BREAKING: In the newest threat to German democracy, an AfD politician will debate his views on television tonight at 8:15 pm. Pundits are uncertain whether the Federal Republic will survive.

Voldemort Björn Höcke

German democracy, we have seen, is facing a wide array of unusual threats. It is like a small Alpine flower, surrounded on all sides by vicious autonomous lawnmowers. The gravest of these threats are the upcoming elections, because as we know nothing is so detrimental to democracy as voting. Almost as bad are social media platforms like X, which allow Germans to voice their unauthorised opinions and to read the unauthorised opinions of others. This is because when you say unauthorised things, that’s “hate speech,” and when you read unauthorised things, that’s “disinformation,” and hate speech and disinformation are extremely antidemocratic. German democracy would be far safer if nobody enjoyed any freedom of expression at all, and our minders are working very hard to address this deficiency.

As if that were not bad enough, a very special threat looms for German democracy this evening, at precisely 8:15 pm. That is when Björn Höcke, head of the AfD faction in the Thüringen state parliament, will have a 45-minute televised debate with his counterpart, the CDU politician Mario Voigt. You would think nothing could be more ordinary and democratic than a discussion between the leading politicians of the two strongest parties in Thüringen, which together command 49% of the vote in that state.

In this you would be very wrong. In fact it is profoundly antidemocratic, because fascism.