Will they ban Alternative für Deutschland?

On Wednesday, 113 members of the Bundestag finally submitted their motion to initiate ban proceedings against Alternative für Deutschland, the second-strongest political party in Germany. This made headlines across the country. “Motion to Ban AfD Launched,” said ZDF, brimming with hope. “Bundestag Set to Vote on AfD Ban Application,” said tagesschau with suppressed optimism. On and on and on and on, through article after article after article, Germans were apprised of this latest attempt to abolish democracy in the Federal Republic for the purpose of saving it.

Soon the news made it into the Anglosphere: They’re trying to ban the AfD in advance of snap elections! said the eccentric Twitter personality and caps-lock fan who calls himself Peter Sweden:

Other news recycling sites said much the same:

My readers know better: The present motion to initiate ban proceedings has nothing to do with the upcoming elections; it has been planned since late October. It is the work of a disgruntled and unimportant CDU politician named Marco Wanderwitz, who has been banging on about outlawing the AfD since he lost his direct mandate to an AfD rival in 2021. Wanderwitz has indeed collected some support among back-benchers, but the political leadership of all the major parties remains sceptical. Even if Wanderwitz’s motion receives a majority vote in the Bundestag, there is no chance at all that the Federal Constitutional Court would ban the AfD before we go to the polls on 23 February 2025. The proceedings would take a year or more.

Nevertheless, this story matters, as all efforts to disenfranchise millions of people should, and there are important developments:

First, the incompetence of the Wanderwitzians and their collaborators in the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) is really a thing to behold. These idiots have sabotaged their their own plot, and that amuses me.

Second, there are more nefarious and strategically competent people at work on the great project of eliminating the AfD via the Federal Constitutional Court. Wanderwitz has stolen the spotlight from them, but I suspect their plans will prove to be the real threat in the coming year.

Maybe you want to subscribe to my plague chronicle, so that I can explain all of these things to you? You won’t find this anywhere else in English.