WWhen it comes to whether the AfD should be banned, there has often been talk of a dilemma recently. Responsible for this: the Federal Constitutional Court.
Six years ago, its judges decided against banning the NPD, although there was no doubt that it was unconstitutional. In addition to this criterion, the court required for the first time that a party must have the potential to overthrow. After all, the party ban is not a ban on an attitude. The judges found that there was no such danger from the NPD. She is too insignificant.
The same cannot be said of the AfD. In Thuringia, where a new state parliament will be elected next year, she can currently count on 30 percent of the vote according to the latest polls. However, given this influx, an AfD ban is considered extremely delicate. Who wants to exclude such a large proportion of voters from the democratic process, continue to antagonize the state, possibly drive them underground? A change of heart cannot be decreed.
reluctance on the part of the parties
Politicians in the Berlin traffic light coalition react reluctantly to questions about a party ban. The same applies to the Union, apart from the former Federal Government Commissioner for Eastern Europe, Marco Wanderwitz. The CDU politician is still pretty much alone with his call for a ban on the AfD.
Recently, it has often been said that the Karlsruhe case law means that parties are either too small or too large to be banned. However, the constitutional court did not decide how to deal with large extremist parties in the NPD ruling. It is a debate that must first be conducted by politicians.
Nor can the discussion be exhausted in the routine reference to deliberative democracy, which is once again capturing people. Apparently it doesn’t do that in some places. If the AfD there also meets all the requirements that the constitutional court has set for a party ban, you have to deal with it. What follows from this is not said.
A ban on the federal party should not only be absurd for political reasons, but also fail due to legal requirements. There is no doubt that right-wing extremist views are widespread in the AfD. So far, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has only listed the federal party as a suspected right-wing extremist. According to its own statements, the AfD had 28,500 members last year. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated the extremist potential at 10,200 people. In terms of content, the party continues to be heterogeneous, according to its most recent annual report. Not all members could be considered supporters of extremist currents.
In some countries things are different. In Thuringia, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been leading the state association around Björn Höcke since March 2021 as proven right-wing extremist efforts. The most recent report by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution states that the protagonists represent an “ethnic-cultural” concept of the people. This is based on “a biologically justified and thus irreversible assumption of inequality between individuals and population groups” and devalues immigrants. That is not compatible with human dignity.
Protection of democratic institutions
She was central to the Karlsruhe NPD proceedings. The judges made it clear: “Human dignity is egalitarian; it is based exclusively on belonging to the human species, regardless of characteristics such as origin, race, age or gender.” What to do if this foundation of our basic order is disregarded?
In view of the differences between the state associations, there is much to be said for thinking through the protective mechanisms of democracy at a federal level – parallel to the work of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. There are now voices that should be taken seriously, such as the Bonn constitutional lawyer Klaus Ferdinand Gärditz, who even suggested a ban on individual AfD state associations. According to him, not even the Basic Law would have to be changed, a reform of the party law would be enough.
The polarizing effects of even an application for a ban should not be underestimated. And attitudes cannot be forbidden. But that’s not the point. It is about protecting democratic institutions from proven enemies of the constitution. If they one day have the majority there, they can start to grind down the rule of law. It’s also about the people for whom the AfD is already a real threat. The state has a duty to protect here, which it must take seriously.
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