The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has urged mainstream parties not to lend support to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which won a big victory in the eastern state of Thuringia in Sunday’s regional election.
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The AfD has been designated as right-wing extremist in both Thuringia and Saxony. Björn Höcke, the AfD leader in Thuringia, has previously been fined for using a Nazi slogan, although he denies knowingly doing so.
On Monday, Mr Scholz urged other parties to block the AfD from governing by maintaining a so-called firewall against it.
What happened to all that talk about potentially banning the party, etc?
Now the rhetoric is ‘we need to contain the nazis’ rather than ‘we need to eliminate the nazis’.
It is more “we need to do what the nazis wanted to do, to keep them out. Oh why is this only making them stronger?”
Germany just doubled down on massive anti immigration anti asylum (human right) anti privacy, anti free speech and anti free science and culture plans.
The latest hack is a plan to have scientists and artists analyzed by the interior intelligence to make sure they are not “antisemitic” if they receive government funding.
Meanwhile investments in infrastructure, education and social security are whacked, which drove a lot of people into the risk of poverty with the exploding prices.
The Scholz government does everything they can to help the fascists rise to power.
You’re completely leaving out why they are doing this and that the €XU are the ones trying to fish votes from far right by doing exactly the same thing: Taking the far right talking points as their own and making a policy trying to “fix” those issues. So then SPD is trying to fish votes from right next to them and become more rightwing themselves. Etc. In the end there is no real left wing party anymore, just dumb Putin worshippers and guess who wins? Still the far right, and everybody is like: How could this have been prevented? My point being: All the established parties play the same game not realizing that if you play by the far rights rules you cannot win at all. It’s not at all unique to the current government.
It’s also not unique to Germany as well. As an American its crazy how much this just sounds like what’s going on in America with the Democrats slowly shifting to the right on things like immigration. Capitulating to the right wing framing on these issues doesn’t help you win, it just pushes more people to the right since you’re basically saying they’re right.
Sounds a lot like France
Sounds worse, but if there’s one thing we’re great at in France is following other countries right wing ideas
The courts decide if a party can be banned the government can only initiate the process, also most experts on constitutional law seem to be of the opinion that a ban for the whole party is unlikely and even if it succeeded the would just be a replacement party stepping in to fill the void.