Hacker News Reader

Comment by fabian2k | Hacker News Reader

If the party is actively working, in a combative and aggressive manner, to damage or destroy the democratic constitutional system in Germany, the constitution allows for this party to be banned.

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.

View on HN

You're not protecting democracy by not letting people vote for the only party that even pretends to care about their concerns. If you want people to vote for other parties then those parties should change to serve the people again instead of trying to make the people serve them.

Well, actually it is.

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.

Different talking points. A party that wants to get rid of the system that enabled them to get voted for in the first place is anti-democratic. People need to be protected from that no matter who or how popular they are.

>A party that wants to get rid of the system that enabled them to get voted for in the first place is anti-democratic.

Does AfD actually do that, though?

Yes, they do that by fearmongering, calling the current government a "cartel", as if such a level of corruption could only arise due to current democratic processes.

So talking shit about other parties and/or alleging there's a conspiracy to keep them out of power (ie. brandmauer) should be enough to get them barred for being "anti-democratic"? That seems a hilariously low bar and totally arbitrary. It's not exactly an unpopular talking point on the left that politics are being secretly controlled by The Billionaires™ (or Israel). Should they be barred as well?

If it can be shown that left-wing politicians in key positions of their party want to abolish core concepts of the democracy or constitutionally guaranteed rights: sure.

Why are the goalposts getting randomly nudged around? First it was

>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.

You are right, my answer didn't account for the specific citation you were answering to. Sorry.

Nobody is nudging anything.

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.

This is a bad faith response. Don't feed the troll

Even if it's in bad faith, that doesn't make it invalid, and internet argument rules require you continue to engage.

The thing that invalidates it is that its a classic right wing troll tactic that actively hurts actual discussion of serious topics. I think I'll rise above internet argument rules this time and exercise free will

Free will is the most expensive thing in the world.

Only one instance can answer that, the Bundesverfassungsgericht. Getting that answer is part of the process to ban a party. Some people might not want that question answered.

That's how we got literal Hitler back in the days, I'm not sure your argument is very strong in practice

You're not protecting democracy either by letting people vote on a party that aims to undermine said democracy.

Of course democracy is being protected, when it is clear such a party is being actively used and supported by foreign actors which have no right to vote in the affected country. People are being manipulated. The law comes first, then, people can choose. It's why a judicial branch exists.

There are democratic parties that care about people's economic concerns. Just because they get discredited by extremist trolls doesn't mean they don't exist.

Right wing talking points and moving the goal posts. The constitution comes first. Popularity is not a shield. We have to ban them, and ban them fast. Irrelevant what people think, there is a judicial process exactly to avoid this empasse. The reason this is unpopular is because every coward party politician in power is worried about their own electoral consequences for supporting this process. Cowards who will go down in history as the vile scum who let it happen again.

Pretending to care is worse than not pretending to care.

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.

“party is actively working, in a combative and aggressive manner, to damage or destroy the democratic constitutional system in Germany”

You declared it, so it must be true.

If the majority of citizens want a thing but somehow the few elites ban that thing, it can, often does, and probably should result in a violent uprising. Every time this happens in history we praise the rebels. So I have to say that if AfD gets banned I will not be surprised or upset if politicians end up murdered over it.

If people dont want democracy they should be able to choose so. Its clear that democracy has proven its failure for long term planning and useless bureocracy.

That is not how the German constitution is set up. You can do what you wish in your country, but here the "freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung" is not up for debate. There are also specific clauses in the constitution that cannot be amended or changed, one of them ensures Germany is a democracy.

if a person doesn't like democracy then they should simply not vote

I told the leopard I did not consent to my face being eaten, but it ate my face anyway.

> If people dont want democracy they should be able to choose so.

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.

At what point does a minority become a majority? Is that defined?

Counting.

10% is all you need as a vote bank to flip an election.

I invite you to look up those two words in literally any handy dictionary. Their definitions are quite uncomplicated.

We have a "minority" which votes en masse and can sway the results of an election.

Is that still a minority? I invite you to introspect more. It's not complicated either.

You are using the general term "minority" without context. That is intentionally deceitful.

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.

It is mathematically possible when voters are pooled into districts, you create super districts to concentrate the opposition, then create local majorities in the remaining districts.

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.

Vote banks. Look it up.

The core principle of democracy is doing what is popular, not what is right.

The idea that democracy is synonymous with the current neoliberal order is nonsense.

If the majority of German voters want "to damage or destroy the democratic constitutional system in Germany", then is it not their democratic right to do so?

The rest of the world did object the last time we did that. I'd prefer if we don't try that again, and our constitution is specifically set up to prevent this.

No, because it may cause the violation of basic human rights of minorities.

However, it is in our democratic right to fight parties that are anti constitutional. It's in the constitution.

No, article 20 of the German constitution forbids this, and article 79 forbids changing article 20 in the way you suggest.

Edit: There is a loophole, though. Article 146 allows the German people to replace the constitution in its entirety.

There is an extralegal loophole as well. There always is; it's the explicit motivation behind the USA's 2nd Amendment.

I'm confused, do you seriously think the AfD runs on phrases like "we want to get rid of the democratic system"?

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com