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German lawmakers can’t agree whether to seek ban on far-right AfD

 


German lawmakers can’t agree whether to seek ban on far-right AfD

 

Many mainstream leaders worry a pre-election debate on banning Alternative for Germany will only boost the party ahead of a national election.

 

January 30, 2025 4:01 am CET

By Emily Schultheis

 

BERLIN — Will it help or hurt the far right?

 

German parliamentarians are set to debate a hotly contested proposal on banning the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), but there’s little consensus, even among the party’s critics, on whether it’s a good idea to be having such a discussion just weeks ahead of a national election.

 

“It’s important for the population to know that the German Bundestag is grappling with this and is clearly stating where the dangers to democracy come from,” said Carmen Wegge, a lawmaker from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and one of the sponsors of the proposal.

 

But many mainstream politicians — including some in her own party, like Chancellor Olaf Scholz — have expressed reservations.

 

“The worst thing,” Scholz said recently, would be a prolonged attempts to ban the party “that might end up going wrong.”

 

On Thursday, lawmakers will consider a proposal to direct Germany’s top court to examine whether the AfD is an anti-constitutional party, a first step toward legally banning it under German law.

 

The debate comes as the conservative frontrunner for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, moves to push through tougher migration measures with support from the far right, eroding the Brandmauer, or firewall, that mainstream parties have erected to block the AfD. The taboo-breaking move has sparked an emotional discussion about how to handle the rise of the party.

 

Though the proposal to examine a ban on the AfD has little chance of passing, its backers say they are obliged to use all means available under the German constitution to stop a party they believe poses a grave threat to democracy.

 

But many AfD critics fear the ban debate will play into the hands of the far right by further alienating the party’s many voters — and fueling the AfD narrative that mainstream parties are the ones subverting democracy by scorning the democratic will of their many supporters. The party is polling in second place on 20 percent ahead of a national election set for Feb. 23.

 

“Calls for the AfD to be banned are completely absurd and expose the anti-democratic attitude of those making these demands,” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s chancellor candidate, told POLITICO last year.

 

Never again

Germany’s constitution, which is designed to prevent a repeat of Nazi rule, allows for bans on political parties that attempt to use democratic means to subvert democracy. Any party that seeks to undermine the “free democratic basic order” can therefore be banned.

 

But the bar for banning a party is high, and German courts have only done so twice before: in 1952, for the neofascist Socialist Reich Party, and in 1956, for the Communist Party of Germany. Two more recent efforts to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) were unsuccessful.

 

Many AfD critics fear the ban debate will play into the hands of the far right by further alienating the party’s many voters. |

 

The AfD first won seats in the Bundestag in 2017 and has grown increasingly radical in the years since. Elements of the party have been declared extremist by state-level domestic intelligence agencies tasked with monitoring anti-constitutional groups.

 

Calls for a ban intensified early last year following a report that AfD officials had taken part in a secret meeting of right-wing extremists who planned the mass deportation of migrants and “unassimilated citizens.”

 

Backers of the ban — 124 lawmakers including members of the center-left SPD and the Greens as well as the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — have nowhere near enough votes to pass the motion on Thursday.

 

But they say the growing influence of the AfD and recent acts of provocation — like handing out mock deportation tickets for migrants as a campaign ploy — make it more critical than ever to spotlight what they regard as the party’s extremism ahead of the national election.

 

Many others warn the only way to defeat the AfD is at the ballot box.

 

“I’m pretty sure there are radical and also extreme elements in the AfD,” conservative parliamentary leader Alexander Dobrindt said at a press conference after the ban proposal was first introduced. “But under no circumstances do I want to give the AfD an additional opportunity to portray itself as the victim.”

 

Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.

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