Germany's Social Democratic Party says first legal steps should be taken to ban the far-right AfD party as unconstitutional. Conservative lawmakers are less keen on the idea.

A number of Germany's conservative lawmakers have called for a cautious approach after the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the junior coalition partner, on Sunday passed a motion calling for preparations to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The debate on whether to ban the AfD, which forms the strongest opposition force in parliament, has gained momentum after it was reclassified by Germany's domestic intelligence agency in May as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" group — an assessment that is now under court review after a legal challenge by the party.

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[–] 81 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Yeah, guess what? We should have banned them long before they became the "strongest opposition force in parliament". Now that they poll over 20%, of course its tricky. Who would have thought?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Do the Murdoch's have their media empire setup there too? If so Lachlan is your problem and the solution is an Italian plumber. Really the crux of any solution is almost certainly a plumber.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Not really but we have Springer which isn’t much better

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  • [–] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    Banning thought never works. Find why people are upset. Analyse it. Find a solution.

    Edit. Downvoted for the idea of analysis, and solutions. Awesome. Is this Reddit?

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    They can do more than one thing though. Germany should be able to treat both the root cause as well as the acute symptoms.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Agree. However, banning a party, who represents a huge portion of the country is just going to make things worse.

    The party exists for probably only certain issues for most people. Not far right issues at all. However, they are also covering those base issues, and the other parties are not.

    So, find these issues. Discuss them honestly. Find a solution.

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  • It will make things significantly better in the short term.

    Their entire infrastructure would immediately crumble. Nothing could be re-used. All successor parties would be banned automatically.

    This means basically all their high ranking members are permanently banned from joining or collaborating with any future political party.

    I don't think I need to elaborate why this would set far right organizations back significantly.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Well you don’t ban the thought you ban them from assuming political positions and from taking government funding. They may have nazi thoughts which you can’t stop them from having but you don’t need to finance their plots to overthrow democracy and murder political opponents and ethnically cleanse the country.

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