Proposals to ban Alternative für Deutschland gain support within the German political establishment, as our domestic spy agency prepares a new assessment of the party's political wrongthink
Key CDU politicians, coordinating with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, will try to get the German Bundestag to approve a ban before the end of the year.
Last week, I wrote about the ongoing campaign of the CDU politician and Bundestag member Marco Wanderwitz to protect German democracy by initiating procedures to ban one of the strongest democratically supported parties in Germany, namely Alternative für Deutschland.
At the time, I assured my readers that Wanderwitz’s plans were doomed. The leadership of the other major parties, like the (centre-right) CDU, the (left-leaning) SPD and the (market-liberal) FDP have long opposed a ban. Not even Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to prohibit the AfD, and even our preeminent marshmallow crusader against all things “extreme right,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, has opposed the measure. This is not because these people have democratic scruples or anything like that, of course; if they could wipe the AfD off the face of the earth by pulling a lever, they absolutely would. Their objections are purely strategic: Party bans are risky and have only succeeded twice in the entire history of the Federal Republic. The Federal Constitutional Court is unlikely to approve a ban and in the meantime the party would only benefit from its open victimisation.
Now, however, the guardians of German democracy seem to be wondering whether they should throw caution to the wind and try banning the AfD after all. Key to this shift in opinion is a small story that I’ve mostly ignored: Since at least February, domestic intelligence goons in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) have been preparing a new assessment of the AfD. Right now, the federal AfD are merely “under suspicion” of right-wing extremism, but in all likelihood this new assessment will upgrade the party to “proven right-wing extremism.” This will be the last major act of BfV chief (and human mole) Thomas Haldenwang …
… who will step down as democracy-defender-in-chief at the end of this year. Apparently – and you will not believe this – the man has health problems.
Anyway, Friedrich Merz, who heads the CDU Bundestag faction, has just signalled that he is no longer “absolutely opposed” to banning the AfD; he may revise his position pending “new developments.” This means that Merz and the CDU may support a ban if and when the constitutional protectors reclassify AfD as “proven right-wing extremists.” The market-liberal FDP, for their part, have said that they will no longer vote against a ban, but will merely abstain, if and when the AfD receive their expected political upgrade. Suddenly we are getting very near the simple majority necessary to send the whole matter to the Federal Constitutional Court. Only the SPD still need to be convinced.
Wanderwitz originally wanted to bring his proposal before the Bundestag in the coming week, but now he’s delayed everything until mid-November. Officially, he wants time to convince the SPD to support his latest scheme to protect democracy by abolishing it. But, unofficially, I suspect he is waiting for the new BfV assessment to come out. In fact, I suspect that this entire charade is being coordinated with Haldenwang and his spy agency.
Yes, you read that right: eugyppius is alleging a conspiracy. Specifically, I think that Haldenwang, a CDU party member, is coordinating with Wanderwitz, a CDU politician, to produce the very assessment he needs to convince CDU party leadership to throw their weight behind banning the AfD. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it: The CDU have been losing voters and members to the AfD for years now. Of course this is making the AfD stronger, but – more subtly – the departure of right-leaning CDU supporters is increasing the concentration of leftist lunatics inside the CDU and changing the nature of the party itself. The nominally “centre-right” CDU is caught in a death spiral, in other words, as their core constituents bleed away to the AfD, and their remaining left-leaning members drive them ever further to the left, where however they are outcompeted by the even crazier Greens and Social Democrats. The party loyalties of older German voters are the only thing holding the CDU up right now, and older German voters are unlikely to live forever. Thus the CDU really, really need to do something about the AfD.
These ulterior motives explain why the Wanderwitzians have so few good arguments. A few days ago, they uploaded their draft ban application to the internet. It weighs in at a mere eight pages, and does nothing but recycle the same tired anti-AfD media narratives we’ve gone over here at the plague chronicle a million times. At the same time, this strange document nevertheless betrays a very bizarre understanding of democracy. Among its arguments for a ban, for example, is the allegation that the AfD “disseminate so-called fake news and conspiracy theories,” that they “systematically defame the free, independent and critical press,” and that they manifest “contempt for … state institutions,” which they “deliberately disparage.” You read that right: A great part of the German political establishment is presently arguing, on the open internet, that it is undemocratic to criticise the media, circulate unauthorised “conspiracy theories” and verbally attack “state institutions.”
I predict many people, some in this very comment section, saying that a ban will only make the right stronger. I think that is wishful thinking at its worst and mental gymnastics taking to an extreme sports level. Repression works, which is actually why people try not to fall under it and their enemies want to exercise it. It’s sad that it takes saying, but repeated experience shows it does.
But anyway – tl;dr: Germany is unfixable and the smart move is getting out while the gittin' is good. Depressing elaboration follows.
On an individual basis, for a young or even middle aged German with something on the ball the smart move has been emigration for quite a while and I have been urging German friends to pack their suitcases – to Switzerland if they can hack it, to the US per default, to Thailand if they can stand the heat, to El Salvador for those who want to risk going long on a value pick.
An outright ban on the only actual opposition party might have one good aspect – shake some of the right [sic] people loose before too many have decided to go and the doors slam shut.
To put it plainly, Germany isn’t getting reformed in any meaningful sense to any meaningful degree in any meaningful timeframe. Indeed, there’s a confluence of deep, generational crises that each would be enough to pretty much sink a country, and they’re all entirely baked in at this point. It’s been fun to watch the AfD go, but substantial optimism is wilful self-delusion – consider if everything went perfectly, if every single decision turned on a dime into perfection:
1. You’d be at least 10 (realistically, 20) years off the new reactor fleet coming into the grid at sufficient numbers to get energy back to prices that other locations enjoy during that whole time frame. I.e. you’re baked into most of another generation of industrial decline, which can only accelerate because networks of skill retention weaken with every company that shuts-or-leaves, impelling the next one to follow.
2. The cost of rebuilding reliable generation in Germany would preclude a ton of other urgently necessary infrastructure work, e.g. the grid not being in any way ready for full electrification, particularly of heating and mobility, overshadows that it needs a lot of maintenance anyway, even for preexisting usage patterns, not to speak of the catastrophic rail- and increasingly bad road infrastructure.
3. Even if every criminal invader was thrown out instantly by pure magic at some stroke of midnight, further decline in cohesion and sheer capacity of the population is already baked in by pure demographic momentum and differential fertility. Fixing that problem to a substantial degree would take some actually scary constitutional changes.
4. And even if none of the above were true Germany is increasingly an old folks’ home, and the health and pension systems are broke. Not even fixing, but just managing, those problems in relevant time frames will require scaled-out deployments of Canadian medicine (which are thus almost certain to come). Thus society inevitably becomes more callous, and more openly brutally utilitarian. The alternative is simple bankruptcy, possibly expressed in inflation, which also doesn’t tend to bring out the best in man.
The synthesis of those is a country of sharply declining wealth, with its diverse population increasingly unable to paper over issues with welfare spending, murdering their old and sickly in the background of increasing social strife. Why be around for it.
I'd say this were unbelievable if there weren't other news from Germany combined with an astonishing silence in the German MSM on this particular issue.
I also suspect the Wanderwitzian attempt has been postponed to next month in the hope of a 'good' outcome on November 5th (an intriguing historical date ...), namely a Kamala Koronation. That would make it so much easier to whip through an AfD ban - not so when Trump wins ...
Ah well, 'interesting times' and all that, innit like ...