will not get their vote.
Am I the only one who sees hypocrisy in banning a political party in order to "mitigate a threat to democracy"?
Not asking in the specific context of the article either, I'm asking in general, because this sentiment isn't specific to just Germany...
How is a diverse opinion a threat to democracy? Excluding a portion of the population from the polls is the antithesis of the basic concept of democracy, and almost globally this is being wholesale ignored, and its almost exclusively a phenomena specific to the left...
Bro….. you can’t have a functioning democracy with an anti-democratic party freely participating in it. If a party’s explicit goal is to end democracy, they really SHOULDN’T be allowed to participate in democracy at all.
Paradox of tolerance and all…
Democracy shouldn’t be a free-for-all, where warlords can win enough votes to conquer the world. That is insane.
It's not hypocrisy because AfD is racist and anti-democratic. There's no paradox here. No tolerance for intolerance, if you let a party be part of the democratic process who is trying to destroy it, you stop have a working democracy. Only a fool would let this happen. Banning AfD doesn't suddenly shift Germany into a pseudo democracy, we have many more parties.
However we can also agree that this is just hiding a bigger issue. So it's no solution and is only gaining time to solve a deeper rooted issue.
If the situation is that you ban a political party because you're worried the people will vote for a facsist dictatorship (and I'm not saying that's an impossibility these days), this is just a band-aid at best. Because clearly the people will get what they want somehow, some day.
The solution needs to be to educate people better, because no sane and educated turkey votes for Christmas (Thanksgiving I guess for the Americans).
You're not banning part of the population from the polls, you're removing anti-democratic elements. I'd argue this is an essential step for democracy to thrive.
"[..] and its almost exclusively a phenomena specific to the left..."
What about the KPD 1956 or the German Autumn then? This party and movement also represented
"a portion of the population"
that was excluded from polls or 'participation'.
The paradox of tolerance, the historical fragility of each rule of law, the separation of powers and the constitutional state ( 'Rechtstaat' ) render parties and movements whose alignment aim for the qualitative destruction of these markers of political entities built to survive more than one election as not just risks, but dangers to regional democracy.
How is a diverse opinion a threat to democracy?
If the opinion is that there should not be a democracy, then that is a threat to democracy.
Excluding a portion of the population from the polls
They are not excluded. They are free to vote for a party that is in line with the constitution.
its almost exclusively a phenomena specific to the left...
I don't even know what to say. In which world are the far-right, fascists and nazis known to value opposing views? Are you serious?
Didn't they teach you the history of WW2?
Germany saw first-hand what happens when a far-right party is elected through democratic ways. They have all the reasons in the world to try to prevent it again.