Hear me out, and this may be radical. what if they instead address the neoliberal polices that have been transferring wealth to business owners from the working class for decades?
I just want to mention that this procedure is raised by party that have majority right now in parliament. That are European People's Party - christian and conservative. They are the same as MAGA just not as radical (yet) as AfD. Whoever thinks that's good thing may go to hell because I don't want to be ruled by christian conservative idiots but I want them to fight against each other so they can show their true nature.
You mean the problem that almost all media is controlled by right-wing billionaires?
Maybe in the US this is true, not here
yes, thats big problem. But it’s good to at least take away some power from the party
No, you are not taking away some power from them, you are simply giving them more "weapons". It would not be that difficult to frame this as "look, they want to silence us because we talk about $PROBLEM they caused"
I'm sorry they are upset that they saw a minority or that they overheard people speaking a foreign language while being brown. They can get over themselves
You don't need to pamper these beliefs. You can lead the voters to the actual cause of the issue without allowing them to empower fascists.
Usually the real issue is economic. Lack of housing, low wages, failing Healthcare. Those can be addressed. You don't have to allow the group trying to blame poor minority groups a seat at the table. You address the real issues
"Oh no, a kebab stand on every street corner?!? What am I to do? Delicious, delicious kebab. I could try one from a different place every day and it would still take weeks to find the best one. This is unheard of! This is unfair! It's the parliament's fault! If they didn't let in so many foreigners then I wouldn't have this many choices before me. I could eat a good German currywurst, or a good German schnitzel, and not be inundated with so many options like 'felafel or haloumi?' or 'döner or dürüm?'. This cannot stand!"
Yeah right, if AfD had their way that guy and all his nephews would get picked up at the grocery store or at the park or on their way to work or in their own homes, and saying "but I work at the local döner shop!" isn't likely to help them much.
Then all the right-wingers would start complaining when the döner shops all start shutting down, like "Those damn foreigners are abandoning me right when I need my lunch! I knew they were good for nuthin!"
It's more of a joke on the people voting for the party and not the party line itself. The party means it
Kinda the classic conservative thing of not seeing a problem until it effects them personally. Or at least a variation.
The US is seeing the same thing, spouses voting for Trump then seeing their illegal/asylum seeking husband/wife deported and being shocked because "they were doing it right, or they were good not a problem"
Do you understand that we can simply take their recipes, and make it ourselves? You can have your kebab, while the rest of us can get a stable economy that can pay natives a decent loan, which they can use to actually buy a house, without getting fucked over by their corporate overlords because their loan is being undermined by the mass-immigration enabled by Liberal politicians - fuck them too.
Usually the real issue is economic. Lack of housing, low wages, failing Healthcare. Those can be addressed.
Mass-immigration is the issue I have identified (at least for the Netherlands, but the same case seem to exist for other European countries.
You don’t have to allow the group trying to blame poor minority groups a seat at the table.
True, the politicians that don't seem to understand that if you let in 100k immigrations (netto), and only build 70k houses a year, there's going to be a housing shortage. "but people can live together!", yes, but you forget there's another 100k of people being born. So now you have 200k people fighting for 70k houses. It's a problem with an easy solution, but no one seems to be able to reduce immigration. I guess we should revert the Vreemdelingenwet 2000 (and the 1965 variant, which is when shit started hitting the fan in regards of migration).
Then there's the cultural issues with such a massive influx of people coming and leaving (2024 200k left, 300k cam in), it's straight up bizarre. Culture takes a while to be taught, and if you have such a large group in flux, I don't see how that's healthy for the country.
Before anyone things I'm some fascist: Racism is not a legitimate term. Something Leftists should know. Also, fuck Christianity and the Monarchy. I'm Dutch-Frankian, not "white" (whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean). Yes, I have a white skin, but holy shit I'm not similar to Celtics, Romanics, or Slavics, you weirdo.
The AfD doesn't really give a shit about foreigners. They mainly use them to gain votes. All they care about is money and power. Blaming foreigners for all of the problems is the easiest way to get votes. They hate poor white Germans almost as much as brown people.
At first glance I thought you meant like a litmus test for fascism. Like dip this strip of paper and if it turns red that means the person is a fascist.
Blaming foreigners for all of the problems is the easiest way to get votes.
The real issue is the politicians letting in insane amounts of migrants - I don't care whether they come from the Maghreb, or the Appalachians. That is going to have VERY long-stretching effects, and politicians are crazily short-sighted. None of them has a 100-year plan for their own country. Absolute bonkers.
It's not exactly desirable. I'd prefer they remain in their home countries if there were peace. After all, it's their home and it sucks to have to leave your home. But there's war in those countries. The problems could be addressed, one being to allow immigrants to work for example.
Oh, they care about foreigners and who they behold to be foreigners. They already had a conference, in quite close proximity to the Wannsee, to discuss how they would like to handle them. No extermination, yet. But the Nazis also didn't start with death camps but plans for deportation or ethnic cleansing or remigration like it is called today.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Potsdam_far-right_meeting)
You're absolutely right. But it is more a means of controlling anti-sentiments to gain votes and it works really well because they instill a fear into people that actually isn't real. I'm fucking scared of what will happen when they come into power. What I meant with my comment is that they hate anyone who isn't rich. A rich foreigner has nothing to fear as long as they play along. It's disgusting.
Oh yes, that is the whole stupidity about it. They suffer from it, like we all do, and then they want more of it. But they need to be dragged towards leftist policies or they will drag us all into the abyss.
Because fascist parties have a scapegoat and clear things they want to change. Meanwhile the centrist parties that claim to be "left" are just sputtering around doing more of the same or window dressing approaches that do nothing, and are more interested in stopping the actual leftist movements that will help people and stop fascism.
The paradox is that they'll blame taxation for being broke even if the actual reason is capitalism.
I reckon one major reason is that taxation is the visible part of your money being "stolen" whereas capitalists profiting off your labour is... well, potentially visible if it's a private company and the owner flaunts his wealth, but generally if it's a big publicly traded company, or a foreign multinational, etc, you need to be looking at the annual reports or something, because there's no real local boss taking all the profit.
Wealth inequality effects everyone and so it changes how everyone votes, but it also causes certain "answers" to that problem to become more popular or tolerable. So what we're seeing around the globe is the rise of the far right who are providing the "answer" that rising inequality and lowering standard of living is entirely the fault of immigrants, the loss of the "traditional family", and pretty much any "answer" except for useful ones. So no, this typically starts by driving people to the right as the right will most easily attempt to maintain the status quo at the expense of the scapegoat.
The follow on effect is the rise of the "radical" left which provides the answer "tax the ultra wealthy, invest in public infrastructure, and strengthen worker rights" - all things that reduce wealth inequality or increase the standard of living.
We're currently figuring out which side will win out in the long run or if the fundamentals will continue to not change and delay this issue further. For example Merz and the CDU in Germany making life better for the rich and worse for everyone else, delaying the inevitable decision of either the AFD winning or some party like Die Linke (hopefully) or Die Grüns winning. So Germans get to watch their lives get worse until they're ready to vote in parties with real positive change on their mind (or the opposite, real terrible changes like AFD).
Sadly it's gonna be AfD... I used to be more optimistic about who my fellow Germans vote for, but I have since moved to a rural region and HOLY COW, people go for the easy but wrong answers here seven times out of ten.
Luckily most people don't live in rural communities. I fear you're right, but I hope Germany can find a Gary Stevenson of their own that can start pushing real solutions in a way all Germans can get behind.
Sure, a certain part, but if I look at my country or other democratic countries the right manages through their control of the media to convince a lot of people that it is the immigrants fault and we just need to be more xenophobic and then we will all be better off.
What planet are you even living on? Have you not seen the state of America? Remember Brexit? Why do you think fascists are surging in the polls everywhere? If a declining standard of living and quality of life created leftism out of thin air every developed economy would be on the verge of socialism in 2026.
Neoliberal/Conservative policies make the working class poorer and the rich richer, who use their capital to seize the means of democracy, kill competition, create monopolies, consolidate ownership of the media, etc and engage in wholesale propaganda aiming to divide and conquer the working class. The greatest threat to the Epstein classes wealth and power is a truly democratic government working "for the people", so they're promoting the same fascist populism everywhere to implement totalitarian dictatorship and remove the threat of democracy.
The uneducated moron who "doesn't do politics" is the easiest mark for fascism to con, because they can't see the incongruence; the patterns of lies, crimes, corruption, and psychopathy only learned from studying historic parallels.
Maybe true, but these are the consequences of ignoring (or creating) the problems but as it seems they don't even care to understand why AfD get so many support.
Only silencing them now will end with AfD with more votes and even less time to attack the root causes.
Of course the current German government doesnt care for the root causes. CDU has always sided with millionaires and promoted suppression of the working class. They are hoping to shut down AfD while staying in power. On an EU level, we cant really do more than this but its the least that needs to happen.
They are hoping to shut down AfD while staying in power.
Then they are even more stupid...
On an EU level, we cant really do more than this but its the least that needs to happen.
Oh, yes, we can do way more.
Think about to impose some sort of limitation to indiscriminate immigration, think about stopping to try to punish the members that do not accept illegal immigrants, think about starting to work to preserve the industries and workplace in Europe, think about how to make outsourcing production less cost-effective for those who do it.
There are a lot of thing EU can do if they want.
So you want to support the incorrect narrative of those xenophobic liars that it's because of immigration instead of the real reason, out of control capitalism with the rich getting richer?
No, I was pointing out that there are things EU can decide to do that make points that are behind AfD rising moot. Which is the solution if we want to solve the problem and not just hide it.
Up until politicians do not understand that AfD (like the far right wing parties in general) are the effect and not the cause, AfD and the like will continue to rise.
AfD has a xenophobic narrative ? Yes, of course. But they was also offered an easy target.
Let's be real: if there would not be all these illegal immigrant in our cities (I am sure that the problems we have near the Milano Central Station are common in many cities) AfD would not have a target. If we had done something when all the jobs were moved to cheaper countries they would not have a target. The rich are getting richer because we are allowing them to do so.(*)
True, there would always be some fascist around, stupid people would always exist, but they would be just a small group of fanatics that are irrelevant like the dozens of other parties (never hear about the Popolo della Famiglia italian party for example ?) that get 0.something % votes at the elections.
Silencing them it's like sweeping dust under the rug: sure, you can't see it, but the dust is still there and sooner or later it will come to bite you.
(*) BTW, thinking that all the problems are caused by the rich getting richer is the same thing that thinking that all the problems are caused by immigration: it is false. Both of these thing are aspects of the same problem, not the cause per se.
Let me understand: wanting to have some controls over unchecked immigration and to preserve jobs in EU is fascist ?
What was your idea of opposing fascism then ? Simply sweep it under the rug and think that just because you can't see it, it doesn't exist?
But these aren't dogs. These are humans with voting rights and the ability to run for office. Banning fascist political parties is a good thing, and it's strange that you seem to think otherwise.
It's an endless game of whack a mole if you silence specific parties. The only way to stop them is to improve people's material conditions so that fascism has no appeal.
Yeah, that's how they should've stopped hitler. Just improve people's material conditions, it's not like he's actively sabotaging that in order to manipulate them into giving him more power. Oh wait, he did.
If whackamole is what it takes to keep the fascists down, then whackamole is what it'll be. History is never over. Life and society are never won. There will always be a danger of resurgence. Vigilance will always be necessary.
Sorry to tell you this, but it's true. The balance of the world hangs on a razor's edge at the best of times. It doesn't take much to destabilize a system when everything is going smoothly.
So sure, improve people's material conditions. There's a lot we could do better in the world. But don't stop whacking fascism every time it rears its ugly head...
Dude, the German government literally handed power to Hitler in an election he didn't win, because those in power would rather slaughter every minority they can think of rather than give an inch to the left.
But their party leader is a lesbian who thinks her party's official stance on homosexuality is "just politics" and doesn't effect her personally (because she lives in Switzerland, of course)
So that means they can't be fascists, right? ...right?
Emmanuel Rohm was the leader of the Brownshirts during Hitler's rise to power and engaged in almost exclusively homosexual relationships while publicly denouncing homosexuality
as much as i hate AfD and the far right, i think banning them will just put fuel on the fire and it gives them easy propaganda material, where they can pose as the victims here
it’s a really hard situation and banning feels like the bad move to me tbh
Banning a political party leads to a loss of funding and they're not allowed to get back together in the same or similar constellation. It would set them back for at least a decade and destroys all of the work they put into their Nazi projects. It absolutely helps and it's absolutely vital that this ban happens.
There's a huge report that a good handful of lawyers made about the AfD which explains why they are antidemocratic and unconstitutional. It's obviously in German but I'll be happy to drop a link once I get around to it. The AfD is without doubt the scariest of the bunch. You do not want to have them as your neighbours.
except it’s a bad analogy because you don’t get rid of the relatively big following of the far right this way, quite the opposite and it will just fuel them more and it annihilates this group from the democratic process, which leads to even harder radicalization
That's not the major issue. The major issue is finance: the uber-rich aren't taxed, keep evading them, and influencing politics to prevent the introduction of taxes on their wealth. The state thus lacks funds (and willingness) to educate their electorate.
The electorate could vote for parties that solve their issues, but instead they are voting for fascists. It's not wrong to remove fascists from the options and if you're seriously arguing that they should be an option, you're part of the problem.
We should but centre right government, which tends to prevail over most of Europe is very good at only listening to the problems of business and ignoring the problems of the ordinary people.
So theyre banning the group these parties are a part of, and no the parties. Thats not even clickbait, thats just misinformation if im reading this correctly.
Do anyone have full list of parties that may get banned?
Article mentions obvious German afd, forum for democracy - fvd from Netherlands, Bulgarian revival and spd from Czechia directly. European esn party as mix of these and 6 more. Guess that's all about them?
While EU gov on many levels, have way more far right or extremist groups, would they be affected too (pls be)?
Banning a party will not magically make the support they have disappear. When people with fascist views get isolated, we only make them close more and more in their own bubble, which will just create more extremism. It's the same with people that make fun of flat earthers. You are not going to change their mind, you are just sending them deeper into their delusions.
People still don't get that banning everything we don't like is not a long term solution, but makes the problem worse (war on drugs, forbidding prostitution, etc)
It will not magically cure all problems, but it is indeed important to ban them. It will do multiple things, for example they will not receive any EU funding or other support. It will also prohibit them from advertising their views and they will not have a platform anymore in television and radio. Which will reduce the amount of propaganda they can spread and therefore reducing the impact they have on the population and in return reduce the support they have.
I disagree. Trump got elected (twice) with >30 felonies and after having said all sort of things that only few years ago would have made him completely uncandidable. Deplatforminng doesn't have the impact that it used to have and only make the person look like "they are going against the strong powers", that's why the afd in germany keeps getting stronger despite the multiple bans, Trump in the US, the neo-fascists movements in the uk, the neofascists in Italy. What has calling these people "fascists" and isolating them has achieved? Only raising their consent. Also, television and radio are not so meaningful anymore as they used to be, internet has made them completely obsolete and most people take their info from the latter.
It's counterintuitive, but the political history of the last 10 years has proven this multiple times. It's very useful to look into how cult works and what's the best way to unlock them. Isolating the people in the cult is the worst move one can make.
True, but not because they didn't try, which is my point. The attempt was to make him so much of a monster and demonise him that nobody would have voted him. The point was to isolate him and they achived the opposite, as you correctly said.
I agree with you. When i say demonising i mean from the point of view of maga folks. The democrats wanted to show how shitty and corrupt he is, they ended up making him a working class hero that is fighting the power and then president for the second time. Trump won thanks to inhability of the democrats and the american public at large to understand that times have changed. Trump understood it and made the "persecution" his winning horse. They manage to transform his mugshot in a huge political win ffs.
I’m not sure what you mean by all this. Your assumption is that the perception of Trump by MAGA is entirely based on a distorted view made up by Democrats, and that’s not true. He won a second term because Democrats were unpopular and the exiting president (Biden) left average folks with a piss poor economy, regardless of how high the stock market was at the time. Trump, a populist, just capitalized on that, and the fact that most people have short term memory and forgot how bad the US economy was in Trump’s last year in office.
There’s no “understanding of the new times”. There’s no grand plan. Nothing changed in between Trump presidencies. I would even say that nothing has changed in the past twenty years or so: most voters will take the bait of a populist if they feel like they need to punish the outgoing administration.
Trump is a bug inherent to democracy. Strongmen tend to do well when people are upset but cannot verbalize it or are unable to find the root cause. Saying that Trump’s victory is partly a consequence of how Democrats pictured him is also extremely naive, since the mf has again and again leaned on what he has been accused of.
If the republican party was banned after the first trump presidency, they wouldn't have recovered fast enough to get a second presidency. Most likely they would have stayed fractured and we may have gotten actual reforms.
I'd love to hear the thoughts of the people that downvoted. If they disagree with what i said, or if stimply they don't like it and want it to disappear. Unironically, the (very expected) reactions to my comment are proving my point.
They are already in a bubble and it's extremely hard to pull them out. Their influence is spreading, so clearly current efforts to deprogram them are less effective than their recruitment efforts. At that point containment is the best option we have, even if it's not the one I'd like we had.
Yes, because current efforts seem to be focused in only trying to isolate the people we don't like. During pre-internet time might have relatively worked, now it's clear it doesn't and saying "it's the best option we have" is just false. It's the easier option that people (but not sociologist or social psichologist) keep adopting because it's very easy, fits with our desire to not have shitheads around us and because people assumed that's how it worked so far.
Stop ignoring the reality and accept the fact that despite attempts to isolate them, the right is getting stronger everywhere. It's time to change approach or to start to get used to the new reality. Don't trust me, go beyond social media and go check what experts of hate and extremism say, not the politician we like this year.
I don't know if that's true. Here in Sweden people were deadly afraid of being called racists for a long time. Being a nazi wasn't acceptable in the public eye. Then being a racist nazi got normalised and here we are.
Giving bigots a platform and visibility serves to normalise them. They should be shamed into nonexistence.
I don’t know if that’s true
Please inform yourself about it then, because that would change the entire discussion. This is an entire field of study, it's not hidden stuff.
I agree they shouldn't have a platform and visibility. Definitely shouldn't be normalised. Shaming them and isolating them is HOW their ideas grew so much. The key is to invalidate their points with arguments, even if they don't listen, it's important they are out there and visible to other potential viewers. If you cannot do that because you are isolated from the fascist/flat earthers or whatever, their bubble will grow constantly because they talk to the belly of the people, and these folks will look for the opinions their belly tells them their are right. This is how we got wehere we are now. People saw something they could relate to when they heard these extremists complain about immigrants, corrupted system, secret plots to rule the world. Without access to a counter argument (becuase of the isolation) the spiral started to go deeper and deeper, until full extremization. We have seen something similar with covid.
For example i think banning Hitler's Mein Kampf, like they do in Germany, is a mistake. The only copies in circulations will be from people that probably simpatize with him and there will be little or no control over the content, which could be altered. This is very dangerous.
If the book is freely available there could be laws that force to have notes on the book, which explain why Hitler was a bullshitter and out of his mind. People will be in contact with this content if they look for that book for any reason, it's not a small thing. They will still find the "altered" copies, but they will be much less attractive (not fascinating because forbidden and easy to find) then will be much easier to see the alteration and to counter it. I hope my point is clearer now
Letting more and more people radicalise further is no solution either. We've seen what happened in the US.
No, the key is general education, deradicalisation for those most prone to spreading fascism, and improvement of life standards.
Restricting immigration is one way, but we should add an article that for all the anti-immigration statements fascists make (even about refugees), they're forced to live like the refugees did.
What, don't want to live in a tent in a starved area? Or not have access to medication? Then how about you go improve their life standards instead of sucking oligarchs', oil and gas industries' dicks?
What would you suggest we should do, if one day, flat earthers find themselves in positions of power and start demanding their bullshit to be taught in schools?
I'm not suggesting to let anybody say what they want and offering them a platform. I'm saying that if you don't want these people in power, like you didn't want trump in power or fascists in the streets, the key is not to do the easiest thing that comes to mind, but to listen to what people that study other people say, and they all say the same thing: the more you isolate shitty people, the more and more shitty they will become, because they will create their own closed community, which history tells us will only grow. What happened when the flat earthers became mainstream and people started to ban them everywhere and threat them like idiot? Their numbers decuplicated and the closeted flat earthers suddenly were public, to the point that athletes, politicians and other public figures came out as flat earthers. The point was to isolate them, they ended up way more and widespread than before.
That mass surveilance was pushed through by the EU commision against the parliament that already rejected it (twice).
Commision and the council. Especially the most recent chat control 1.0 proposal that the parliament will vote for tomorrow (July 9)
EU ambassadors agree to push a temporary revival — unprecedented, as Parliament’s rejection was considered final. Because an expired regulation cannot be extended, the Council proposes a formally new law with identical content via an expedited procedure.
You are wrong. People like this shouldn't be given a chance to be voted for, lest their propaganda wins and we end up in a full blown WW3.
Obviously these powers to ban a party must be kept under high scrutiny of the public incase they start banning all of their competition, but in this case right now It is good.
I would go further, democracy must defend itself. It's an embarrassing failure to allow anti-democratic parties to gain power through democratic means.
Well, this is democracy undermining itself. Parties with millions of supporters don't just randomly pop up for no reason. They come about due to real people having real problems.
Banning parties is a good way to become blind to that.
That is just a pragmatic argument, independent of my conviction that every citizen should have a right to equal representation, a right to be heard. No ifs' and buts' and no "but not like that" if I find their opinions unpalatable.
It is the same foundation I stand on to assert my own right. I will have my say. If that were taken away, I'd be inclined to tear it all down.
One very angry person can do a lot of damage today. How about the ten million who voted for AFD in the most recent German election? Or maybe just the seventy thousand who are active members? They are surely more extreme than you or I. That's more people than there are jail cells in Germany right now.
Those aren't real problems. They are lies specifically meant to influence people into believing that foreigners are a problem. That is why they are antidemocratic and must be banned. There's already plenty of official evidence from a legal standpoint. How is this so difficult to understand?
every citizen should have a right to equal representation, a right to be heard. No ifs’ and buts’ and no “but not like that” if I find their opinions unpalatable.
That is my conviction, regardless of ideology. It doesn't matter how much you highlight what the AFD stand for, because it is fundamentally irrelevant to my opinion on the subject.
Those aren’t real problems.
Which problems?
Decreasing standard of living? Rising energy prices? High home prices? A stagnating economy?
You don't convince someone to change ideology by saying "your problems aren't real". You do it by identifying the real problems, because I promise you that they exist. Then, convince them that a better solution exists than what their current ideology proposes.
When people are being brainwashed into focussing on brown people = bad, then no. Fuck that. That has nothing to do with democracy. The AfD stands for nothing other than their own gains.
And the problems you listed aren't the things they're addressing.
There is no reasoning. It's pure brain washing. Don't support that kind of shit.
And the problems you listed aren’t the things they’re addressing.
They claim to (read their party program), and they've convinced millions to agree regardless of how we feel about that.
There is no reasoning.
This is the easy way out, dismissing them outright, simply retreating. Without understanding and addressing their claims, however false they may be, you are fundamentally handicapped in challenging them - it is one of the key reasons that the AFD have managed to become so large in the first place.
Such rhetoric might get clamor and agreement from those who already reject their ideas, but is unlikely to convince many, if anybody in the other camp.
Look, the entire fucking country tried to find reason in this party. There is none. They're funded by Russia and want to destabilize Europe for their own gains. It's painfully obvious. I understand your take and to a certain extent I applaud you for it. But the AfD is very officially unconstitutional and antidemocratic. And a ban is to prevent parties like that from fucking everything up. This happened to the NPD already and it was the right thing to do.
It is definitely far too late for this, it should've been done 10 years ago, but better late than never. The cancer should've been surgically removed when it was small, now it has grown very large and removing it means losing an arm and half a lung but that's no reason to give up and let it overtake the rest of the body.
Check out the concept of the tolerance paradox, it might shift your point of view a bit. Think there's a copy pasta of a nazi bar that's in a similar context
I'm familiar with both, and the nazi bar equivalency is a false parallell.
The antidote to anti-establishment movements in democracies (which AFD & their related parties across Europe are at this point) is strengthening public trust and legitimacy, not creating the tools to dismantle it.
Because long term policies require short term patches, so problems don’t get out of hand too early.
Policing crime and implementing mechanisms so people don’t need to resort to it in the long term, are complementary, but without the former, chances of the latter to work are slim.
From your point of view, it’s fine to let nazis win now as long as we set out to fix the root cause later, which is naive at several levels, most importantly because if they find their way to office, they will fight any policy that could make them irrelevant. Even more, since they are purely reactionary parties with no real policies, they are incentivized to manufacture more enemies and false issues. And if you don’t believe me, look at pretty much any reactionary cabinet in the world from the past 20 years, from the US to Russia to Hungary.
The rules allowing bans exist specifically for cases like these, to prevent fascists from manipulating their way to power and dismantling democracy. If a party doesnt play by the rules of democracy, it does not have the right to be democratically elected. Nothing strange about that.
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Far too late but good luck.
Yes, let us learn from past mistakes for once!
Let's see how the 30% of nazis and / or uneducated idiots who voted for them will react.
Hear me out, and this may be radical. what if they instead address the neoliberal polices that have been transferring wealth to business owners from the working class for decades?
Why not both?
They would need to severely reduce the amount of migrants coming in, so that's not happening.
Immigrants are a scapegoat.
Heads up: Your autocorrect accidentally changed billionaires to migrants.
I don't see the link to migrants
I just want to mention that this procedure is raised by party that have majority right now in parliament. That are European People's Party - christian and conservative. They are the same as MAGA just not as radical (yet) as AfD. Whoever thinks that's good thing may go to hell because I don't want to be ruled by christian conservative idiots but I want them to fight against each other so they can show their true nature.
You're absolutely right and those who downvote you need to have a wee looksie into parties like that.
There are a LOT of far right MEPs who pretend they're not far right and are members of the conservative parties. So I'm not holding my breath.
Also wondering when Weidel will be arrested for treason.
Good news for once
Maybe, but they only trying to silence them, not to solve the problems that cause their rising...
You mean the problem that almost all media is controlled by right-wing billionaires?
yes, thats big problem. But it's good to at least take away some power from the party
Maybe in the US this is true, not here
No, you are not taking away some power from them, you are simply giving them more "weapons". It would not be that difficult to frame this as "look, they want to silence us because we talk about $PROBLEM they caused"
Racists and fascists should be silenced.
I'm sorry they are upset that they saw a minority or that they overheard people speaking a foreign language while being brown. They can get over themselves
You don't need to pamper these beliefs. You can lead the voters to the actual cause of the issue without allowing them to empower fascists.
Usually the real issue is economic. Lack of housing, low wages, failing Healthcare. Those can be addressed. You don't have to allow the group trying to blame poor minority groups a seat at the table. You address the real issues
"Oh no, a kebab stand on every street corner?!? What am I to do? Delicious, delicious kebab. I could try one from a different place every day and it would still take weeks to find the best one. This is unheard of! This is unfair! It's the parliament's fault! If they didn't let in so many foreigners then I wouldn't have this many choices before me. I could eat a good German currywurst, or a good German schnitzel, and not be inundated with so many options like 'felafel or haloumi?' or 'döner or dürüm?'. This cannot stand!"
This cannot stand? You just said a stand on every corner! ;-)
Yes, but that was a noun. This is a verb.
(As if fascists understand grammar)
Are there not grammar Nazis? ;-)
As a stickler for grammar myself, I find that to be a misnomer.
Real fascists won't correct you on your grammar because they want you to be stupid.
Well expect the local Döner shop can stay, he's one of the good ones you see
Yeah right, if AfD had their way that guy and all his nephews would get picked up at the grocery store or at the park or on their way to work or in their own homes, and saying "but I work at the local döner shop!" isn't likely to help them much.
Then all the right-wingers would start complaining when the döner shops all start shutting down, like "Those damn foreigners are abandoning me right when I need my lunch! I knew they were good for nuthin!"
It's more of a joke on the people voting for the party and not the party line itself. The party means it
Kinda the classic conservative thing of not seeing a problem until it effects them personally. Or at least a variation.
The US is seeing the same thing, spouses voting for Trump then seeing their illegal/asylum seeking husband/wife deported and being shocked because "they were doing it right, or they were good not a problem"
The cognitive dissonance is amazing
Or ICE scaring off workers and food rotting in fields and construction work being slowed. It's infuriating on many levels.
Do you understand that we can simply take their recipes, and make it ourselves? You can have your kebab, while the rest of us can get a stable economy that can pay natives a decent loan, which they can use to actually buy a house, without getting fucked over by their corporate overlords because their loan is being undermined by the mass-immigration enabled by Liberal politicians - fuck them too.
Mass-immigration is the issue I have identified (at least for the Netherlands, but the same case seem to exist for other European countries.
True, the politicians that don't seem to understand that if you let in 100k immigrations (netto), and only build 70k houses a year, there's going to be a housing shortage. "but people can live together!", yes, but you forget there's another 100k of people being born. So now you have 200k people fighting for 70k houses. It's a problem with an easy solution, but no one seems to be able to reduce immigration. I guess we should revert the Vreemdelingenwet 2000 (and the 1965 variant, which is when shit started hitting the fan in regards of migration).
Then there's the cultural issues with such a massive influx of people coming and leaving (2024 200k left, 300k cam in), it's straight up bizarre. Culture takes a while to be taught, and if you have such a large group in flux, I don't see how that's healthy for the country.
Before anyone things I'm some fascist: Racism is not a legitimate term. Something Leftists should know. Also, fuck Christianity and the Monarchy. I'm Dutch-Frankian, not "white" (whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean). Yes, I have a white skin, but holy shit I'm not similar to Celtics, Romanics, or Slavics, you weirdo.
If it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...
The AfD doesn't really give a shit about foreigners. They mainly use them to gain votes. All they care about is money and power. Blaming foreigners for all of the problems is the easiest way to get votes. They hate poor white Germans almost as much as brown people.
Hmm, I wonder who else tried this strategy in Germany's history... 🤔
It's the fash-test way to gain power.
Apologies for the shitty pun. But only if it made you groan
At first glance I thought you meant like a litmus test for fascism. Like dip this strip of paper and if it turns red that means the person is a fascist.
The real issue is the politicians letting in insane amounts of migrants - I don't care whether they come from the Maghreb, or the Appalachians. That is going to have VERY long-stretching effects, and politicians are crazily short-sighted. None of them has a 100-year plan for their own country. Absolute bonkers.
It's not exactly desirable. I'd prefer they remain in their home countries if there were peace. After all, it's their home and it sucks to have to leave your home. But there's war in those countries. The problems could be addressed, one being to allow immigrants to work for example.
Oh, they care about foreigners and who they behold to be foreigners. They already had a conference, in quite close proximity to the Wannsee, to discuss how they would like to handle them. No extermination, yet. But the Nazis also didn't start with death camps but plans for deportation or ethnic cleansing or remigration like it is called today.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Potsdam_far-right_meeting)
You're absolutely right. But it is more a means of controlling anti-sentiments to gain votes and it works really well because they instill a fear into people that actually isn't real. I'm fucking scared of what will happen when they come into power. What I meant with my comment is that they hate anyone who isn't rich. A rich foreigner has nothing to fear as long as they play along. It's disgusting.
Which problems do you mean here?
Neoliberal policies that take wealth way from everybody but the rich and gives it to them.
I do not know about other EU countries but in my country these far right voters want MORE Capitalism/Neoliberalism, not less.
Oh yes, that is the whole stupidity about it. They suffer from it, like we all do, and then they want more of it. But they need to be dragged towards leftist policies or they will drag us all into the abyss.
Because fascist parties have a scapegoat and clear things they want to change. Meanwhile the centrist parties that claim to be "left" are just sputtering around doing more of the same or window dressing approaches that do nothing, and are more interested in stopping the actual leftist movements that will help people and stop fascism.
The paradox is that they'll blame taxation for being broke even if the actual reason is capitalism.
I reckon one major reason is that taxation is the visible part of your money being "stolen" whereas capitalists profiting off your labour is... well, potentially visible if it's a private company and the owner flaunts his wealth, but generally if it's a big publicly traded company, or a foreign multinational, etc, you need to be looking at the annual reports or something, because there's no real local boss taking all the profit.
You don't believe that causes people to vote rather left instead?
If everyone was intelligent, sure. But that's not how propaganda works, unfortunately...
Wealth inequality effects everyone and so it changes how everyone votes, but it also causes certain "answers" to that problem to become more popular or tolerable. So what we're seeing around the globe is the rise of the far right who are providing the "answer" that rising inequality and lowering standard of living is entirely the fault of immigrants, the loss of the "traditional family", and pretty much any "answer" except for useful ones. So no, this typically starts by driving people to the right as the right will most easily attempt to maintain the status quo at the expense of the scapegoat.
The follow on effect is the rise of the "radical" left which provides the answer "tax the ultra wealthy, invest in public infrastructure, and strengthen worker rights" - all things that reduce wealth inequality or increase the standard of living.
We're currently figuring out which side will win out in the long run or if the fundamentals will continue to not change and delay this issue further. For example Merz and the CDU in Germany making life better for the rich and worse for everyone else, delaying the inevitable decision of either the AFD winning or some party like Die Linke (hopefully) or Die Grüns winning. So Germans get to watch their lives get worse until they're ready to vote in parties with real positive change on their mind (or the opposite, real terrible changes like AFD).
Sadly it's gonna be AfD... I used to be more optimistic about who my fellow Germans vote for, but I have since moved to a rural region and HOLY COW, people go for the easy but wrong answers here seven times out of ten.
Luckily most people don't live in rural communities. I fear you're right, but I hope Germany can find a Gary Stevenson of their own that can start pushing real solutions in a way all Germans can get behind.
Sure, a certain part, but if I look at my country or other democratic countries the right manages through their control of the media to convince a lot of people that it is the immigrants fault and we just need to be more xenophobic and then we will all be better off.
What planet are you even living on? Have you not seen the state of America? Remember Brexit? Why do you think fascists are surging in the polls everywhere? If a declining standard of living and quality of life created leftism out of thin air every developed economy would be on the verge of socialism in 2026.
Neoliberal/Conservative policies make the working class poorer and the rich richer, who use their capital to seize the means of democracy, kill competition, create monopolies, consolidate ownership of the media, etc and engage in wholesale propaganda aiming to divide and conquer the working class. The greatest threat to the Epstein classes wealth and power is a truly democratic government working "for the people", so they're promoting the same fascist populism everywhere to implement totalitarian dictatorship and remove the threat of democracy.
The uneducated moron who "doesn't do politics" is the easiest mark for fascism to con, because they can't see the incongruence; the patterns of lies, crimes, corruption, and psychopathy only learned from studying historic parallels.
[Insert racist & fascist propaganda here]
Colored people 🫣😱
Sigh
Unfortunately at the stage we are at we dont have enough time to only fight the root causes.
Maybe true, but these are the consequences of ignoring (or creating) the problems but as it seems they don't even care to understand why AfD get so many support.
Only silencing them now will end with AfD with more votes and even less time to attack the root causes.
Of course the current German government doesnt care for the root causes. CDU has always sided with millionaires and promoted suppression of the working class. They are hoping to shut down AfD while staying in power. On an EU level, we cant really do more than this but its the least that needs to happen.
Then they are even more stupid...
Oh, yes, we can do way more.
Think about to impose some sort of limitation to indiscriminate immigration, think about stopping to try to punish the members that do not accept illegal immigrants, think about starting to work to preserve the industries and workplace in Europe, think about how to make outsourcing production less cost-effective for those who do it.
There are a lot of thing EU can do if they want.
So you want to support the incorrect narrative of those xenophobic liars that it's because of immigration instead of the real reason, out of control capitalism with the rich getting richer?
No, I was pointing out that there are things EU can decide to do that make points that are behind AfD rising moot. Which is the solution if we want to solve the problem and not just hide it.
Up until politicians do not understand that AfD (like the far right wing parties in general) are the effect and not the cause, AfD and the like will continue to rise.
AfD has a xenophobic narrative ? Yes, of course. But they was also offered an easy target.
Let's be real: if there would not be all these illegal immigrant in our cities (I am sure that the problems we have near the Milano Central Station are common in many cities) AfD would not have a target. If we had done something when all the jobs were moved to cheaper countries they would not have a target. The rich are getting richer because we are allowing them to do so.(*)
True, there would always be some fascist around, stupid people would always exist, but they would be just a small group of fanatics that are irrelevant like the dozens of other parties (never hear about the Popolo della Famiglia italian party for example ?) that get 0.something % votes at the elections.
Silencing them it's like sweeping dust under the rug: sure, you can't see it, but the dust is still there and sooner or later it will come to bite you.
(*) BTW, thinking that all the problems are caused by the rich getting richer is the same thing that thinking that all the problems are caused by immigration: it is false. Both of these thing are aspects of the same problem, not the cause per se.
Oh I wasnt talking about what the EU can do to promote fascism, I meant opposing it.
Let me understand: wanting to have some controls over unchecked immigration and to preserve jobs in EU is fascist ?
What was your idea of opposing fascism then ? Simply sweep it under the rug and think that just because you can't see it, it doesn't exist?
That's better than not silencing them, no?
You can snip the vocal cords of all the vicious dogs you want. Sure they stop barking, but they will still maul you
Then send animal control after the ones who bite.
But these aren't dogs. These are humans with voting rights and the ability to run for office. Banning fascist political parties is a good thing, and it's strange that you seem to think otherwise.
Are you sure you're responding to the right comment? Not sure how that fits in any way as a response to what I said
You are correct, my mistake
It's an endless game of whack a mole if you silence specific parties. The only way to stop them is to improve people's material conditions so that fascism has no appeal.
Yeah, that's how they should've stopped hitler. Just improve people's material conditions, it's not like he's actively sabotaging that in order to manipulate them into giving him more power. Oh wait, he did.
If whackamole is what it takes to keep the fascists down, then whackamole is what it'll be. History is never over. Life and society are never won. There will always be a danger of resurgence. Vigilance will always be necessary.
Sorry to tell you this, but it's true. The balance of the world hangs on a razor's edge at the best of times. It doesn't take much to destabilize a system when everything is going smoothly.
So sure, improve people's material conditions. There's a lot we could do better in the world. But don't stop whacking fascism every time it rears its ugly head...
Dude, the German government literally handed power to Hitler in an election he didn't win, because those in power would rather slaughter every minority they can think of rather than give an inch to the left.
first they came for our russia backed nazis
then they came for our russia backed commies
slippery slope amirite!!!
And there's not even any ICE over there!
(Don't read too much into a silly pun)
Hey, german government, parliament and federal council. This is how that works, now do that, too. For fucks sake!
But their party leader is a lesbian who thinks her party's official stance on homosexuality is "just politics" and doesn't effect her personally (because she lives in Switzerland, of course)
So that means they can't be fascists, right? ...right?
She's also married to a foreign lady.
Foreign lady married one of the tribe - she can stay.
Emmanuel Rohm was the leader of the Brownshirts during Hitler's rise to power and engaged in almost exclusively homosexual relationships while publicly denouncing homosexuality
As were a great many in the party at the time.
yup. right wing politics in many ways is rooted in the conception of the self as special, and worthy of explicit privilege based on that
Good, fuck them and their anti-democratic brethren.
as much as i hate AfD and the far right, i think banning them will just put fuel on the fire and it gives them easy propaganda material, where they can pose as the victims here
it’s a really hard situation and banning feels like the bad move to me tbh
Tolerance paradox.
Take it from us in the USA, do not fuck around with these types of groups
Banning a political party leads to a loss of funding and they're not allowed to get back together in the same or similar constellation. It would set them back for at least a decade and destroys all of the work they put into their Nazi projects. It absolutely helps and it's absolutely vital that this ban happens.
Such as? Genuine question. I'm Dutch-Frankian, but I don't pay that much attention to German politics. I have my own to worry about.
There's a huge report that a good handful of lawyers made about the AfD which explains why they are antidemocratic and unconstitutional. It's obviously in German but I'll be happy to drop a link once I get around to it. The AfD is without doubt the scariest of the bunch. You do not want to have them as your neighbours.
banning them just leads to some other even more radical party to rise up as the voter base who supports them won’t disappear
But to build up the infrastructure, the network, the funding takes years. That's the main reason behind the ban.
Dealing leniently with their predecessor just gave him time to write his manifesto.
Amputation is a valid course of treatment while the cancer or infection is spreading. Leaving the limb alone can lead to dead much more quickly.
except it’s a bad analogy because you don’t get rid of the relatively big following of the far right this way, quite the opposite and it will just fuel them more and it annihilates this group from the democratic process, which leads to even harder radicalization
Not seeing any alternatives presented here...
Solve the problems that the voterbase is experiencing. Those problems are real even if what they believe the cause is is wrong.
That's not the major issue. The major issue is finance: the uber-rich aren't taxed, keep evading them, and influencing politics to prevent the introduction of taxes on their wealth. The state thus lacks funds (and willingness) to educate their electorate.
The electorate could vote for parties that solve their issues, but instead they are voting for fascists. It's not wrong to remove fascists from the options and if you're seriously arguing that they should be an option, you're part of the problem.
To be fair, we really should be trying to solve our problems anyway. Lol
We should but centre right government, which tends to prevail over most of Europe is very good at only listening to the problems of business and ignoring the problems of the ordinary people.
Nice, take nazies (and Putin pawns) down one party at time
Found this a few posts down
https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/6676522c-4cc7-42a1-abe7-9e005f9e0c53.jpeg
That's pretty funny ngl
pls make it happen
So theyre banning the group these parties are a part of, and no the parties. Thats not even clickbait, thats just misinformation if im reading this correctly.
This is about parties in the EU parliament which are made up of representatives from national parties. The EU can't ban parties on a national level.
Do anyone have full list of parties that may get banned?
Article mentions obvious German afd, forum for democracy - fvd from Netherlands, Bulgarian revival and spd from Czechia directly. European esn party as mix of these and 6 more. Guess that's all about them?
While EU gov on many levels, have way more far right or extremist groups, would they be affected too (pls be)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_of_Sovereign_Nations_Group
Scroll down to MEPs
ESN is all about freedoms and democracy unless it goes against their interests
Maybe the people downvoting your comment should've read the article to figure out what ESN stands for.
to clarify: ESN is the EU's far right party pool.
You just enabled people to continue not reading the article :(
I hate him so much right now 😭
Just your average fascists. It's always the same with them, wherever you look.
Yup
Banning a party will not magically make the support they have disappear. When people with fascist views get isolated, we only make them close more and more in their own bubble, which will just create more extremism. It's the same with people that make fun of flat earthers. You are not going to change their mind, you are just sending them deeper into their delusions. People still don't get that banning everything we don't like is not a long term solution, but makes the problem worse (war on drugs, forbidding prostitution, etc)
It will not magically cure all problems, but it is indeed important to ban them. It will do multiple things, for example they will not receive any EU funding or other support. It will also prohibit them from advertising their views and they will not have a platform anymore in television and radio. Which will reduce the amount of propaganda they can spread and therefore reducing the impact they have on the population and in return reduce the support they have.
And this is just one aspect.
I disagree. Trump got elected (twice) with >30 felonies and after having said all sort of things that only few years ago would have made him completely uncandidable. Deplatforminng doesn't have the impact that it used to have and only make the person look like "they are going against the strong powers", that's why the afd in germany keeps getting stronger despite the multiple bans, Trump in the US, the neo-fascists movements in the uk, the neofascists in Italy. What has calling these people "fascists" and isolating them has achieved? Only raising their consent. Also, television and radio are not so meaningful anymore as they used to be, internet has made them completely obsolete and most people take their info from the latter. It's counterintuitive, but the political history of the last 10 years has proven this multiple times. It's very useful to look into how cult works and what's the best way to unlock them. Isolating the people in the cult is the worst move one can make.
Trump was not deplatformed, if anything the total opposite of that.
True, but not because they didn't try, which is my point. The attempt was to make him so much of a monster and demonise him that nobody would have voted him. The point was to isolate him and they achived the opposite, as you correctly said.
Reporting on his crimes and policies is not demonising him.
I agree with you. When i say demonising i mean from the point of view of maga folks. The democrats wanted to show how shitty and corrupt he is, they ended up making him a working class hero that is fighting the power and then president for the second time. Trump won thanks to inhability of the democrats and the american public at large to understand that times have changed. Trump understood it and made the "persecution" his winning horse. They manage to transform his mugshot in a huge political win ffs.
I’m not sure what you mean by all this. Your assumption is that the perception of Trump by MAGA is entirely based on a distorted view made up by Democrats, and that’s not true. He won a second term because Democrats were unpopular and the exiting president (Biden) left average folks with a piss poor economy, regardless of how high the stock market was at the time. Trump, a populist, just capitalized on that, and the fact that most people have short term memory and forgot how bad the US economy was in Trump’s last year in office.
There’s no “understanding of the new times”. There’s no grand plan. Nothing changed in between Trump presidencies. I would even say that nothing has changed in the past twenty years or so: most voters will take the bait of a populist if they feel like they need to punish the outgoing administration.
Trump is a bug inherent to democracy. Strongmen tend to do well when people are upset but cannot verbalize it or are unable to find the root cause. Saying that Trump’s victory is partly a consequence of how Democrats pictured him is also extremely naive, since the mf has again and again leaned on what he has been accused of.
If the republican party was banned after the first trump presidency, they wouldn't have recovered fast enough to get a second presidency. Most likely they would have stayed fractured and we may have gotten actual reforms.
I'd love to hear the thoughts of the people that downvoted. If they disagree with what i said, or if stimply they don't like it and want it to disappear. Unironically, the (very expected) reactions to my comment are proving my point.
If you can't neutralize a toxic spill you contain it instead.
Exactly, but seems that we have been proven multiple times that banning/shunning/shaming only achieves the opposite.
They are already in a bubble and it's extremely hard to pull them out. Their influence is spreading, so clearly current efforts to deprogram them are less effective than their recruitment efforts. At that point containment is the best option we have, even if it's not the one I'd like we had.
Yes, because current efforts seem to be focused in only trying to isolate the people we don't like. During pre-internet time might have relatively worked, now it's clear it doesn't and saying "it's the best option we have" is just false. It's the easier option that people (but not sociologist or social psichologist) keep adopting because it's very easy, fits with our desire to not have shitheads around us and because people assumed that's how it worked so far.
Stop ignoring the reality and accept the fact that despite attempts to isolate them, the right is getting stronger everywhere. It's time to change approach or to start to get used to the new reality. Don't trust me, go beyond social media and go check what experts of hate and extremism say, not the politician we like this year.
This is already an improvement over the previous policy of shooting Nazis.
I don't know if that's true. Here in Sweden people were deadly afraid of being called racists for a long time. Being a nazi wasn't acceptable in the public eye. Then being a racist nazi got normalised and here we are.
Giving bigots a platform and visibility serves to normalise them. They should be shamed into nonexistence.
I agree they shouldn't have a platform and visibility. Definitely shouldn't be normalised. Shaming them and isolating them is HOW their ideas grew so much. The key is to invalidate their points with arguments, even if they don't listen, it's important they are out there and visible to other potential viewers. If you cannot do that because you are isolated from the fascist/flat earthers or whatever, their bubble will grow constantly because they talk to the belly of the people, and these folks will look for the opinions their belly tells them their are right. This is how we got wehere we are now. People saw something they could relate to when they heard these extremists complain about immigrants, corrupted system, secret plots to rule the world. Without access to a counter argument (becuase of the isolation) the spiral started to go deeper and deeper, until full extremization. We have seen something similar with covid.
For example i think banning Hitler's Mein Kampf, like they do in Germany, is a mistake. The only copies in circulations will be from people that probably simpatize with him and there will be little or no control over the content, which could be altered. This is very dangerous. If the book is freely available there could be laws that force to have notes on the book, which explain why Hitler was a bullshitter and out of his mind. People will be in contact with this content if they look for that book for any reason, it's not a small thing. They will still find the "altered" copies, but they will be much less attractive (not fascinating because forbidden and easy to find) then will be much easier to see the alteration and to counter it. I hope my point is clearer now
Letting more and more people radicalise further is no solution either. We've seen what happened in the US.
No, the key is general education, deradicalisation for those most prone to spreading fascism, and improvement of life standards.
Restricting immigration is one way, but we should add an article that for all the anti-immigration statements fascists make (even about refugees), they're forced to live like the refugees did.
What, don't want to live in a tent in a starved area? Or not have access to medication? Then how about you go improve their life standards instead of sucking oligarchs', oil and gas industries' dicks?
What would you suggest we should do, if one day, flat earthers find themselves in positions of power and start demanding their bullshit to be taught in schools?
I'm not suggesting to let anybody say what they want and offering them a platform. I'm saying that if you don't want these people in power, like you didn't want trump in power or fascists in the streets, the key is not to do the easiest thing that comes to mind, but to listen to what people that study other people say, and they all say the same thing: the more you isolate shitty people, the more and more shitty they will become, because they will create their own closed community, which history tells us will only grow. What happened when the flat earthers became mainstream and people started to ban them everywhere and threat them like idiot? Their numbers decuplicated and the closeted flat earthers suddenly were public, to the point that athletes, politicians and other public figures came out as flat earthers. The point was to isolate them, they ended up way more and widespread than before.
Ain't it the same parliament that recently passed mass invigilation of EU citizens without a vote?
Quite the contrary. That mass surveilance was pushed through by the EU commision against the parliament that already rejected it (twice).
Commision and the council. Especially the most recent chat control 1.0 proposal that the parliament will vote for tomorrow (July 9)
https://fightchatcontrol.eu/chat-control-overview
Gods, comission? What a farce.
...to pass chat control resolution
Not a fan. This is inherently anti-democratic, regardless of the views that the efn espouses.
You are wrong. People like this shouldn't be given a chance to be voted for, lest their propaganda wins and we end up in a full blown WW3.
Obviously these powers to ban a party must be kept under high scrutiny of the public incase they start banning all of their competition, but in this case right now It is good.
I'm not a fan of killing cockroaches but I'd rather do that than let them run around the house.
That said, these particular cockroaches are everywhere now.
These groups are themselves anti-democratic. Democracy is allowed to defend itself.
I would go further, democracy must defend itself. It's an embarrassing failure to allow anti-democratic parties to gain power through democratic means.
Well, this is democracy undermining itself. Parties with millions of supporters don't just randomly pop up for no reason. They come about due to real people having real problems.
Banning parties is a good way to become blind to that.
That is just a pragmatic argument, independent of my conviction that every citizen should have a right to equal representation, a right to be heard. No ifs' and buts' and no "but not like that" if I find their opinions unpalatable.
It is the same foundation I stand on to assert my own right. I will have my say. If that were taken away, I'd be inclined to tear it all down.
One very angry person can do a lot of damage today. How about the ten million who voted for AFD in the most recent German election? Or maybe just the seventy thousand who are active members? They are surely more extreme than you or I. That's more people than there are jail cells in Germany right now.
Those aren't real problems. They are lies specifically meant to influence people into believing that foreigners are a problem. That is why they are antidemocratic and must be banned. There's already plenty of official evidence from a legal standpoint. How is this so difficult to understand?
Did you even read my comment?
Let me repeat the most important part for you:
That is my conviction, regardless of ideology. It doesn't matter how much you highlight what the AFD stand for, because it is fundamentally irrelevant to my opinion on the subject.
Which problems?
Decreasing standard of living? Rising energy prices? High home prices? A stagnating economy?
You don't convince someone to change ideology by saying "your problems aren't real". You do it by identifying the real problems, because I promise you that they exist. Then, convince them that a better solution exists than what their current ideology proposes.
When people are being brainwashed into focussing on brown people = bad, then no. Fuck that. That has nothing to do with democracy. The AfD stands for nothing other than their own gains.
And the problems you listed aren't the things they're addressing.
There is no reasoning. It's pure brain washing. Don't support that kind of shit.
They claim to (read their party program), and they've convinced millions to agree regardless of how we feel about that.
This is the easy way out, dismissing them outright, simply retreating. Without understanding and addressing their claims, however false they may be, you are fundamentally handicapped in challenging them - it is one of the key reasons that the AFD have managed to become so large in the first place.
Such rhetoric might get clamor and agreement from those who already reject their ideas, but is unlikely to convince many, if anybody in the other camp.
Look, the entire fucking country tried to find reason in this party. There is none. They're funded by Russia and want to destabilize Europe for their own gains. It's painfully obvious. I understand your take and to a certain extent I applaud you for it. But the AfD is very officially unconstitutional and antidemocratic. And a ban is to prevent parties like that from fucking everything up. This happened to the NPD already and it was the right thing to do.
It is definitely far too late for this, it should've been done 10 years ago, but better late than never. The cancer should've been surgically removed when it was small, now it has grown very large and removing it means losing an arm and half a lung but that's no reason to give up and let it overtake the rest of the body.
There is no room for fascists.
Check out the concept of the tolerance paradox, it might shift your point of view a bit. Think there's a copy pasta of a nazi bar that's in a similar context
I'm familiar with both, and the nazi bar equivalency is a false parallell.
The antidote to anti-establishment movements in democracies (which AFD & their related parties across Europe are at this point) is strengthening public trust and legitimacy, not creating the tools to dismantle it.
That’s like saying that since crime is mostly a symptom of a systemic issue, we shouldn’t prosecute it.
No, it's like saying the police shouldn't fight crime by breaking the law, because it undermines trust in the legal system.
For a prime example of that in action, see the US.
That’s… not at all equivalent.
How so?
Because long term policies require short term patches, so problems don’t get out of hand too early.
Policing crime and implementing mechanisms so people don’t need to resort to it in the long term, are complementary, but without the former, chances of the latter to work are slim.
From your point of view, it’s fine to let nazis win now as long as we set out to fix the root cause later, which is naive at several levels, most importantly because if they find their way to office, they will fight any policy that could make them irrelevant. Even more, since they are purely reactionary parties with no real policies, they are incentivized to manufacture more enemies and false issues. And if you don’t believe me, look at pretty much any reactionary cabinet in the world from the past 20 years, from the US to Russia to Hungary.
The paradox of democracy is at play here. We cannot tolerate an intolerant party without sacrificing our tolerance to others.
In other words, the only rule we have is to tolerate others. A party like AFD is intolerant to others, therefore it cannot be allowed to exist.
So what's your opinion on the NSDAP?
The rules allowing bans exist specifically for cases like these, to prevent fascists from manipulating their way to power and dismantling democracy. If a party doesnt play by the rules of democracy, it does not have the right to be democratically elected. Nothing strange about that.
Fascists don't deserve a seat at Democracies table when they would destroy Democracy if they win.
It's really that simple, cupcake.