EA student shares an AfD Smurf video and is then lectured by police officers. AfD politicians are not appointed committee chairmen in the Bundestag, even though that would correspond to their share of the vote. Constitutional protection officers publicly warn against voting for the AfD. Politicians want to prevent the AfD from exerting influence on the Constitutional Court, even though they themselves have this influence. Constitutional lawyers suggest banning the AfD. Is that okay, is that right, is that wise?
Among the forms of government, liberal democracy is certainly the weakest in defense. It cannot simply defeat its enemies; only autocracies, monarchies and dictatorships can do that. Democracy, on the other hand, finds itself in a self-contradiction that is difficult to bear. It risks its essence because it must remain a guarantor of civil liberties, even for those who think differently. That's exactly why she shouldn't leave it to the citizens to decide whether they should be voted out. She has to intervene.
Citizens are also divided
The democracy under attack is therefore divided. She has to fight back, but when she does, she resembles the thing she wants to fight. It imprisons Holocaust deniers, it spies on extremists, it bans clubs. Neutral authorities become combative. Teachers talk into students' consciences. Suddenly there are scenes that remind East Germans of the past or all Germans of the very past.
That makes everything even more difficult. The democracy under attack is not only divided in its goals, its citizens are too. There will always be those who consider a defensive measure to be excessive. Anyone who is particularly concerned about their liberal integrity will want to delegate. Let the voters decide, they say. Others answer with a number: 1933. So democracy not only faces its opponents in torn ways, it is also criticized by its own people. That's not a strong performance.
In an authoritarian system, the opposition has nothing to laugh about
You have to look at it through the eyes of an extremist. As soon as he says what he thinks, society falls apart before his eyes. Of course, this confirms every prejudice about a weak form of government that only protects minorities if they fit in with it. There has probably never been an enemy of the state in a democracy who did not invoke civil liberties. Even if he is accused of wanting to take away these very rights from others. It's just too tempting. As soon as he says it, he can hear his opponents squealing with inconsistency. This is definitely entertaining. Anyone who pays attention to this in the Bundestag will notice how much a certain faction laughs and how pained the others look. In an authoritarian system it is exactly the other way around. The opposition has nothing to laugh about.
The democracy under attack is therefore faced with impossible tasks. It has to intervene, but it also has to be convincing, fair, careful, thoughtful and trustworthy. This just went terribly wrong.
For days it was said that a student was taken out of class by police officers because she shared an AfD video in which little blue Smurfs say that Germany is their home. It was only after several days that the authorities announced that they were following up on information that the student had posted right-wing extremist symbols, not Smurfs. By then the information war was already lost. A second error occurred. The Interior Minister and the Education Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania flatly defended teachers and police officers, although a school can be expected not to immediately dial 110 if ideological errors are made. The attacked state is doing itself a disservice by allowing such confusion and exaggerations.
The situation is similar with the distribution of committee chairs in the Bundestag. There are no hard and fast rules; the factions make an agreement. This no longer works as soon as someone is disadvantaged. Then there shouldn't even be any suspicion of arbitrariness. This grievance should have been remedied earlier, but the case is now before the Constitutional Court.
All we hear from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution is that the AfD is becoming more radical, but the evidence remains secret. So more and more citizens are questioning the neutrality of the authority in surveys. The state cannot stand idly by and watch this loss of trust; it must argue with publicly available evidence. Otherwise the classification will have the opposite effect.
Those who demand repressive severity against the AfD in liberal democracy must not forget how much precision and clarity is necessary for this. Otherwise the Republic will be buried by those who actually want to defend it. This is the misery of a robust democracy.
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