They just won a state election a few weeks ago, and they're also ahead in nation-wide polls - how can you ban a party that receives the majority vote of the population?
Popularity isn't a limit here, at least not in this direction. If the party were irrelevant, it would prevent the ban since the party would not be able to achieve those anti-constitutional goals anyway.
Debatable. One of the core ideas of democracy is to protect minorities. Democracy has been built around the concept that a majority cannot restrict basic rights of minorities. Arguably no one should be allowed to create a system which allows the violation of basic human rights of minorities.
Is that still a minority? I invite you to introspect more. It's not complicated either.
A voting minority cannot by itself gain power in a democratic election.
A population minority may vote with, against, or mixed versus the eventual majority. It is not the same as active participation in voting.
This is the essence of gerrymandering and why only ~10% of US house races are competitive. It's related to why there are only seven swing states in the US for our only national election, which should be changed to a national popular vote.
The idea that democracy is synonymous with the current neoliberal order is nonsense.
The other option has been tried 100 years ago and didn't go so well.
> If you want people to vote for other parties then those parties should chagne to serve the people again instead of trying to make the people serve them.
This doesn't work when the party doesn't serve the people in the first place.
It doesnt even help most of their voters.
Does AfD actually do that, though?
>A party that wants to get rid of the system that enabled them to get voted for in the first place is anti-democratic.
Then it was
>fearmongering, calling the current government a "cartel",
And now you're saying
>abolish core concepts of the democracy or constitutionally guaranteed rights
In other words, it went from "afd wants to get rid of democracy" to "afd's policies breaks the constitution". Of course you guys are different people and are entitled to your own opinions, but it's tiring arguing on a slippery topic that keeps on getting redefined.
If you wish to quote me, then do it accordingly: the AfD is blaming the established democratic processes for the current "cartel" situation. As if that's the only thing to blame, and not that the AfD is not willing to collaborate with other democratic parties or even respect the democratic process.
It's hard to work against pretense, because pretending is lying, and shortcutting reality is hard to compete with, if people start to believe in the lie.
For example: I can promise to gift everyone a unicorn for upvoting this comment (thanks in advance!). Instead of working on a concept of how to make that happen, I can instead just pretend to work on making that happen and mostly work on selling that to you.
It's not necessarily easy, but much easier.
However, it is in our democratic right to fight parties that are anti constitutional. It's in the constitution.
Edit: There is a loophole, though. Article 146 allows the German people to replace the constitution in its entirety.
It's actually quite the opposite, they are running on things like a direct democracy[0], with phrases such as "Wir sind überzeugte Demokraten"[1] (eng: We are confident democrats). And they do that for good reason, as running a party that openly wants to abandon the democratic process would be against the constitution.
[0]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_f%C3%BCr_Deutschla...
[1]: https://www.afd.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Programm_AfD_D...
You declared it, so it must be true.
And that AfD is against the best interest of the people, i guess, you can not be serious. It is a populist party that picks up all the things that people are not happy about and are popular, but ignored. It is actually in the very interest of the people who vote for them. But of course scary for the people, who get voted out. Majority wins.
The laws don't work like that, otherwise we arguably would not have any parties left.
Just ask yourself if you would be ok with the majority of the population voting to abolish private property. Or Islamists voting to end votes. Or men voting to remove the voting rights of women.
"Democracy" is not synonymous with "good".
Let's turn to an actual dictionary:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/democracy-and-republ...
he posted & advertised heavily nationalistic videos on tiktok and gained huge following.
court said the election had been affected by irregularities, alleged foreign interference, and problems with campaign financing and online campaigning.
I.e. people asking at the polling places who was going to pay them the money they'd been promised
[Edit: nope, that was neighboring Moldova in 2024]
It does beg a question of how to run an election as a smaller state when faced with overwhelming propaganda from a much larger one (the US or Russia).
That's never not been true, I suppose, but with large unregulated, privately-controlled social media platforms it feels more pressing.
How does one run a "fair" election if the voters are being irradiated with one-sided messaging sufficient to turn an election? Is the result really the will of the people? And yet, what's the alternative?
Democracy's definition contains no such safeguards, just as pure capitalism doesn't prevent monopolies.
Pretty much everyone agrees that "50.01% of us agreed to slaughter the rest" is not a good decision, but it is technically a democratic one.
Why not?
Damn right it isn't, because for most of them it is against their own interests. They vote out of emotion.
In other parts of this thread we have people saying that the AfD must be banned because they are a threat to democracy and that the German constitution has provisions which prevent amending it to weaken the guarantee of democracy...
But how do you then reconcile the idea that people must be prevented from voting for the party they wish? Is that not undermining democracy when you only let them vote when they vote "correctly"?
You don't understand how they may have a historical election or two that led to some kind of event proving that sometimes the people need to be protected from themselves short-term in order to preserve their constitution and democracy long-term?
In Germany we have laws to ban parties that work against our constitution, exactly because of what happened in Weimar. The AfD is classified as confirmed right-wing extremist in five states. Starting a ban process is more than justified. The process is not arbitrary. Only the Bundestag, Bundesrat or government can apply, and the Constitutional Court decides after checking if the conditions are met. Also, just because a majority votes for something doesn’t make it right.
This appears to be an old german law right after nazis were defeated, so its not like someone invented a law specifically to target afd.