The Germans are considering doing their favourite thing for the first time in a while: banning a political party. The German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was responding to the apparently dangerous rise of the far-right AfD party which just reached a record 21 per cent in the polls when he said: “We all have it in our hands to put those who despise our democracy in their place”.
So the German government is considering putting the party in its place. But what is the Afd, why is it so dangerous, and will the German establishment actually be able to ban the party?
Alternative for Germany was founded in 2013 as a soft Eurosceptic, conservative party but has become increasingly far-right and extreme in its politics. In the 2013 elections, it was just short of the 5 per cent threshold needed for representation in the Bundestag but went on to win seven seats in the European Parliament elections the following year. In 2017, the AfD became the third-largest party in Germany winning 94 seats in that year’s elections.
At its recent conference in Magdeburg, east Germany – the region where the party has the strongest support – co-leader Alice Weidel called the EU “deeply undemocratic” and raised the idea of “Dexit”, the German Brexit. The AfD passionately argues against Germany’s current rates of immigration, with one of its MEPs, Maximilian Krah, recently telling The Times that the current “immigration-drunk establishment politicians” are playing with fire and Germany could see its own “Rotherham-style [grooming] scandal”.
It remains to be seen how deep the AfD’s teutonic pride runs, however. Weidel’s co-leader Tino Chrupalla was caught out when he was advocating for the teaching of German folk songs and poems but couldn’t name a single German poem himself on children’s TV.
Perhaps its most controversial member is Björn Höcke, the leader of the AfD in the eastern state of Thuringia. Charged for using a Nazi slogan in a speech, he recently said that disabled children should not be taught in the same schools as other kids. The AfD wants to free Germany of the “ideology of inclusion”.
But recent polls have given the German establishment a shock. Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that if it can be proven that AfD members are “proven Right-wing extremists”, then a ban should be considered. Even the respected publication Der Spiegel weighed in with a leader saying: “Ban the enemies of the constitution!”
But given the sensitive nature of German history, the current constitution makes it very hard for the state to ban political parties. Bismarck banned the Social Democrats with his Anti-Socialist Law of 1878, Hitler banned all other parties when he came to power and then political parties were banned in East Germany if they weren’t in bed with the Socialist Unity Party.
Understandably, there is now a high threshold for outlawing other political parties. In 2003 and 2017 there were unsuccessful attempts to ban the neo-nazi NPD party. “You can’t simply ban a party that gets 20-30 per cent approval,” said Volker Boehme-Nessler, a law professor.
All the while, the AfD is gaining support as Germany’s problems intensify. The AfD is going nowhere any time soon.
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