this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Some additional info to his occurence:
The revelation last week has caused an uptick in demonstrations against the AfD and fascism in Germany. Many people are now demanding that the government should initiate a case to ban the AfD at the constitutional court. A case to ban a political party can only be initated by the federal government, the federal parliament, or the federal council.
However multiple high ranking politicians has argued against forbidding the AfD, claiming to "fight them with arguments" instead. Calls like this came from Friedrich Merz, the leader of the conservative/right wing populist CDU, Markus Söder, the head of the right wing populist CSU, Christian Lindner, head of the liberal party FDP and current minister of Finance. CDU and FDP voted together with the AfD in 2020 to make the FDP candidate prime minister of Thuringen for one day, despite the FDP having barely 5%, which is the minimum for a party to sent delegates to a parliament in Germany. The subsequent government crisis lead to the AfD now being the strongest political force in Thuringen, according to election polls. CDU and FDP also worked together with the AfD on the local level before. Among other things they limited the amount of refugees a city would house and cut funding to organizations, who help and represent victims of hate crime.
The head of the AfD in Thuringen Björn Höcke lost a defamation lawsuit, because the court ruled, that "fascist" is a factual description of him, rather than an insult. Multiple state organizations of the AfD are considered proven to be far right extremists by the interior intelligence, as well as the youth organization of the party. All of the party is considered to be suspect of being far right extremists.
Germany is facing the risk of a another fascist power grab, yet parties that claim to be liberal and conservative refuse to defend the democracy against them, likely hopeing for their own power options under a fascist government, as well as being worried of backlash for having helped the AfD by repeating and strenghtening their political positions and topics.
While you didn't state anything incorrect, the debate is more complicated than that. E.g. Habeck from the greens (vice chancellor) said to consider the consequences should such a proposal fail. I think such a failure would have very much the opposite effect and strengthen the AFD and right wing positions in Germany in general. The probability of success needs to be carefully considered before going ahead with the popular request.
The Tagesschau wrote
Based on experiences in the past with Neofacist parties it could take up to 5 years to ban the party.