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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