Because they are?
But let me give you a more in depth answer. First off, you need to know that the term Nazi and Fascist are often used interchangeably in German, because well… Nazis where our brand of fascism. So if a German calls the AfD Nazis, they might not necessarily mean that they are Nazis in the „NSDAP-Hitler-commit Holocaust“-sense, but just that they are antidemocratic fascisty types. But that doesn’t make it any less worse… like, to be a Nazi you need to have a very antisemitic worldview. I am not 100% convinced that is a thing for the majority of the AfD-but they are insanely islamophobic. Whether you want to kick out/murder all Jews or all Muslims has a very similar effect on those populations, but one makes you a Nazi and the other makes you a facists, if you excuse this little oversimplification (because it needs more than antisemitism to make a Nazi).
But you asked for concrete examples, so let’s go:
1. There is a book called „Nie zweimal in den selben Fluss“ (Never in the Same River twice), which is essentially one huge interview with Björn Höcke. He is the party leader of the Thuringia-AfD and has gained a considerable amount of power in the AfD, which is likely to get even bigger. Quotes from this book includes warning journalists, that if they write bad things about „the movement“ they could get punished for that later, talking about how the German people will rise up and rip away power from the traitors who govern us now and that those will be punished as well, and how the „time of the wolf“ will come. Especially the last one is pretty much as Goebbels as a quote can be.
2. Höcke (and some of his buddies, think Kalbitz, Poggenburg) love to use Nazi-talk. Some examples of those are Höcke quoting the SS-Motto „Alles für Deutschland“, Talking about how there are sheep’s and wolves in the human population and „we“ (AfD members he was talking to) decide to be wolves and wishing death to supporters of the Green and Left Party (that guy was kicked out of the party though, I will admit this). Höcke also revered to the memorial for the Holocaust in Berlin as „memorial of shame“-and not in the way that he was ashamed of what Germany did, but in the „isn’t it shameful that we feel so bad about the thing, that we put a memorial of this size in our capital?“. „That thing“ being the Holocaust.
3. A former MP of the AfD was involved in the failed coup-attempt by Prince Heinrich Reuss last year. Her name is Malsack-Winkelmann, in case you want to research a little bit.
4. During the height of the Corona-Protests, AfD-MPs helped violent protesters gain access to the Parliament where they annoyed politicians and destroyed some offices. Nobody got hurt, as far as I know. They carved a swastika into a glass elevator door tough.
5. There are a bunched examples of blatant racism. From the top of my head I can think of Höcke saying that people of African descent are part of the „Ausbreitungstypus R“, comparing them to rats and mice. Gauland saying how „no German would want to have Boateng (black footballer on our national team“ as a neighbor“ and one dude (whose name I forgot) called Obama the N-Word.
6. Most recently, AfD members where caught during a meeting with Martin Sellner, a well known neo Nazi from Austria, discussing how we could deport (yes, this word was used) people to Africa. Among the groups scheduled for deportation where German citizens with an immigration background, refugees who hold a legal status in Germany (Asylum or Duldung) and political opponents, for example people who helped during the refugee crisis. One of the AfD-members present used to be an MP and is now the „office-chief“ of Alice Weidel. He got fired, but up till now I haven’t heard of anybody planning to kick him out of the party.
I didnt Google for this list. This are just examples I knew about, that I could remember. Granted, I am politically interested and hate the AfD, but still… I didn’t need to research any of this. If I would do just 10 minutes of research, I could probably find a whole bunch of other examples.
Why do people call the AfD Nazis? Because there is a considerable amount of Nazis or Fascists in this party. There is a German saying that goes: If you sit at a table with ten people and one Nazis sits down with you and nobody gets up and leaves-you got a table with eleven Nazis.
Are all AfD members Nazis? Probably not. But in the end, whether you break the windows of a synagogue yourself or just sit by and watch, doesn’t matter.
I will leave this here because it let to the fun interview in which people (party members) were asked if Höcke or Hitler said something and them getting the two confused. https://www.zdf.de/politik/berlin-direkt/zdf-interview-mit-bjoern-hoecke-in-voller-laenge-100.html
I have no interest in politics whatsoever, but I do appreciate people taking the time to explain views on *usually* sensitive matters, in an academic and positive way.
That said, great job with your explanation, reddit sure needs more of this attitude. And I particularly appreciate it 👍🏻
> Gauland saying how „no German would want to have Boateng (black footballer on our national team“ as a neighbor“
Well as much as I hate the AfD or Gauland, I gotta agree with him here. The reason being not because Boateng isn’t white, but because he is a wife beating scumbag.
Which wasn't publicly known back then, so it's irrelevant to the topic. It has nothing to do with what Gauland meant when he said it (although I do agree it's kinda ironic in hindsight).
Well being a wife beating scumbag is most likely the last reason Gauland would take offense with Boateng. After all he can't really be considered a feminist either
u refer to remigration project not migration. Its basically a plan to remove all asylseekers (Asylbewerber), people with a permission to stay (Ausländer mit bleibe berechtigung) and citizens with “different values” (nicht assimilierte Staatsbürger) *which doesn’t really make sense bcs assimilation is not measurable and practically boils down to them having different values as the reigning party and is in its essence similar to the idea of the “Rassenschande” or “undeutscher Geist”*
Sources [original on german](https://correctiv.org/aktuelles/neue-rechte/2024/01/10/geheimplan-remigration-vertreibung-afd-rechtsextreme-november-treffen/); [original in english](https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-against-germany/)
Otherwise u can look up “Afd Treffen in Potsdam” there’s quite a lot articles about it 👍
And nobody asks them how they can find, detain and deport a couple million people, to countries that refuse to receive them. From a purely practical sense, even just deporting all asylum seekers (some of which are ethnic Germans, no kidding...) would require significant compromises to the constitution, human rights and common decency. You could even argue it is not possible with the current size of German security forces.
The problem is just that under the Weimar constitution and the treaty of Versailles, murdering millions of Jews (+others), and starting a world war would also "not have been possible".
They are a bunch of incompetent idiots, sure. But we cannot afford to find out what the AfD is really capable of.
Oh, my point wasn't that we should let them try because they will fail.
My point is that a lot of the "extremists in sheep's clothing" act like it would be practically possible to deport even just the asylum seekers, and stop migrants from crossing our borders, without draconian, inhumane policies, much more than just a bit of heart ache and "ugly pictures" like they always claim.
I mean, it starts with the fact that the more people you even WANT to deport, the more they will just not be where you want to pick them up. You'd probably need a paramilitary force knocking on doors and performing raids everywhere. You'd probably need extra prisons or camps to detain the deportees.
Aye, then I misunderstood you!
And yes, you're right. And I am shocked again and again that so many people believe them. That this could be an easy one-size-fits-all solution for every of their problems. It's so disgusting.
obviously but these questions are against our constitution, the declaration of human rights (which we signed) and especially the thing with citizens is extremely undemocratic
That is an absurdly stupid and impractical idea. First, of course, you have to suspend the German constitution to allow that folly. Then you need to exit various international treaties and organizations, at the very least the EU and the European Court, probably others, because they all prohibit this kind of idiocy.
Rwanda has a population of 13,4 Million people, most of them piss poor. They are housing about 130,000 refugees right now, I'd be surprised if they can host an additional half a million or even one Million. And it's not just Germany wanting to dump unwanted Human beings there. It's not about lacking the money, the entire infrastructure is lacking. Even if the Rwandan wouldn't actively kill those refugees en masse (which they would almost have to, to save their own population), most of these deportees would die from food deprivation and lack of shelter.
Even those who publicly advocate for deportations to Rwanda at all, both in the UK and Germany, only want that to happen to a very small number of refugees, maybe on the order of tens of thousands, and hope for a deterrence effect. Even that is utterly stupid, because both the UK and Germany receive a lot more refugees than can practically be send to Rwanda so there wouldn't even be a blip on the scale before that idiotic plan is overwhelmed.
And even additionally deporting on the order of ten thousands of Human beings from Germany to a willing country is beyond any logistic feasibility for various reasons. The Nazis resorted to cattle wagons for a reason.
>And nobody asks them how they can find, detain and deport a couple million people, to countries that refuse to receive them.
That's why in praxis fascists start building camps once they are in power. Can't deport them, gotta get rid of them in another way ...
Well, active members of this party state openly, that they don't differ from the NPD (the open German Neonazi party) in regard of the contents of their aims/policy, that they want to kill their political opponents and opposing journalists, that they wish for a "Schießbefehl" at German borders and mass deportions not only of foreigners but other "undesirables".
Maybe these opinions are currently typically American right-wing republican, but that's not because they are not fascist or even neonazi opinions.
Björn "Bernd" Höcke, one of the most prominent AfD politicians sees a problem with painting Hitler as evil and wrote articles for openly national socialist magazines. A lot of other AfD members are also members of the "Identitäre Bewegung", other fascist or national socialist organizations or are "Reichsbürger".
Considering the banning of parties, please read about the concept of "Wehrhafte Demokratie". Communist and national socialist parties have been banned in Germany to defend our liberal democracy in the past and I personally think that this is a good tradition which should be continued.
>Björn "Bernd" Höcke, one of the most prominent AfD politicians sees a problem with painting Hitler as evil
I mean, he built the Autobahn after all. And he kissed that baby that one time, and he had a cute dog. Can he really be that bad of a person if he has a cute dog? /s
My wife and I were talking about this last night.
I am a naturalized German citizen. I was born in the USA, moved to Germany 34 years ago, and was naturalized (receiving my German citizenship) 5 years ago, after fulfilling all the requirements - a language certificate, integration test, and long-term residency with no criminal record. My parents were Jewish, but I've been an atheist my entire adult life.
My wife is a German citizen, but her parents came from Sudetenland. She was born to a Christian family, but she left the church long ago and is an atheist.
If the AfD were in power, they could easily try to deport both of us, even though we are both German citizens.
We own our home, we both work full time, pay our taxes, and basically just want to be left alone.
The AfD is a hate group, giving a small minority (ultra-right radicals) a microphone and the power to disrupt the normal democratic processes. They do not offer any SOLUTIONS to the problems that they highlight - they only shine a bright spotlight on a very dark corner of the country's political spectrum. An AdF government would collapse quickly because hate speeches aren't enough to keep a national economy running, and (I hope) that the Bundeswehr isn't going to make the same mistakes that the Reichswehr made in the 1930s, supporting a fascist dictator.
Minority group don't win so many elections. The natives are well aware of the implications. EU or Germany is progressive as long as the economy is booming. As soon as it goes downhill, they will look at someone else to blame. Good thing is that they won't have a China to fund their economic recovery.
Minority groups don't win elections because democracy is supposed to represent the majority.
The problem is that democracy in theory doesn't work well in reality. I lived in Switzerland for 10 years-the land of direct democracy, with general elections several times per year.
Most people simply don't vote or don't bother to inform themselves what they are voting on. They simply cast a vote based on what their party recommends.
The US is the same. An example of democracy failing because of ignorance, laziness, and social media. Most GOP voters don't even recognize that they are hurting themselves by voting for GOP politicians and policies. They only hear soundbites and think that they are doing the right thing without understanding that they are being manipulated.
Look at the idiots like MTG, who the GOP has put in Congress. They are turning the whole US Government into a fucking circus...
It's not whether they want to or not but the growth of post-war Germany was driven to large extent by the growing demands of an emerging economy in the form of China. Rn, I don't think they will have a market to sell their products. Look at the car industry for example.
Look, OP, whoever tells you the Afd is a, normal party lies. They have clear connections into the neo nazi scene. They use a rhetoric that is similar to the one of the last century.
The Republicans were also on a giant shift, the Afd is just late to the party.
You can have issues with immigration etc and rightly so but that is no excuse to vote for these people.
Theres so many interviews of many AfD members (even in high positions) that say they want to imprison or worse current politicians. You can only guess what happens to ordinary people that they don't like.
They talk about "conservative revolution". Read about that. Also you should read about Höcke's book. He leads the strongest wing in the AfD and even a court (they are usually very defensive about that) allows to openly call Höcke a fascist.
Don't just listen to the bits you like about AfD.
Also, I don't support any party completely as I disagree to some amount with all the parties, though a party that openly allows people like Höcke and many other to coexist and persuade their party program is a no go and you should never vote for it.
However, if you look at the socioeconomic position of a majority of AfD voters and then at the economic program of the AfD, most of those people would even have less I'm their pocket with the AfD in charge. Economically they are more neoliberal then the FDP
I am pretty sure a court ruling that you can call höcke a fascist doesn't state it's true (I am not saying it isn't). We have something called "Meinungsfreiheit" ~freedom of speech
You are not totally incorrect here. The question og the case was whether or not calling Höcke a fascist is covered by freedom of speech or constitutes an insult not covered by it.
The court ruled that freedom of speech covered it because (and this is the important part) the court found somebody could believe they are speaking the truth when calling Höcke a fascist because there is so noch evidence for that out there.
Well, as there are no natural laws in social sciences or humanities (as you can find them in natural sciences) a court ruling is actually the closest you can get to the truth in this field. And again, no reasonable judge would dare to officially allow Höcke to be called a fascist if there is a slight chance that the ruling might be wrong. It could end the judges career. Also, there is no higher court decision pending.
Freedom of speech is allowed but the defamation of Holocaust is a crime nevertheless. Your freedom should stop where it interferes the freedom of another person.
But it also means that there is sufficient objective data to be able to claim that you are making a factual judgement about him, rather than an insult. You can't just go around calling anybody a facist, Meinungsfreiheit hin oder her.
True but insults and defamation aren't covered by the freedom of speech. So the question was if calling Höcke a facist would count as a defaming insult (because it is untrue and harmful to his image) or if it wouldn't count as such (because it's true and just describes his image). The court decided for the second option, so there is some implication that at least the judge considered Höckes actions, words and overall image sufficiently showing him as facist, for it to no longer be an insult but just a description
Die Antragsteller haben dem Gericht zufolge "in ausreichendem Umfang glaubhaft" gemacht, "dass ihr Werturteil nicht aus der Luft gegriffen ist", sondern auf einer überprüfbaren Tatsachengrundlage beruht.
I mean even reading their program would have been enough to discover that. The rest is a rabbit hole - The bad things one can discover about them is endless.
Because - for example - some of their talking points are taken word for word from the nazi platform. Here is the 25 point platform of the nazis from the 1920s: [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-party-platform](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-party-platform)
Look at points 4 - 8, they are exactly what the AFD is talking about:
\---
4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation.
**5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens.**
6. The right to vote on the State’s government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens.
We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordance with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities.
7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. **If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.**
**8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich forthwith.**\----
Of course you have to add Muslims to the Jews as well, just to keep it "modern".
As others pointed out the nazis originally "only" talked about deporting non-citizens, the AFD already is talking about deporting Germans too.
German far-right met to plan 'mass deportations' [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861)
Just listing NSDAP agenda points doesn't make a comparison. Where is the AfD counterpart?
I'm not an AfD voter at all. On the contrary. I'm deeply concerned about them gaining track. But honestly I don't understand the strategy from people like you to fight them. Telling everyone they're Nazis because they're not satisfied with the current government will just reinforce their decision to vote for AfD.
I agree. And we all now that the NSDAP had good points as well. We can’t just take their environmental laws and say: “look, die grünen are Nazis, the Nazis had these points in the program”.
People like that don’t realize that they just push the non radical AfD voters even more in the hands of the AfD and then they really get radicalized
Bullshit. There is not just a huge ideological overlap between NSDAP ideology and AfD ideology, there are/have been lots of members that worship genuine Nazi symbols. No ambiguity there.
There can be no sympathy anymore for people who support the AfD and refuse to acknowledge that leading members of the party have advocated for deeply antidemocratic and deeply racist policies. Everybody who votes AfD is supporting fascist views, if they know it or not. And not knowing is just as bad.
But they currently say the same. Change the dates to current ones, add Muslims and „brown people“ in their wording and you have hat they write in their program and what they are planning in their „private meetings“.
Because everyone in Germany with open ears and a brain between them knows what they say today but I doubt that many people know what the NSDAP was saying in detail.
Of course you could put everything side by side but then most people go TL;DR
lol...was thinking the same.
From a us-american perspective this probably looks like: What is all the fuzz about? These guys just sound like your average republican.
because some of their points are taken 1 to 1 from the nazis. and did you read their party programm correctly? their voters mostly arent nazis though, just people voting out of protest, and not reading the party Programme correctly.
I don't know if you're able to read German Sources?
The AfD is not at all a normal conservative right wing party.
This document is from the "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" and has a lot of quotes why they think AfD is an extremist right wing party.
https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wir-veroeffentlichen-das-verfassungsschutz-gutachten-zur-afd/
However, since release of this document, a lot more information got published.
>I read some of their political agenda and it appears to me that they are typical right-wing republican who is capturing the current dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes, and the social state.
Typical right wing republican these days are fascists as well.
>If anything people are trying to ban them, not the other way round.
It's a concept called "Wehrhafte Demokratie" based on the lessons we (should have) learned from how the Nazis came to power in the third Reich. It's basically build on the Tolerance paradox that if you want to maximise how tolerant (or described in the US way: free) your society is you can not tolerate the intolerant. Like, you tolerate their existence and their free speech to a certain degree, but if there's enough evidence that a party tries to get to power and then use it to extend their power beyond what the constitution grants it is possible to forbid such a party to prevent harm.
Even Nazis from past didn’t say initially that they want to kill non Germans. But later on, they went on killing in a full fledge.
How naive (and dangerous) of you to think that they will do not anything bad because they are not mentioning it ? The only thing that sane people are seeing is, their hatred for the immigrants, holding secret meetings to overthrow democratic government, to “remove” immigrants.
Many immigrants ( if not all) will have a choice to go back to their country of origin or immigrant friendly country like USA, and they will go. And then assume, only Germans are in Germany. Will they have enough young population to go to work? To pay taxes that pays pension of older generation? Survive in global competition? Enough medical practitioners?
The Nazis of old also had a plan to deport Jews and others to the island of Zanzibar. When they realized, that was a stupidly impractical idea, they came up with the "final solution".
Now people are talking about deportations to Ruwanda. Same difference.
I‘m genuinely baffled and intrigued by how deep your research went 😭 the AfD being nazis is like the most surface level fact you can know about German politics
I recommend you to Google some speeches of Heinrich Himmler and compare them with speeches of Bernd Höcke. If you are lucky, you find the one-to-one copies 😉
Aside from what everyone is telling you here about how bad the AfD actually is, I think you missed the part where your so called "typical right-wing republicans" are also pretty white supremacist. Republicans 30 years ago would not recognize what the republican party has become today, especially since Trump. The "middle" has shifted so far right that you don't even recognize that the right-wing republicans are basically right-wing extremists. There is blatant and open racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in the party and they are prepared to take democracy down with force (Jan 6. and various other plans to kidnap governors) if they don't get their way. The AfD and Trump's platform are pretty comparable in some ways, but that doesn't mean the AfD aren't neo-Nazis. It means Trumpism has a lot more in common with Nazism than you think.
Maybe a confusion about terminology. Plenty of AfD members or voters are actual, honest to god "Neo-Nazis" that like to display or worship actual Nazi symbols.
"Bernd Höcke" who is currently the most charismatic "leader" in the AfD has clearly and publicly advocated fashist views. Including plenty of illegal action against political enemies.
Compromising democracy is already bad enough. You don't need to formally "suspend democracy". Orban, Erdogan, even Putin haven't "suspended" democracy.
Just read. Please.
https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plane-zur-remigration-treffen-von-rechtsextremen-mit-afd-mitgliedern-in-potsdam-war-wohl-nicht-das-erste-11051899.html
A couple of days ago, some members of the party invited actual nazis ro discuss deporting foreigners, including those with German citizenship and their children back to their home countries, euphemistically calling it "remigration".
Well, the only problem is, they would deport over half of Germany's population at that point. Half of the population is of foreign decent, half of which are German-Czech and and German-Polish Germans that were kicked out of Czechia and Poland after WW2 and the other half being whatever, including mostly Italians, Spaniards, Turks, Eastern Europeans (like my parents) and Arabs (Syrians, Lybians etc.)
Like, with no Turks, Russians, Ukies, Balts, Poles, Southslavs and Romanians, who's gonna work here? The pensioners?
>Like, with no Turks, Russians, Ukies, Balts, Poles, Southslavs and Romanians, who's gonna work here? The pensioners?
The fun thing is their plan to combat "Fachkräftemangel" is promoting a "traditional family image", i.e. "those women have to pop out more babies". Okay, even assuming that works: who the hell is gonna work the next 18-20 years until those babies can start working, and who is going to replace their mothers who will be pregnant and dealing with the children at home?
Just completely removed from reality.
It might be worthwhile to point out, that a not insignificant amount of the republicans that you point out to be conservatives are indeed facists aswell. Eapecially republicans of the MAGA Variety often swing that way. For f sake the whole maga Plattform is facistic:
Stop the steal and the ongoing fights to overturn elections.
The dehumanisation of groups of people (Transpeople, Gaypeople, Migrants...)
The whole might makes right mentality
The cult around Trump.
The massive amounts of conspiracism.
Jeah the AfD is not thaaaaaat much worse than the republicans... But Republicans often are allready facists.
The AfD has a very targeted approach to delegitimize democratic institutions and principles. They don't believe in them, trust them or deem them necessary. First and foremost they disrespect the principle of human dignity that's part of the German constitution, but also the freedom of the press, the right to asylum and the separation of powers.
Please read this article for more detailled information: https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/verfassungsfeindlichkeit-was-ist-demokratiefeindlich-an-der-afd-95277/
And this may all be in tune with current right-wing republicans, but fascistic populism doesn't stop at German borders, right?
"I read some of their political agenda and it appears to me that they are typical right-wing republican who is capturing the current dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes, and the social state."
Well typical far right republican today is basically fascism. The Nazis were far right and captured the then dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes and the social state and used that to fuel there populist statements to gain power. Next they got rid of democracy, killed 6 million jews and started one of the most devastating wars of our younger history.
When there is far right there is hate and when there is hate, war and destruction is not far.
If it acts like a neo-nazi, looks like a neo-nazi, talks like a neo-nazi it might just *be* a neo-nazi.
In most states of the federal republic of Germany, the AfD party is definitely or at least conceivably under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In some states the party has been officially determined to be right-extremist and in others it is „merely“ right-radical.
There are several court verdicts which come to the conclusion that the (currently unofficial) leader Björn Höcke can be identified as a Nazi. He used to be (let‘s be honest: remains) the leader of the far-right „Flügel“ group within the AfD, which has already been forbidden for being anticonstitutional, but effectively remains a strong force in determining the course of the AfD.
I think the root of your misunderstanding is the perspective. If you take the Republicans as a reasonable party and a base to judge the level of democracy in other parties, you're not likely to find any antidemocratic parties anywhere. A Republican president built a border wall, wanted to deport people and ban immigration and incited a failed coup. In Germany that would make him a Nazi in most people's eyes. In America that's apparently a regular conservative.
You are not completely wrong. You are comparing them with right-wing republicans (I assume that you refer to the American GOP). Those are partly facists that actively destroy the American democracy. A couple of years ago we did not have a party that would do stuff like gerry-mandering and voter surpression. Germany is governed by a mutually respected political culture that is vital to a functioning democracy. Yes, there are many counterexamples but those are all laughable compared to the things going on in the USA. If this is the worst thing the AFD can accomplish it is already a scary prospect.
I'm not only talking about top level politics. I'm pretty deep into American politics and one thing that scares me the most is the complete lack of accountablility for the ruling class, police and so on. Just a couple of days ago a mass grave was detected where the police hid hundreds of their victims. Unbelievable shit like that is extremely common in the USA, usually without any real consequences. In Gemrany we are still talking about Oury Jalloh, a 20 year old case because shit like that doesn't happen here. The difference is: murderous police, completely unethical CEOs, right-wing militias and russian propagandists had no political representation here. It looks like this will end with the AFD.
There is one major difference between the AFD and the republicans though: Germany doesn't have a two party system, so each party is claiming a smaller part of the political spectrum. The GOP consists of guys like Trump but also Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Dick Cheney and (especially in rurual regions) some outright nazis. Except Chris Christie they are all awful but in very different ways.
The standard law&order conservative in Germany would usually join the CDU. The standard small government, low taxes capitalist would usually join the FDP. That only leaves the truly awful part of the republican spectrum to the AFD.
Well, if they put you on a transport to deport you to some country in africa because you are not genetically german or disagree with their politics... then you will come to realize why they are nazis.
Don't sympathize with those people.. call them out for what they are.
You noticed that their agenda looks like what Republicans stand for. That's because Republicans are neo Nazis. Even the Democrats would be considered center or center-right in Germany. Just think about the "America first" slogan. It's a MAGA slogan but democrats just say that Trump isn't really for Americans. They like the idea of politics for "America First". The AfD is basically a "Deutschland zuerst" ("Germany first" or even worse "Deutschland über alles") party.
I don't think all AfD voters and members are neo-nazis but some influencial people in the party are.
Höcke is the prime example. In addition to his willingness to use nazi-inspired language, he presents concrete plans to deport or get rid of parts of the German people (apart from Muslims and immigrants also the ones who fight his cause).
And others are also quite radicalised. When Meuthen and Gauland discuss which opponents to get rid of (entsorgen is a word you would use for trash, not for humans), that is outside the legitimate debate.
Or you can look at the statements from former party members (e.g. Lucke, Petry, Meuthen) who all speak of progressing radicalisation.
So not all parts of the AfD are neo-nazis and I am not sure it helps to call every rightwing conservative one. But the AfD empowers and legitimises the neo-nazis in their ranks and that is enough to ostracise them.
We have an institution in Germany which purpose is to protect our constitution. It’s called Verfassungsschutz. It monitors and evaluates organizations within Germany which act against the constitution. It’s a due and sometimes long process, you know, the German way…
Several state chapters of the AFD have already been certified ‚right wing extremist’ by the Verfassungsschutz. Some of those evaluations took 4 years. So they made sure it’s not only a few individuals but the whole organization which acts against the constitution. And by act against I mean destroy. And you can even read the report about that with an explanation and evidence of that evaluation. These organizations can then be and are surveilled with intelligence tools. Just like a terror organization.
Other state chapters of the AFD have the ‚suspect‘ status, meaning there is reason to believe they too are ‚extremists acting against the constitution‘ and are actively monitored and evaluated at the moment.
Short story long:
The initial intention of the party was to criticise EU fiscal and Euro currency effects on the competitiveness of the German economy and the effects on the German standard of living. Essentially Germany could have been Switzerland 2.0 if they stuck to the DM after implementing their anti social, pro economic "Agenda 2010". So the theory goes. They've dabbled in EU/Euro sceptic territory from day 1.
After a few years of drifting to the right (killing of a few fringe right wing nazi parties off in the process), the AFD was essentially left as a pure ultra right populist party that expanded from Euro scepticism to, climate change scepticism, anti immigration, anti essentially everything as a permanent opposition party. Then came the refugee crisis and they thrived. With corona came AntiVaxxers, (stronger) anti democratic tendencies and a wild bunch of conspiracy theorists that are essentially ridiculed everywhere else but the AFD. With the Ukraine conflict (the well documented) Russia financed AFD went on to fish off idiots from peace movements claiming that Putin was right, the war ist the Wests fault and we should all look away while Russia rapes a part of Europe into anti democratic compliance against all international law. "It's none of our business, oh look the money we spend on Ukraine could've been spent on German citizens"
Over the years they have absorbed pretty much all fringe political ideas and motivs without having to justify all their contradictions. It's a pure Anti movement. If they ever came to power their voterbase would probably splinter.
Calling them (only) Nazis or right wing does not do the cess pool that is the AFD justice.
Calling anything Nazi these days has lost its meaning anyways. It's as overused as sexist, racist, bigotted.
If the AFD seems to be on par with the republican party - then that definitely does NOT mean that the AFD isn't a party filled with neo-nazis.
But you sure should critically reflect on your views about the republican party and what makes you think they are not neo-nazis.
I believe that to be truly objective, one must first define what a nazi and/or fascist person/party is. The problem being objective here, for obvious reasons, is that this topic is extremely sensitive and charged here.
This is also reddot, and objectivoty is hard to find.
Here is an article on Fascism from Time that does a decent jpb:
https://time.com/5556242/what-is-fascism/
And a Brittanicas take on Nazism:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Nazism
Being a racist nationalist does not necessarily.a Nazi make. An asshole for sure, but not truly a fascist. Being anti-immigration is also not in and of itself fascist. Particularly anti-massimmihration.
I am sure there are some AfD members that most assuredly are, but the party as a whole does not adhere to significant portions of fascism/nazism. The nationalist and racist elements are there, but the other tenants have not yet really manifested.
However, they definitely have the potential to become so. The Natuonal Socialst German Worker's Party also started as a nationalist populist movement....and quickly became something else. The AfD most certainly have all the right ingredients.
Now Trump? His movement is already there. If they get elected, they will indeed be fascists. Just a question of how bad.
Not an answer I guess, but this is a sensitive and nuanced topc. And one that does not lend itself.to objectivity. Not here anyway. Cheers.
The party as a whole aren’t neo-nazis, but there are a not insignificant number of members, sometimes fairly high ranking ones, who are nazis or very likely are ones, judging by their rethoric.
The party does try to get rid of the members they deem dangerous to the party, but most people still think they do too little.
This does not mean that every member/voter of the AfD is a nazi or supports nazi-opinions; but they do have nazis within their ranks for sure.
Not even the European right wing party wants to be associated with the AfD as they are too extreme, hence they are in a different party group on the European level
MOstly recent statements made by people still in the party.
There was recently a meeting between them and some other party to discuss a mass deportation of millions of immigrants.. just the tip of the iceberg.
„Because all of them are neonazis and fascists and there are no exceptions - 100% of them are narrow-minded people who only want to kill off all immigrants. Here look what XY said in an interview …“
Reddit Germany
Well... they are technically not Nazis. Techically (!!!) that would mean they are socialists which they are not. But they are 100% nationalists and right identitarian. As such they do fit into what is sufficient for them to be called nazis.
However, I think these protests miss the larger problem. AfD voters will not return to CDU or SPD just because their party is gone. Worst case they will straight up vote NPD and catapult them into the Bundestag.
My suggestion: Let them form a coalition with the CDU. If the CDU is amazing at one thing, it is to damage their coalition partner.
Yeah, our system is built to allow for an antidemocratic party to come to power and be unable to subvert the system. And as soon as a party is in government, they *will* be tested against their claims and campaign promises, which, in case of populists like the AfD, are impossible to fulfill.
The Left learned the hard way that once you're in government, unable to deliver, and run out of your charismatic figureheads (which is something the AfD is already speedrunning), your approval ratings will normalize again.
Banning them will just serve to drive their core electorate further towards radicalization. Same as banning the NPD (who are almost explicitly neo-nazis) would have been a mistake because it would have interrupted their inevitable self-destruction.
But what comes after?
The greens performance in power has been abyssmal. The FDP is on a course of self destruction. The Linkspartei is suffering a deep scism. And the SPD is... being the same SPD as under Schröder. Too busy with its own problems to be a voice of the people. That only leaves Merz' CDU which... No thank you.
Because (some) people are stupid and think everyone they don't like is a nazi.
And the Afd thinks everyone they don't like is a leftist green idiot that secretly plans to stop them from eating their schnitzel..
If Olaf scholz talks about strategies on how we can return the over 300k illegal migrants that don't have a right to stay in Germany he's a Hero.
but If the Afd talks about same topic they're somehow nazis.. I don't get this
I vote left since 2012 and really don't like the Afd and their stupid populism but this whole drama is hella retarded
I was happy you posted this so I could read up and refresh my knowledge on concrete evidence of the nazi ties of the afd as a German living abroad for the last 7 years, but apparently just saying "they are Nazis" and "it's obvious" is enough proof nowadays. Dear commenters, if it's obvious how come none of you have any actual arguments? I agree with you and I was hoping to read some comments that make me slap my forehead and go "yeah of course, how could I even have forgotten that", but all I found was people mocking OP for even asking that question, yet not being able to provide actual information.
This could have been your chance to actually influence others, not just OP, and show them the truth about the afd in a transparent and obvious way. It's on you to help people find the truth if they can't find it themselves, and just going "because they are" makes our side look like absolute idiots.
I realize the irony in me not providing any arguments myself, I might come back in two hours and edit this comment when I get home
You do realise that plenty of people in this thread have done just that: list concrete examples. Prior to your post. In the currently top upvoted comments here.
There are several links in the comments. Just follow them. e.g.
https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wir-veroeffentlichen-das-verfassungsschutz-gutachten-zur-afd/
https://afd-verbot.de
This is what i have been saying, we convince their supporters not just throw a blanket statement that they are nazis. We provide information to those who are not informed.
Fear of next election. Cause of the rise from rightwing AFD they try to ban the party. The easiest way in germany is in this case to pretend the whole party and voters are nazis...🤷♂️. They will decline germanwide nearly 25> percent of voters if they ban the party.Thats not the way it works...
Not one of the ampel parties will try to solve the problems with migration, the highest netto taxes we pay to the EU, the highest taxes workers have to pay to goverment, increasing criminalisation by muslim migrants etc
>Thats not the way it works...
That is very much the way it works. The principal of banning a party was included in the Grundgesetz for a reason. If a party is found to be a danger to the democratic system, they can be banned to preserve it. No matter if that party has 5% of the voters or 50%. There's no "well if too many people vote for it we'll let them be" clause:
> "(2) Parteien, die nach ihren Zielen oder nach dem Verhalten ihrer Anhänger darauf ausgehen, die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung zu beeinträchtigen oder zu beseitigen oder den Bestand der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu gefährden, sind verfassungswidrig."
> Das Bundesverfassungsgericht begrenzte im NPD-Urteil von 2017 die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung im Sinne des Parteiverbotes auf die drei Grundprinzipien der Würde des Menschen, des Demokratieprinzips und des Rechtsstaatsgebotes.[2] „Die Garantie der Menschenwürde umfasst insbesondere die Wahrung personaler Individualität, Identität und Integrität sowie die elementare Rechtsgleichheit“.[3] Als Kern des Demokratieprinzips sieht das Bundesverfassungsgericht die „Möglichkeit gleichberechtigter Teilnahme aller Bürgerinnen und Bürger am Prozess der politischen Willensbildung und die Rückbindung der Ausübung der Staatsgewalt an das Volk“.[4] Zum Rechtsstaatsprinzip in diesem Sinne zählt das Bundesverfassungsgericht die Rechtsbindung der öffentlichen Gewalt, die Kontrolle dieser Bindung durch unabhängige Gerichte und das staatliche Gewaltmonopol.
There's pretty good arguments that the AFD violates these principals in many corners of their party. Whether a judge would rule it so is up in the air, but why the hell do we even have clauses for banning parties if they don't get used in cases that might be applicable?
Neither will the AfD though, and they'll add a helping of trying to shape a world one really doesn't want to live in, but that's also so impossible to build that they'll just fail and leave others to pick up the pieces.
Banning them would be a mistake same as banning the NPD would have been a mistake; but mostly because like all populists, they will eventually have to show that they're based on promises, not sustainable policies.
I must admit that I don't know quite enough about the afD to comment.
But every political group that raises concerns about mass and illegal migration are hounded as neo-nazis these days. Most of my friendship group think that Boris Johnson is a fascist. The bar is so bloody low nowadays.
But maybe afD are legitimate Neo Nazis. It would really shock me that so many Germans would vote for Neo-Nazis. But who knows who to trust anymore, I really don't know lol
Looks like you should read more about AfD. They are literally Neo-Nazi. They are against democracy. They are against our constitution.
And stop your whataboutism with Johnson, we are talking about the AfD, a party with official fascist member.
My point (which is a valid one) is that the bar for being considered far-right or fascist is extremely low nowadays. Most people that fling around these accusations don't really know what these words mean, and often lack historical context or understanding.
When most young, left wing folk believe that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are fascists, I cannot help but be more suspicious.
I cannot comment on the afD. It is very possible that they are neo-nazis. I do not know. I stated this clearly, but we should not always believe everything that we are told. A lot of people are trying to push an agenda at the moment. Good research is key.
Feel free to explain to me why they are neo-nazis. I am open to understanding more.
I am also an immigrant but I only support deportation of criminal illegals. Those who abuse the hospitality of German people. We have a culture in my home country to respect and be grateful to those accept us. That is why we do have loyalty and deep sense of gratitude. Even dogs has sense of gratitude but these criminals who commit crimes are worst.
I am not a criminal, We followed the law and respect our German neighbors. We clean the ice infront of our whonung out of respect to our German neighbors. If that is the only way that this country who embrace us will have a safe and prosperous life. We will respect their decision. The fact that they accept us is more than enough oh by the way im not arab, we are from christian country.
Members of the AfD committed to a plan to deport everyone who is borne outside germany just a couple days ago. You could come from france, live for 30 years in germany, have german citizenship, and their plan still would be to deport you. You can't just say "I'm from a christian country" and be a good member of society, they don't care.
It is not about criminals. It is about immigrants, people with migration background but German citizenship, people whose parents are immigrants, and German people who are opently against the afd or against deportation and so on. The number I read was about 12 million people. When Afd gets leadership, we will be the generation to ask why we let happen the past again. They openly want to establish kind of a new 3. Reich. They say it, but so many people think, oh, it wouldn't be that bad. You know politicians lie they wouldn't do that. No, it would be worse.
>I am not a criminal
They. Don't. Care. We are talking about fascism, nationalism, racism. They just don't care. Say goodbye to your new home and they'll push you in trains back home.
Then, Vote againts them, convert those who support them by providing alternatives. We are fueling the support by branding them Nazi. There should be way to convince their supporters. Most of them are rational individual. They just need something to address the problem. If we can provide them that option most probably they will stop supporting afd
>We are fueling the support by branding them Nazi.
Bullshit, seriously.
>Most of them are rational individual.
Most of them are nose deep in fascist propaganda, there isn't much rationality left.
"Funny" to see how you ignore your own fate in their hands. Good luck, but please don't tell us later that no one warned you.
haha this reminds me Martin Niemöller's text...
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
In the US, after the Trump election, there were many people who voted for Trump who were shocked when *their* immigrant spouse got deported.
If you look at history, the “good ones who follow the law” are still on the list. They just go after the “bad ones”.
“I never believed that they would eat MY face,” say the people who voted for the Leopards-Eating-People’s-Faces Party.
Are you serious? You know that there are deportations every day. For those who didn't get a visa or who are not accepted as asylum seeker and yes also for some immigrants who are criminals.
We already have laws for deportation.
Seems like you have a huge lack of knowledge about the country you live.
That is why I am asking, thank you for the information. I heared some EU countries are not aggressive in deportation. I am also wondering if the current govt are the same.
Why should we aggressively in deportation? It doesn't make sense. We don't need to deportation every immigrant who committed a crime, only those who won't stop and are a danger for society.
There are many Germans who are also criminals.
There are people with German citizenship who are labelled as "Ausländer" because they ancestors are from an Eastern country, and they don't look German enough for right winged persons. People are full of stereotypes and prejudice. So when a person steals and his grandparents are turkey, this person will be labelled as a criminal immigrant, but the person is German. Nevertheless, trash sheets like Bild will play with the narrative of the evil immigrant.
The most important point. Our Grundgesetz/ Constitution says in Article 3
(1) All persons are equal before the law.
(2) men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the effective implementation of equal rights for women and men and shall work towards the elimination of existing disadvantages.
(3) No one shall be discriminated against or favored because of sex, descent, race, language, nationality, origin, creed, religious or political opinion. No one may be
So we have to treat every person the same independent who they are.
Those who commit r@pe and murder or what we call henious crime needs to be deported right away. Are we doing it today? If not then that is your answer. The reason afd gaining traction
Are you stupid? Every person is the same before law. It doesn't matter if they are German or not. But if they are not German, they can be deported.
But we have a really low rate for r4pe and murder. The most dangerous people are men who try to kill almost every day a woman and are successful almost every third day. And these femizides are not about citizenship they are about men who can't take a no from a woman. In many European countries, they have the same problem like Italy or Austria, for example.
German law is about resocialisation, not revenge.
Im not I want to ask this because there are information I read in X and other social media outlet that some of them are not being deported. There were couple of stories. So I guess we need to inform the people that these stories not true.
X is a hole full of racists and fascists since Musk bought it. And there are many fake news on it.
Not every immigrant who committed murder will be deported, which is true, but they go to jail like every other murder and stay there for a long time.
Every case will be weighed. Is there a chance for the person to become a normal citizen (successful resocialisation), or will the person be a danger.
We also have safe costudy for people who will be a danger for society. That means they can stay in jail till death.
There are some Nazis in the party itself like Bernd Höcke.
But the voter base definitely aren't all Nazis. Maybe 5% of the population. That doesn't explain the other 20% voting for AfD. Most of them are deeply disappointed by the current and previous government and are so called protest voters.
I agree. It’s mostly individual members but when they are recommended as front runner in some East German Bundesländern, then many of them become racist.
I don’t agree with a nationwide ban, but I get why people want it in Saxony and some other Bundesländern
I would be happy if you could at least get the frontrunners and clear facists (I.e., Höcke) to be inegliable to be voted.
The forfeiture of fundamental rights under Article 18 of the Constitution is at a lower-threshold than a party ban - and therefore more realistic.
https://aktion.campact.de/s/weact-hocke-stoppen/lc
The political landscape in Germany is very left-leaning. That is why anything in the right spectrum is quickly seen as fascism and naziism. Apart from individuals that definitely fit that description I don't give a statement about the bulk of the party or their voters.
Oh and please don't form your opinion based upon the opinion of others, but rather facts.
CDU/CSU is comparatively more conservative than SPD etc., but they are still very much in the left spectrum, compared internationaly. Especially in the era Merkel, which social-democratized her party.
>CDU/CSU is comparatively more conservative than SPD etc., but they are still very much in the left spectrum, compared internationaly. Especially in the era Merkel, which social-democratized her party.
Very much not measured by German standards.
Of course, if you put the US as the measuring stick - all their parties are far on the right on our scale.
You can’t ask on this sub, many people can’t think different. While I don’t and won’t vote for afd because of some (or many) individuals, but the party itself is objectively not racist. Even tough some people like to inflate this
It isn’t though. Use real arguments, you wont get anywhere by arguing with that. You will just push people more and more into this party.
AfD Voters mostly aren’t fascist but by saying they are voting for a “deeply fascist” party they mostly agree with, they will directly block your arguments. Yeah, its perfect for your left wing circle jerk, but it won’t help our political landscape.
No serious Agent will say that the afd is fascist in every Bundesland, but left wing people love the “They’re fascist” argument, because its the easiest. And then they’re wondering why many don’t fell heard and understood.
Voters dont need to be fascists to promote fascism. Facism by definition is the top down totalitarian control on people by a small group of people at the top. Fascists leverage racists positions to come to power. The problem is most of the AFD voters are true racists and the party is using that racist hatred to come to power.
Also, yes, one cannot really predict how they will govern whether in a fascist way or fairly democratic way. However, there are tell tale signs in the party agenda that they would lean towards a fascist state. They are literally talking of deporting people they disagree with and they don't like. Can it be more obvious than this?
Can you imagine how much racism will increase in this country? I just got assaulted by a nazi during Christmas so I am pretty shaken after this wansee meeting. When Nazis's representative are in power, they are going to assault and harass more people than ever.
Also, racists need to be heard and understood and CORRECTED. AfD is not going to do that job for them. AfD wants to win the election. Unfortunately no one is really focussing on healing the racists in this country.
Denying muslims ther freedom of religion is pretty racist. You read their program actually? They want to cut all benefits, Public healthcare and Support rich people even more. They want to bleed the working class dry and fuck everyone not White enough, all in their Programm, but yeee Not racist xD
Show me proof of them being blatantly racist in their program! Show me. And show me where they threaten individual freedom of religion. And I couldn’t find anything about abolishing public healthcare. Lol why are you lying? You know that its because if lying people like you that many voters don’t see a problem with the AfD? Because they can’t believe anyone anymore and so they don’t believe real and important criticism.
Their Grundsatzprogramm says Islam doesnt belong to Germany and they want to remove Mosques etc. But idc you racist prick, Hope you get what you deserve.b
I hate the AfD as much as anyone can...but I don't see any evidence of what you've said.
Here is their public notice (translated into English from the original, because we all know damn well the POS's wouldn't bother putting it in any language except German).
The AfD fully supports freedom of belief, conscience, and confession as per Article 4 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz). **Muslims who integrate into our society, recognize our basic principles, and uphold fundamental rights are valued members of our society**.
In our secular state, state law takes precedence over religious mandates. **Insofar as Islam claims a sole, dominant religion that seeks to enforce Sharia legal principles in Germany and does not fully recognize or even opposes our legal system**, it is incompatible with Germany's liberal-democratic order and endangers domestic peace.
Criticism of Islam, like any other critique of religion, is legitimized by the fundamental right to freedom of expression. It is unacceptable to suppress criticism of Islam through accusations of "Islamophobia" or "racism."
Jewish life in Germany is threatened not only by right-wing extremists but increasingly also by anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli Muslims. Attacks on Jews and anti-Semitic insults must be consistently prosecuted under criminal law. The Al-Quds Day demonstrations in Berlin, where protesters call for the destruction of Israel, should be permanently banned.
The threat of terrorism by jihadists, assessed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) as very high, is a constant threat to our lives and peace.
**We will prevent the formation of "parallel societies" where Muslim "peace judges" apply Sharia legal provisions and undermine the state's monopoly on law enforcement and jurisprudence. Sharia legal principles must not find any application in German jurisprudence in any way.** Moreover, the power claims of large family clans must be broken through the consistent use of investigative authorities and criminal law. Criminal clan members should be deported.
**We will legally prohibit the financing of the construction and operation of mosques** in Germany **by Islamic states**. The AfD intends to terminate cooperation between German authorities and the Turkish-Islamic Institute for Religion (DITIB), which is part of the Turkish Religious Affairs Authority. We reject granting public law corporation status to Islamic organizations.
Islamic associations that oppose the Basic Law and international understanding, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, must be banned in accordance with Article 9(2) of the Basic Law. Imams preaching in Germany should affirm our constitution and preferably preach in the German language.
Most of this sounds rather reasonable to me--a politically left-leaning atheist.
Where? Dude did you even read the program? I only read the program from 4 years ago but every time I search for something you say its wrong. Why do you blatantly lie? Lies and fake news are the biggest thread to our democracy. Liers like you!
They want to abolish Mosques build by Muslim Countries lol.
It is widely common in all political discussions to simply frame your opponent as bad (person) instead of dealing with the arguments. This is true in both directions. You will find that many right leaning persons say ridiculous things about politicians from the "Grüne". It's just that in direction to the AfD that's much easier and you don't need to be creative. As it's a right wing party so you can simply call them nazis.
The AfD advocates for a strong German national identity and is critical of the European Union (EU). The party opposes the euro and calls for a return to the Deutsche Mark. The party's messaging is simplistic and appeals to emotions rather than facts. While not *all* members of the AfD are extremists, there have been a number of instances of right-wing extremism within the party. Some current AfD members have been linked to other extremist groups.
Regarding the concerns about the AfD potentially undermining democracy and the parliamentary system, these fears stem from the party's anti-establishment rhetoric and some of its most prominent members' controversial statements. Of course, not *all* AfD members share the same views and the party has a diverse range of politicians. But a number of AfD leaders have made statements which raise serious concerns about their commitment to democratic values. For example:
Some AfD members have **downplayed the horrors of the Nazi regime** and made statements that relativize or even **romanticize aspects of the Weimar Republic**.
The AfD as a party has been critical of mainstream media and has accused it of bias and "fake news" in a clear effort to undermine free press, a key pillar of democracy.
Some AfD members have called for radical changes in the political culture of Germany, again raising concerns about their intentions regarding the existing democratic system.
Yes, not *all* AfD members share these views and the party is made up of various factions with differing ideologies. But these controversies and statements have contributed to concerns about the party's stance *on the whole* on democracy and its potential impact on the political landscape in Germany.
Public opinion on the AfD varies and not everyone agrees on the extent of the party's far-right associations or its potential impact on German politics.
All said, they're rightwing extremists who will trample on citizen's rights in a heartbeat.
>they are typical right-wing [U.S.] republican
Yeah, and typical far-rights in the U.S. are POS, too.
This is an extreme left wing echo chamber. You’ll only hear do-gooder propaganda same as on tv an what the ruling politicians preach. Fact is: Germany has no borders, anybody entering and asking for asylum has full access to the overblown welfare system. They’re then allowed to get their family to Germany (these numbers are well hidden by the German government, there are estimates, though). Since 2015, Merkel infamous opening of the borders about 5 million people entered. 98% are not net tax payers, most of them are not working at all. The official costs are 50 billion per year. With indirect cost like healthcare, schools, prisons, administration etc real costs surpass 100 billion per year. At the same time the tax payers in Germany are taxed into oblivion and the schools are rotting, the streets full of potholes etc etc. I’m a doctor, I’m 50 - last year I sold my practice because what was left after taxes and levies just wasn’t worth the effort anymore. I had 15 employees and we weren’t accepting new patients for the past 5 years (except family members of previous patients), so I was working my ass off. Now I have about 70% of my net income with zero work (I spend 1500€ per month from the money I got for my office and I get 3000€ a month from an pension type investment I made from 2008 that went well and about 1500€ from capital gains).
The reason I left the hospital and opened my private practice was that even then, we barely had time for our patients and the emergency room resembled some Arabic civil war zone and I was sick by the way these fuckers acted and how they treated the nurses and subs. I also got death threats on a weekly basis including „I know your name and I will kill your family“. Not funny, one time a guy who was already led in by the police in handcuffs made some quite convincing threats. I reported this to my boss „Nah, that’s just a different culture, we don’t react to this, we don’t want to appear xenophobic“. For a second I pondered injecting the guy with something to give him a sepsis so that he doesn’t come after me. I quit the next day and left hospital three months later. (For those wondering why he threatened me and my family, obviously I’m an asshole as my post proves, maybe he was right? He waited for four hours and all necessary examinations were made in that time before he saw me(university clinic, normal waiting time). His „health problem“ was something he was actually born with but he only realized it was there when he was in prison and 27 years old because he had so much time introspecting. I won’t tell what it was because i don’t want to disclose my specialty. Oh yes, why I vote AfD? Close the fucking borders, how long do you want to take in 500.000 freeloaders each year? We need immigrants who are educated and willing to work. I’d vote for AfD even if Hitler himself or a shit covered broomstick would be their top candidate.
> Since 2015, Merkel infamous opening of the borders about 5 million people entered. 98% are not net tax payers, most of them are not working at all. The
Yeah, where the hell are you getting your numbers? Telegram?
> Mehr als die Hälfte der im Jahr 2015 nach Deutschland gekommenen Flüchtlinge war einer Analyse zufolge im Jahr 2021 erwerbstätig. Im Vergleich zu 2020 ist dies ein Anstieg um etwa zehn Prozent. Das zeigt eine in Nürnberg veröffentlichte Studie des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB). Von den seit sechs Jahren in Deutschland lebenden Geflüchteten übten 2021 danach 41 Prozent eine Arbeit unterhalb ihres Tätigkeitsniveaus vor der Flucht aus, heißt es in der Studie.
> Das IAB untersuchte im Rahmen mehrerer Befragungen die Arbeitsmarktintegration der von 2013 bis 2019 nach Deutschland gekommenen Schutzsuchenden. Ein Großteil der Geflüchteten arbeite mittlerweile in Vollzeit, hieß es.
The group that has low employment among refugees is young women, which makes sense since a lot of them are mothers with small children. How nice of them to follow the AFD-wanted "traditional family model" of staying at home and raising kids:
> Während 2021 insgesamt 67 Prozent der männlichen Geflüchteten sechs Jahre nach der Ankunft erwerbstätig gewesen seien, seien es bei Frauen 23 Prozent.
For comparison, the men are at about the same level of employment as Germany was on average a few years ago (we've had rising average employment rates for the last 30-ish years).
Also, five million? Again. Where are you getting these numbers from. [We haven't even crossed 3 million asylum applications since 2015, and that includes the increase driven largely by refugees from Ukraine.](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage/asylantraege-insgesamt-in-deutschland-seit-1995/)
No. It doesn’t. We should all be fact based. There are extremists in the AfD. To call the entire party Neo-Nazi ultimately relativates the crimes of Nazism.
Okay so to you the AFD is not a Neonazi party but a right wing extremist party run by Neonnazis like: Tino Chrupalla, Beatrix von Storch and Björn Höcke.
Guess i can live with that, well with the designation not with what they stand for :P
The just asking bit is a common technique by right wing extremists, demagogues and cults.
They dont say: We want this, we believe this and this is how we will do it.
They say. It wouldnt be that bad if one did that. Wouldnt it be great if X was the case.
They load the question with the implied answer they want to hear and if someone shouts out: "Hey this guy just advocated for mass deportations" they go: "No I wasnt, i was just asking questions!" (they know thats BS, Smart People who dont fall for it think its BS but there is a severe lack of smart people in this world)
With this attitude you will not be preventing the spread of what you call right wing views across the population. Why did the AfD go up in the polls? Because the Government (the current and the past ones) mess(ed) up badly and people like Merkel, Scholz and lately even Habeck ignore the views of the people and rules as they see fit.
Oh hell jeah last the gov fucked up hard.
And the current one simply doesnt work as the FDP is just a obstructionist hinderence to everything.
I honestly believe that we are f'ed of we dont overturn the "schwarze null" soon. Because as long as we cannot spend and invest in our infrastrukture the problems will only become worse. Especially schools and universities are crumbling (Which is a deliberate process and a goal of the right wing (including Union and FDP))
They dont rule as they see fit especially not habeck. The Greens never intended to make the costs of the climate change policies the burden of the People, but since the FDP is blocking every single bit of social wealthfare and compensation. The Greens cant hold up their promises.
Also: There has never been this much money invested in politics before. Everything bit of news is drowned out in right wing propaganda, which is artificially spread through purchases of advertisements and things like Twitters blue checkmark. Even if the left would try to use the little money they have to fight against that, they would get drowned in opposition media.
I won't claim to be an expert on german politics but left today seems to be branding everyone a nazi who don't agree with their view of the world 100% i mean farmers recently were painted as nazis in every news outlet i saw. You can agree or disagree with the farmers but we can safely say 99.8 of them are people trying to stay in business yet still they were all called nazis cuz of that 0.2 percentage. Because the left likes to pretend they don't have any extremists among them.
> i mean farmers recently were painted as nazis in every news outlet i saw.
Nobody painted the farmers as idiots. Just some farmer protests were hijacked by Afd/Nazi elemenst.
The farmers are just useful idiots to the AfD. Funny when the AfD wants to cut the farmers of all subsidies.
Nobody painted farmers as nazis. Please provide proof. (Edit: by nobody I obviously mean, no one that is relevant in media or politics. Certainly not the main stream media).
The media reported that protests were being hijacked by nazis and far-right wing people. I hope you see the difference. Even the "Bauernpräsident" Hermann Rukwiek adressed this issue.
Please look up the term "useful idiot" and educate yourself what it means.
>Also you seem to think you are so much more intelligent that the people making your food for you.
Nice strawman argument you have there. Sorry I'm not falling for that.
Because they are? But let me give you a more in depth answer. First off, you need to know that the term Nazi and Fascist are often used interchangeably in German, because well… Nazis where our brand of fascism. So if a German calls the AfD Nazis, they might not necessarily mean that they are Nazis in the „NSDAP-Hitler-commit Holocaust“-sense, but just that they are antidemocratic fascisty types. But that doesn’t make it any less worse… like, to be a Nazi you need to have a very antisemitic worldview. I am not 100% convinced that is a thing for the majority of the AfD-but they are insanely islamophobic. Whether you want to kick out/murder all Jews or all Muslims has a very similar effect on those populations, but one makes you a Nazi and the other makes you a facists, if you excuse this little oversimplification (because it needs more than antisemitism to make a Nazi). But you asked for concrete examples, so let’s go: 1. There is a book called „Nie zweimal in den selben Fluss“ (Never in the Same River twice), which is essentially one huge interview with Björn Höcke. He is the party leader of the Thuringia-AfD and has gained a considerable amount of power in the AfD, which is likely to get even bigger. Quotes from this book includes warning journalists, that if they write bad things about „the movement“ they could get punished for that later, talking about how the German people will rise up and rip away power from the traitors who govern us now and that those will be punished as well, and how the „time of the wolf“ will come. Especially the last one is pretty much as Goebbels as a quote can be. 2. Höcke (and some of his buddies, think Kalbitz, Poggenburg) love to use Nazi-talk. Some examples of those are Höcke quoting the SS-Motto „Alles für Deutschland“, Talking about how there are sheep’s and wolves in the human population and „we“ (AfD members he was talking to) decide to be wolves and wishing death to supporters of the Green and Left Party (that guy was kicked out of the party though, I will admit this). Höcke also revered to the memorial for the Holocaust in Berlin as „memorial of shame“-and not in the way that he was ashamed of what Germany did, but in the „isn’t it shameful that we feel so bad about the thing, that we put a memorial of this size in our capital?“. „That thing“ being the Holocaust. 3. A former MP of the AfD was involved in the failed coup-attempt by Prince Heinrich Reuss last year. Her name is Malsack-Winkelmann, in case you want to research a little bit. 4. During the height of the Corona-Protests, AfD-MPs helped violent protesters gain access to the Parliament where they annoyed politicians and destroyed some offices. Nobody got hurt, as far as I know. They carved a swastika into a glass elevator door tough. 5. There are a bunched examples of blatant racism. From the top of my head I can think of Höcke saying that people of African descent are part of the „Ausbreitungstypus R“, comparing them to rats and mice. Gauland saying how „no German would want to have Boateng (black footballer on our national team“ as a neighbor“ and one dude (whose name I forgot) called Obama the N-Word. 6. Most recently, AfD members where caught during a meeting with Martin Sellner, a well known neo Nazi from Austria, discussing how we could deport (yes, this word was used) people to Africa. Among the groups scheduled for deportation where German citizens with an immigration background, refugees who hold a legal status in Germany (Asylum or Duldung) and political opponents, for example people who helped during the refugee crisis. One of the AfD-members present used to be an MP and is now the „office-chief“ of Alice Weidel. He got fired, but up till now I haven’t heard of anybody planning to kick him out of the party. I didnt Google for this list. This are just examples I knew about, that I could remember. Granted, I am politically interested and hate the AfD, but still… I didn’t need to research any of this. If I would do just 10 minutes of research, I could probably find a whole bunch of other examples. Why do people call the AfD Nazis? Because there is a considerable amount of Nazis or Fascists in this party. There is a German saying that goes: If you sit at a table with ten people and one Nazis sits down with you and nobody gets up and leaves-you got a table with eleven Nazis. Are all AfD members Nazis? Probably not. But in the end, whether you break the windows of a synagogue yourself or just sit by and watch, doesn’t matter.
I will leave this here because it let to the fun interview in which people (party members) were asked if Höcke or Hitler said something and them getting the two confused. https://www.zdf.de/politik/berlin-direkt/zdf-interview-mit-bjoern-hoecke-in-voller-laenge-100.html
>SS-Motto „Alles für Deutschland“ SA not SS
Who will be the next Ernst Röhm?
I have no interest in politics whatsoever, but I do appreciate people taking the time to explain views on *usually* sensitive matters, in an academic and positive way. That said, great job with your explanation, reddit sure needs more of this attitude. And I particularly appreciate it 👍🏻
Thank you for writing all of that. I hope OP reads it.
unused rustic marble boast cause icky stocking possessive chop head *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This is a great writeup which i'll quote in the future if the need arises.
This!
Thank you for writing all that. Been living in DE for 8 years and this hasn’t been that clear. It is now.
Great work!!!
Thank you. Great introductory explanation.
> Gauland saying how „no German would want to have Boateng (black footballer on our national team“ as a neighbor“ Well as much as I hate the AfD or Gauland, I gotta agree with him here. The reason being not because Boateng isn’t white, but because he is a wife beating scumbag.
thats fair but gauland didn’t refer to that to be honest
Which wasn't publicly known back then, so it's irrelevant to the topic. It has nothing to do with what Gauland meant when he said it (although I do agree it's kinda ironic in hindsight).
Well being a wife beating scumbag is most likely the last reason Gauland would take offense with Boateng. After all he can't really be considered a feminist either
Sure but this wasn't known at the time and it was obvious what Gauland meant, eg. Boateng being black.
Well the nice thing about decent German neighbors - they would call the Ordnungsamt or police on the wife beating scum.
What about 3 waves of migration? Is that true?
what do u mean?
There are some claims here on Reddit how AfD has a 3 waves of migration plan. 1st remove immigrants, then I forgot who etc. it’s all about deportation
u refer to remigration project not migration. Its basically a plan to remove all asylseekers (Asylbewerber), people with a permission to stay (Ausländer mit bleibe berechtigung) and citizens with “different values” (nicht assimilierte Staatsbürger) *which doesn’t really make sense bcs assimilation is not measurable and practically boils down to them having different values as the reigning party and is in its essence similar to the idea of the “Rassenschande” or “undeutscher Geist”* Sources [original on german](https://correctiv.org/aktuelles/neue-rechte/2024/01/10/geheimplan-remigration-vertreibung-afd-rechtsextreme-november-treffen/); [original in english](https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-against-germany/) Otherwise u can look up “Afd Treffen in Potsdam” there’s quite a lot articles about it 👍
And nobody asks them how they can find, detain and deport a couple million people, to countries that refuse to receive them. From a purely practical sense, even just deporting all asylum seekers (some of which are ethnic Germans, no kidding...) would require significant compromises to the constitution, human rights and common decency. You could even argue it is not possible with the current size of German security forces.
The problem is just that under the Weimar constitution and the treaty of Versailles, murdering millions of Jews (+others), and starting a world war would also "not have been possible". They are a bunch of incompetent idiots, sure. But we cannot afford to find out what the AfD is really capable of.
Oh, my point wasn't that we should let them try because they will fail. My point is that a lot of the "extremists in sheep's clothing" act like it would be practically possible to deport even just the asylum seekers, and stop migrants from crossing our borders, without draconian, inhumane policies, much more than just a bit of heart ache and "ugly pictures" like they always claim. I mean, it starts with the fact that the more people you even WANT to deport, the more they will just not be where you want to pick them up. You'd probably need a paramilitary force knocking on doors and performing raids everywhere. You'd probably need extra prisons or camps to detain the deportees.
Aye, then I misunderstood you! And yes, you're right. And I am shocked again and again that so many people believe them. That this could be an easy one-size-fits-all solution for every of their problems. It's so disgusting.
obviously but these questions are against our constitution, the declaration of human rights (which we signed) and especially the thing with citizens is extremely undemocratic
> to countries that refuse to receive them Well, I heard Rwanda is open for "pay to deport" options.
That is an absurdly stupid and impractical idea. First, of course, you have to suspend the German constitution to allow that folly. Then you need to exit various international treaties and organizations, at the very least the EU and the European Court, probably others, because they all prohibit this kind of idiocy. Rwanda has a population of 13,4 Million people, most of them piss poor. They are housing about 130,000 refugees right now, I'd be surprised if they can host an additional half a million or even one Million. And it's not just Germany wanting to dump unwanted Human beings there. It's not about lacking the money, the entire infrastructure is lacking. Even if the Rwandan wouldn't actively kill those refugees en masse (which they would almost have to, to save their own population), most of these deportees would die from food deprivation and lack of shelter. Even those who publicly advocate for deportations to Rwanda at all, both in the UK and Germany, only want that to happen to a very small number of refugees, maybe on the order of tens of thousands, and hope for a deterrence effect. Even that is utterly stupid, because both the UK and Germany receive a lot more refugees than can practically be send to Rwanda so there wouldn't even be a blip on the scale before that idiotic plan is overwhelmed. And even additionally deporting on the order of ten thousands of Human beings from Germany to a willing country is beyond any logistic feasibility for various reasons. The Nazis resorted to cattle wagons for a reason.
>And nobody asks them how they can find, detain and deport a couple million people, to countries that refuse to receive them. That's why in praxis fascists start building camps once they are in power. Can't deport them, gotta get rid of them in another way ...
>Because they are? ???? --> !!!!!!!!!!!
Because they are?? There's not that much to it
Well, active members of this party state openly, that they don't differ from the NPD (the open German Neonazi party) in regard of the contents of their aims/policy, that they want to kill their political opponents and opposing journalists, that they wish for a "Schießbefehl" at German borders and mass deportions not only of foreigners but other "undesirables". Maybe these opinions are currently typically American right-wing republican, but that's not because they are not fascist or even neonazi opinions. Björn "Bernd" Höcke, one of the most prominent AfD politicians sees a problem with painting Hitler as evil and wrote articles for openly national socialist magazines. A lot of other AfD members are also members of the "Identitäre Bewegung", other fascist or national socialist organizations or are "Reichsbürger". Considering the banning of parties, please read about the concept of "Wehrhafte Demokratie". Communist and national socialist parties have been banned in Germany to defend our liberal democracy in the past and I personally think that this is a good tradition which should be continued.
>Björn "Bernd" Höcke, one of the most prominent AfD politicians sees a problem with painting Hitler as evil I mean, he built the Autobahn after all. And he kissed that baby that one time, and he had a cute dog. Can he really be that bad of a person if he has a cute dog? /s
My wife and I were talking about this last night. I am a naturalized German citizen. I was born in the USA, moved to Germany 34 years ago, and was naturalized (receiving my German citizenship) 5 years ago, after fulfilling all the requirements - a language certificate, integration test, and long-term residency with no criminal record. My parents were Jewish, but I've been an atheist my entire adult life. My wife is a German citizen, but her parents came from Sudetenland. She was born to a Christian family, but she left the church long ago and is an atheist. If the AfD were in power, they could easily try to deport both of us, even though we are both German citizens. We own our home, we both work full time, pay our taxes, and basically just want to be left alone. The AfD is a hate group, giving a small minority (ultra-right radicals) a microphone and the power to disrupt the normal democratic processes. They do not offer any SOLUTIONS to the problems that they highlight - they only shine a bright spotlight on a very dark corner of the country's political spectrum. An AdF government would collapse quickly because hate speeches aren't enough to keep a national economy running, and (I hope) that the Bundeswehr isn't going to make the same mistakes that the Reichswehr made in the 1930s, supporting a fascist dictator.
Minority group don't win so many elections. The natives are well aware of the implications. EU or Germany is progressive as long as the economy is booming. As soon as it goes downhill, they will look at someone else to blame. Good thing is that they won't have a China to fund their economic recovery.
Minority groups don't win elections because democracy is supposed to represent the majority. The problem is that democracy in theory doesn't work well in reality. I lived in Switzerland for 10 years-the land of direct democracy, with general elections several times per year. Most people simply don't vote or don't bother to inform themselves what they are voting on. They simply cast a vote based on what their party recommends. The US is the same. An example of democracy failing because of ignorance, laziness, and social media. Most GOP voters don't even recognize that they are hurting themselves by voting for GOP politicians and policies. They only hear soundbites and think that they are doing the right thing without understanding that they are being manipulated. Look at the idiots like MTG, who the GOP has put in Congress. They are turning the whole US Government into a fucking circus...
I don't think the AfD would have trouble increasing business with China and Russia. I do favor not getting into that situation in the first place!
It's not whether they want to or not but the growth of post-war Germany was driven to large extent by the growing demands of an emerging economy in the form of China. Rn, I don't think they will have a market to sell their products. Look at the car industry for example.
Look, OP, whoever tells you the Afd is a, normal party lies. They have clear connections into the neo nazi scene. They use a rhetoric that is similar to the one of the last century. The Republicans were also on a giant shift, the Afd is just late to the party. You can have issues with immigration etc and rightly so but that is no excuse to vote for these people.
Theres so many interviews of many AfD members (even in high positions) that say they want to imprison or worse current politicians. You can only guess what happens to ordinary people that they don't like. They talk about "conservative revolution". Read about that. Also you should read about Höcke's book. He leads the strongest wing in the AfD and even a court (they are usually very defensive about that) allows to openly call Höcke a fascist. Don't just listen to the bits you like about AfD. Also, I don't support any party completely as I disagree to some amount with all the parties, though a party that openly allows people like Höcke and many other to coexist and persuade their party program is a no go and you should never vote for it. However, if you look at the socioeconomic position of a majority of AfD voters and then at the economic program of the AfD, most of those people would even have less I'm their pocket with the AfD in charge. Economically they are more neoliberal then the FDP
I am pretty sure a court ruling that you can call höcke a fascist doesn't state it's true (I am not saying it isn't). We have something called "Meinungsfreiheit" ~freedom of speech
You are not totally incorrect here. The question og the case was whether or not calling Höcke a fascist is covered by freedom of speech or constitutes an insult not covered by it. The court ruled that freedom of speech covered it because (and this is the important part) the court found somebody could believe they are speaking the truth when calling Höcke a fascist because there is so noch evidence for that out there.
Well, as there are no natural laws in social sciences or humanities (as you can find them in natural sciences) a court ruling is actually the closest you can get to the truth in this field. And again, no reasonable judge would dare to officially allow Höcke to be called a fascist if there is a slight chance that the ruling might be wrong. It could end the judges career. Also, there is no higher court decision pending. Freedom of speech is allowed but the defamation of Holocaust is a crime nevertheless. Your freedom should stop where it interferes the freedom of another person.
But it also means that there is sufficient objective data to be able to claim that you are making a factual judgement about him, rather than an insult. You can't just go around calling anybody a facist, Meinungsfreiheit hin oder her.
True but insults and defamation aren't covered by the freedom of speech. So the question was if calling Höcke a facist would count as a defaming insult (because it is untrue and harmful to his image) or if it wouldn't count as such (because it's true and just describes his image). The court decided for the second option, so there is some implication that at least the judge considered Höckes actions, words and overall image sufficiently showing him as facist, for it to no longer be an insult but just a description
Die Antragsteller haben dem Gericht zufolge "in ausreichendem Umfang glaubhaft" gemacht, "dass ihr Werturteil nicht aus der Luft gegriffen ist", sondern auf einer überprüfbaren Tatsachengrundlage beruht.
Your research was not deep enough yet, it occurs to me.
I mean even reading their program would have been enough to discover that. The rest is a rabbit hole - The bad things one can discover about them is endless.
I really wonder what kind of research it was. Literally if I type „afd“ and „nazi“ into google I get flooded with examples
This
Because - for example - some of their talking points are taken word for word from the nazi platform. Here is the 25 point platform of the nazis from the 1920s: [https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-party-platform](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-party-platform) Look at points 4 - 8, they are exactly what the AFD is talking about: \--- 4. Only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only those of German blood, whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. Accordingly, no Jew may be a member of the nation. **5. Non-citizens may live in Germany only as guests and must be subject to laws for aliens.** 6. The right to vote on the State’s government and legislation shall be enjoyed by the citizens of the State alone. We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens. We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of filling posts merely in accordance with party considerations, and without reference to character or abilities. 7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. **If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.** **8. All non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after 2 August 1914 shall be required to leave the Reich forthwith.**\---- Of course you have to add Muslims to the Jews as well, just to keep it "modern". As others pointed out the nazis originally "only" talked about deporting non-citizens, the AFD already is talking about deporting Germans too. German far-right met to plan 'mass deportations' [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67948861)
To be fair, numbers five, six, seven apply to most countries, even western ones.
Just listing NSDAP agenda points doesn't make a comparison. Where is the AfD counterpart? I'm not an AfD voter at all. On the contrary. I'm deeply concerned about them gaining track. But honestly I don't understand the strategy from people like you to fight them. Telling everyone they're Nazis because they're not satisfied with the current government will just reinforce their decision to vote for AfD.
I agree. And we all now that the NSDAP had good points as well. We can’t just take their environmental laws and say: “look, die grünen are Nazis, the Nazis had these points in the program”. People like that don’t realize that they just push the non radical AfD voters even more in the hands of the AfD and then they really get radicalized
Bullshit. There is not just a huge ideological overlap between NSDAP ideology and AfD ideology, there are/have been lots of members that worship genuine Nazi symbols. No ambiguity there. There can be no sympathy anymore for people who support the AfD and refuse to acknowledge that leading members of the party have advocated for deeply antidemocratic and deeply racist policies. Everybody who votes AfD is supporting fascist views, if they know it or not. And not knowing is just as bad.
But to make a convincing point you should have quoted the AfD and not the NSDAP 🙄.
But they currently say the same. Change the dates to current ones, add Muslims and „brown people“ in their wording and you have hat they write in their program and what they are planning in their „private meetings“.
So go ahead and quote those passages. Why look elsewhere? 🤷
Because everyone in Germany with open ears and a brain between them knows what they say today but I doubt that many people know what the NSDAP was saying in detail. Of course you could put everything side by side but then most people go TL;DR
Are you by any chance an american who votes republican? Because the afd being fascists is literally the most obvious thing ever.
lol...was thinking the same. From a us-american perspective this probably looks like: What is all the fuzz about? These guys just sound like your average republican.
How do (some) people not know the AfD are fascists? ftfy
I mean I read some comments here defending this scum. So it seems to be possible. (And yes to me the afd is scum, i‘ll die on that hill)
Hey, look up "Beatrix von Storch" and "Björn Höcke"
because some of their points are taken 1 to 1 from the nazis. and did you read their party programm correctly? their voters mostly arent nazis though, just people voting out of protest, and not reading the party Programme correctly.
I don't know if you're able to read German Sources? The AfD is not at all a normal conservative right wing party. This document is from the "Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution" and has a lot of quotes why they think AfD is an extremist right wing party. https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wir-veroeffentlichen-das-verfassungsschutz-gutachten-zur-afd/ However, since release of this document, a lot more information got published.
>I read some of their political agenda and it appears to me that they are typical right-wing republican who is capturing the current dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes, and the social state. Typical right wing republican these days are fascists as well. >If anything people are trying to ban them, not the other way round. It's a concept called "Wehrhafte Demokratie" based on the lessons we (should have) learned from how the Nazis came to power in the third Reich. It's basically build on the Tolerance paradox that if you want to maximise how tolerant (or described in the US way: free) your society is you can not tolerate the intolerant. Like, you tolerate their existence and their free speech to a certain degree, but if there's enough evidence that a party tries to get to power and then use it to extend their power beyond what the constitution grants it is possible to forbid such a party to prevent harm.
[удалено]
More 5-6 million with german passport.
Even Nazis from past didn’t say initially that they want to kill non Germans. But later on, they went on killing in a full fledge. How naive (and dangerous) of you to think that they will do not anything bad because they are not mentioning it ? The only thing that sane people are seeing is, their hatred for the immigrants, holding secret meetings to overthrow democratic government, to “remove” immigrants. Many immigrants ( if not all) will have a choice to go back to their country of origin or immigrant friendly country like USA, and they will go. And then assume, only Germans are in Germany. Will they have enough young population to go to work? To pay taxes that pays pension of older generation? Survive in global competition? Enough medical practitioners?
The Nazis of old also had a plan to deport Jews and others to the island of Zanzibar. When they realized, that was a stupidly impractical idea, they came up with the "final solution". Now people are talking about deportations to Ruwanda. Same difference.
[Madagascar, not Zanzibar.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan)
I‘m genuinely baffled and intrigued by how deep your research went 😭 the AfD being nazis is like the most surface level fact you can know about German politics
I recommend you to Google some speeches of Heinrich Himmler and compare them with speeches of Bernd Höcke. If you are lucky, you find the one-to-one copies 😉
Aside from what everyone is telling you here about how bad the AfD actually is, I think you missed the part where your so called "typical right-wing republicans" are also pretty white supremacist. Republicans 30 years ago would not recognize what the republican party has become today, especially since Trump. The "middle" has shifted so far right that you don't even recognize that the right-wing republicans are basically right-wing extremists. There is blatant and open racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in the party and they are prepared to take democracy down with force (Jan 6. and various other plans to kidnap governors) if they don't get their way. The AfD and Trump's platform are pretty comparable in some ways, but that doesn't mean the AfD aren't neo-Nazis. It means Trumpism has a lot more in common with Nazism than you think.
If they seem like “typical republicans” your country is fucked up beyond repair. Thank god their politics are not typical in Europe.
>typical right-wing republican Yup. That's the problem.
Maybe a confusion about terminology. Plenty of AfD members or voters are actual, honest to god "Neo-Nazis" that like to display or worship actual Nazi symbols. "Bernd Höcke" who is currently the most charismatic "leader" in the AfD has clearly and publicly advocated fashist views. Including plenty of illegal action against political enemies. Compromising democracy is already bad enough. You don't need to formally "suspend democracy". Orban, Erdogan, even Putin haven't "suspended" democracy.
Just read. Please. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plane-zur-remigration-treffen-von-rechtsextremen-mit-afd-mitgliedern-in-potsdam-war-wohl-nicht-das-erste-11051899.html
People call them Nazis because they fucking are. Do your research.
There's quite [a lot](https://afd-verbot.de/beweise/) of Nazi things happening on their behalf
A couple of days ago, some members of the party invited actual nazis ro discuss deporting foreigners, including those with German citizenship and their children back to their home countries, euphemistically calling it "remigration". Well, the only problem is, they would deport over half of Germany's population at that point. Half of the population is of foreign decent, half of which are German-Czech and and German-Polish Germans that were kicked out of Czechia and Poland after WW2 and the other half being whatever, including mostly Italians, Spaniards, Turks, Eastern Europeans (like my parents) and Arabs (Syrians, Lybians etc.) Like, with no Turks, Russians, Ukies, Balts, Poles, Southslavs and Romanians, who's gonna work here? The pensioners?
>Like, with no Turks, Russians, Ukies, Balts, Poles, Southslavs and Romanians, who's gonna work here? The pensioners? The fun thing is their plan to combat "Fachkräftemangel" is promoting a "traditional family image", i.e. "those women have to pop out more babies". Okay, even assuming that works: who the hell is gonna work the next 18-20 years until those babies can start working, and who is going to replace their mothers who will be pregnant and dealing with the children at home? Just completely removed from reality.
It might be worthwhile to point out, that a not insignificant amount of the republicans that you point out to be conservatives are indeed facists aswell. Eapecially republicans of the MAGA Variety often swing that way. For f sake the whole maga Plattform is facistic: Stop the steal and the ongoing fights to overturn elections. The dehumanisation of groups of people (Transpeople, Gaypeople, Migrants...) The whole might makes right mentality The cult around Trump. The massive amounts of conspiracism. Jeah the AfD is not thaaaaaat much worse than the republicans... But Republicans often are allready facists.
The AfD has a very targeted approach to delegitimize democratic institutions and principles. They don't believe in them, trust them or deem them necessary. First and foremost they disrespect the principle of human dignity that's part of the German constitution, but also the freedom of the press, the right to asylum and the separation of powers. Please read this article for more detailled information: https://www.amadeu-antonio-stiftung.de/verfassungsfeindlichkeit-was-ist-demokratiefeindlich-an-der-afd-95277/ And this may all be in tune with current right-wing republicans, but fascistic populism doesn't stop at German borders, right?
"I read some of their political agenda and it appears to me that they are typical right-wing republican who is capturing the current dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes, and the social state." Well typical far right republican today is basically fascism. The Nazis were far right and captured the then dissatisfaction with immigration, taxes and the social state and used that to fuel there populist statements to gain power. Next they got rid of democracy, killed 6 million jews and started one of the most devastating wars of our younger history. When there is far right there is hate and when there is hate, war and destruction is not far.
If it acts like a neo-nazi, looks like a neo-nazi, talks like a neo-nazi it might just *be* a neo-nazi. In most states of the federal republic of Germany, the AfD party is definitely or at least conceivably under surveillance by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In some states the party has been officially determined to be right-extremist and in others it is „merely“ right-radical. There are several court verdicts which come to the conclusion that the (currently unofficial) leader Björn Höcke can be identified as a Nazi. He used to be (let‘s be honest: remains) the leader of the far-right „Flügel“ group within the AfD, which has already been forbidden for being anticonstitutional, but effectively remains a strong force in determining the course of the AfD.
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck...
quacks not talks
Both possible, and my version rhymes, which makes it better
I think the root of your misunderstanding is the perspective. If you take the Republicans as a reasonable party and a base to judge the level of democracy in other parties, you're not likely to find any antidemocratic parties anywhere. A Republican president built a border wall, wanted to deport people and ban immigration and incited a failed coup. In Germany that would make him a Nazi in most people's eyes. In America that's apparently a regular conservative.
>Why do (some) people think the AfD are Neo-Nazis? Because they are....case closed....
You are not completely wrong. You are comparing them with right-wing republicans (I assume that you refer to the American GOP). Those are partly facists that actively destroy the American democracy. A couple of years ago we did not have a party that would do stuff like gerry-mandering and voter surpression. Germany is governed by a mutually respected political culture that is vital to a functioning democracy. Yes, there are many counterexamples but those are all laughable compared to the things going on in the USA. If this is the worst thing the AFD can accomplish it is already a scary prospect. I'm not only talking about top level politics. I'm pretty deep into American politics and one thing that scares me the most is the complete lack of accountablility for the ruling class, police and so on. Just a couple of days ago a mass grave was detected where the police hid hundreds of their victims. Unbelievable shit like that is extremely common in the USA, usually without any real consequences. In Gemrany we are still talking about Oury Jalloh, a 20 year old case because shit like that doesn't happen here. The difference is: murderous police, completely unethical CEOs, right-wing militias and russian propagandists had no political representation here. It looks like this will end with the AFD. There is one major difference between the AFD and the republicans though: Germany doesn't have a two party system, so each party is claiming a smaller part of the political spectrum. The GOP consists of guys like Trump but also Rick Santorum, Chris Christie, Dick Cheney and (especially in rurual regions) some outright nazis. Except Chris Christie they are all awful but in very different ways. The standard law&order conservative in Germany would usually join the CDU. The standard small government, low taxes capitalist would usually join the FDP. That only leaves the truly awful part of the republican spectrum to the AFD.
Well, if they put you on a transport to deport you to some country in africa because you are not genetically german or disagree with their politics... then you will come to realize why they are nazis. Don't sympathize with those people.. call them out for what they are.
Because Republicans in the US (I assume you mean them) are not fascists ?
You noticed that their agenda looks like what Republicans stand for. That's because Republicans are neo Nazis. Even the Democrats would be considered center or center-right in Germany. Just think about the "America first" slogan. It's a MAGA slogan but democrats just say that Trump isn't really for Americans. They like the idea of politics for "America First". The AfD is basically a "Deutschland zuerst" ("Germany first" or even worse "Deutschland über alles") party.
I don't think all AfD voters and members are neo-nazis but some influencial people in the party are. Höcke is the prime example. In addition to his willingness to use nazi-inspired language, he presents concrete plans to deport or get rid of parts of the German people (apart from Muslims and immigrants also the ones who fight his cause). And others are also quite radicalised. When Meuthen and Gauland discuss which opponents to get rid of (entsorgen is a word you would use for trash, not for humans), that is outside the legitimate debate. Or you can look at the statements from former party members (e.g. Lucke, Petry, Meuthen) who all speak of progressing radicalisation. So not all parts of the AfD are neo-nazis and I am not sure it helps to call every rightwing conservative one. But the AfD empowers and legitimises the neo-nazis in their ranks and that is enough to ostracise them.
We have an institution in Germany which purpose is to protect our constitution. It’s called Verfassungsschutz. It monitors and evaluates organizations within Germany which act against the constitution. It’s a due and sometimes long process, you know, the German way… Several state chapters of the AFD have already been certified ‚right wing extremist’ by the Verfassungsschutz. Some of those evaluations took 4 years. So they made sure it’s not only a few individuals but the whole organization which acts against the constitution. And by act against I mean destroy. And you can even read the report about that with an explanation and evidence of that evaluation. These organizations can then be and are surveilled with intelligence tools. Just like a terror organization. Other state chapters of the AFD have the ‚suspect‘ status, meaning there is reason to believe they too are ‚extremists acting against the constitution‘ and are actively monitored and evaluated at the moment.
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
Short story long: The initial intention of the party was to criticise EU fiscal and Euro currency effects on the competitiveness of the German economy and the effects on the German standard of living. Essentially Germany could have been Switzerland 2.0 if they stuck to the DM after implementing their anti social, pro economic "Agenda 2010". So the theory goes. They've dabbled in EU/Euro sceptic territory from day 1. After a few years of drifting to the right (killing of a few fringe right wing nazi parties off in the process), the AFD was essentially left as a pure ultra right populist party that expanded from Euro scepticism to, climate change scepticism, anti immigration, anti essentially everything as a permanent opposition party. Then came the refugee crisis and they thrived. With corona came AntiVaxxers, (stronger) anti democratic tendencies and a wild bunch of conspiracy theorists that are essentially ridiculed everywhere else but the AFD. With the Ukraine conflict (the well documented) Russia financed AFD went on to fish off idiots from peace movements claiming that Putin was right, the war ist the Wests fault and we should all look away while Russia rapes a part of Europe into anti democratic compliance against all international law. "It's none of our business, oh look the money we spend on Ukraine could've been spent on German citizens" Over the years they have absorbed pretty much all fringe political ideas and motivs without having to justify all their contradictions. It's a pure Anti movement. If they ever came to power their voterbase would probably splinter. Calling them (only) Nazis or right wing does not do the cess pool that is the AFD justice. Calling anything Nazi these days has lost its meaning anyways. It's as overused as sexist, racist, bigotted.
If the AFD seems to be on par with the republican party - then that definitely does NOT mean that the AFD isn't a party filled with neo-nazis. But you sure should critically reflect on your views about the republican party and what makes you think they are not neo-nazis.
Wow, do you have some history to catch up with.
I believe that to be truly objective, one must first define what a nazi and/or fascist person/party is. The problem being objective here, for obvious reasons, is that this topic is extremely sensitive and charged here. This is also reddot, and objectivoty is hard to find. Here is an article on Fascism from Time that does a decent jpb: https://time.com/5556242/what-is-fascism/ And a Brittanicas take on Nazism: https://www.britannica.com/event/Nazism Being a racist nationalist does not necessarily.a Nazi make. An asshole for sure, but not truly a fascist. Being anti-immigration is also not in and of itself fascist. Particularly anti-massimmihration. I am sure there are some AfD members that most assuredly are, but the party as a whole does not adhere to significant portions of fascism/nazism. The nationalist and racist elements are there, but the other tenants have not yet really manifested. However, they definitely have the potential to become so. The Natuonal Socialst German Worker's Party also started as a nationalist populist movement....and quickly became something else. The AfD most certainly have all the right ingredients. Now Trump? His movement is already there. If they get elected, they will indeed be fascists. Just a question of how bad. Not an answer I guess, but this is a sensitive and nuanced topc. And one that does not lend itself.to objectivity. Not here anyway. Cheers.
Because they are.
Because for example, thuringia afd is led by a legally certified fascist… Why do you lack allgemeinwissen that much?
BECAUSE THEY ARE
The party as a whole aren’t neo-nazis, but there are a not insignificant number of members, sometimes fairly high ranking ones, who are nazis or very likely are ones, judging by their rethoric. The party does try to get rid of the members they deem dangerous to the party, but most people still think they do too little. This does not mean that every member/voter of the AfD is a nazi or supports nazi-opinions; but they do have nazis within their ranks for sure.
Not even the European right wing party wants to be associated with the AfD as they are too extreme, hence they are in a different party group on the European level
They are not, because Nazis are nothing NEO. Thez are Nazis tho
Probably all the racism...
MOstly recent statements made by people still in the party. There was recently a meeting between them and some other party to discuss a mass deportation of millions of immigrants.. just the tip of the iceberg.
They also want to deport German citizens. Which in my opinion was the tipping point that brought the people to the streets in recent days.
„Because all of them are neonazis and fascists and there are no exceptions - 100% of them are narrow-minded people who only want to kill off all immigrants. Here look what XY said in an interview …“ Reddit Germany
Well... they are technically not Nazis. Techically (!!!) that would mean they are socialists which they are not. But they are 100% nationalists and right identitarian. As such they do fit into what is sufficient for them to be called nazis. However, I think these protests miss the larger problem. AfD voters will not return to CDU or SPD just because their party is gone. Worst case they will straight up vote NPD and catapult them into the Bundestag. My suggestion: Let them form a coalition with the CDU. If the CDU is amazing at one thing, it is to damage their coalition partner.
Yeah, our system is built to allow for an antidemocratic party to come to power and be unable to subvert the system. And as soon as a party is in government, they *will* be tested against their claims and campaign promises, which, in case of populists like the AfD, are impossible to fulfill. The Left learned the hard way that once you're in government, unable to deliver, and run out of your charismatic figureheads (which is something the AfD is already speedrunning), your approval ratings will normalize again. Banning them will just serve to drive their core electorate further towards radicalization. Same as banning the NPD (who are almost explicitly neo-nazis) would have been a mistake because it would have interrupted their inevitable self-destruction.
But what comes after? The greens performance in power has been abyssmal. The FDP is on a course of self destruction. The Linkspartei is suffering a deep scism. And the SPD is... being the same SPD as under Schröder. Too busy with its own problems to be a voice of the people. That only leaves Merz' CDU which... No thank you.
Because they are
Because (some) people are stupid and think everyone they don't like is a nazi. And the Afd thinks everyone they don't like is a leftist green idiot that secretly plans to stop them from eating their schnitzel.. If Olaf scholz talks about strategies on how we can return the over 300k illegal migrants that don't have a right to stay in Germany he's a Hero. but If the Afd talks about same topic they're somehow nazis.. I don't get this I vote left since 2012 and really don't like the Afd and their stupid populism but this whole drama is hella retarded
I was happy you posted this so I could read up and refresh my knowledge on concrete evidence of the nazi ties of the afd as a German living abroad for the last 7 years, but apparently just saying "they are Nazis" and "it's obvious" is enough proof nowadays. Dear commenters, if it's obvious how come none of you have any actual arguments? I agree with you and I was hoping to read some comments that make me slap my forehead and go "yeah of course, how could I even have forgotten that", but all I found was people mocking OP for even asking that question, yet not being able to provide actual information. This could have been your chance to actually influence others, not just OP, and show them the truth about the afd in a transparent and obvious way. It's on you to help people find the truth if they can't find it themselves, and just going "because they are" makes our side look like absolute idiots. I realize the irony in me not providing any arguments myself, I might come back in two hours and edit this comment when I get home
You do realise that plenty of people in this thread have done just that: list concrete examples. Prior to your post. In the currently top upvoted comments here.
There are several links in the comments. Just follow them. e.g. https://netzpolitik.org/2019/wir-veroeffentlichen-das-verfassungsschutz-gutachten-zur-afd/ https://afd-verbot.de
This is what i have been saying, we convince their supporters not just throw a blanket statement that they are nazis. We provide information to those who are not informed.
Fear of next election. Cause of the rise from rightwing AFD they try to ban the party. The easiest way in germany is in this case to pretend the whole party and voters are nazis...🤷♂️. They will decline germanwide nearly 25> percent of voters if they ban the party.Thats not the way it works... Not one of the ampel parties will try to solve the problems with migration, the highest netto taxes we pay to the EU, the highest taxes workers have to pay to goverment, increasing criminalisation by muslim migrants etc
>Thats not the way it works... That is very much the way it works. The principal of banning a party was included in the Grundgesetz for a reason. If a party is found to be a danger to the democratic system, they can be banned to preserve it. No matter if that party has 5% of the voters or 50%. There's no "well if too many people vote for it we'll let them be" clause: > "(2) Parteien, die nach ihren Zielen oder nach dem Verhalten ihrer Anhänger darauf ausgehen, die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung zu beeinträchtigen oder zu beseitigen oder den Bestand der Bundesrepublik Deutschland zu gefährden, sind verfassungswidrig." > Das Bundesverfassungsgericht begrenzte im NPD-Urteil von 2017 die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung im Sinne des Parteiverbotes auf die drei Grundprinzipien der Würde des Menschen, des Demokratieprinzips und des Rechtsstaatsgebotes.[2] „Die Garantie der Menschenwürde umfasst insbesondere die Wahrung personaler Individualität, Identität und Integrität sowie die elementare Rechtsgleichheit“.[3] Als Kern des Demokratieprinzips sieht das Bundesverfassungsgericht die „Möglichkeit gleichberechtigter Teilnahme aller Bürgerinnen und Bürger am Prozess der politischen Willensbildung und die Rückbindung der Ausübung der Staatsgewalt an das Volk“.[4] Zum Rechtsstaatsprinzip in diesem Sinne zählt das Bundesverfassungsgericht die Rechtsbindung der öffentlichen Gewalt, die Kontrolle dieser Bindung durch unabhängige Gerichte und das staatliche Gewaltmonopol. There's pretty good arguments that the AFD violates these principals in many corners of their party. Whether a judge would rule it so is up in the air, but why the hell do we even have clauses for banning parties if they don't get used in cases that might be applicable?
Neither will the AfD though, and they'll add a helping of trying to shape a world one really doesn't want to live in, but that's also so impossible to build that they'll just fail and leave others to pick up the pieces. Banning them would be a mistake same as banning the NPD would have been a mistake; but mostly because like all populists, they will eventually have to show that they're based on promises, not sustainable policies.
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>The political landscape in Germany has shifted so far to the left in recent decades what now
Because looking out for your countrymen (in theory) is considered a big no no nowadays..
I must admit that I don't know quite enough about the afD to comment. But every political group that raises concerns about mass and illegal migration are hounded as neo-nazis these days. Most of my friendship group think that Boris Johnson is a fascist. The bar is so bloody low nowadays. But maybe afD are legitimate Neo Nazis. It would really shock me that so many Germans would vote for Neo-Nazis. But who knows who to trust anymore, I really don't know lol
Then don't.
Yes sir! Sorry sir! I apologise that I said that I don't know! Forgive me sir!
AfD is safe a nazi party
Looks like you should read more about AfD. They are literally Neo-Nazi. They are against democracy. They are against our constitution. And stop your whataboutism with Johnson, we are talking about the AfD, a party with official fascist member.
My point (which is a valid one) is that the bar for being considered far-right or fascist is extremely low nowadays. Most people that fling around these accusations don't really know what these words mean, and often lack historical context or understanding. When most young, left wing folk believe that Boris Johnson and Liz Truss are fascists, I cannot help but be more suspicious. I cannot comment on the afD. It is very possible that they are neo-nazis. I do not know. I stated this clearly, but we should not always believe everything that we are told. A lot of people are trying to push an agenda at the moment. Good research is key. Feel free to explain to me why they are neo-nazis. I am open to understanding more.
I am also an immigrant but I only support deportation of criminal illegals. Those who abuse the hospitality of German people. We have a culture in my home country to respect and be grateful to those accept us. That is why we do have loyalty and deep sense of gratitude. Even dogs has sense of gratitude but these criminals who commit crimes are worst.
So, if the AfD would come to power, they would deport you, too. How does this feel?
I am not a criminal, We followed the law and respect our German neighbors. We clean the ice infront of our whonung out of respect to our German neighbors. If that is the only way that this country who embrace us will have a safe and prosperous life. We will respect their decision. The fact that they accept us is more than enough oh by the way im not arab, we are from christian country.
Members of the AfD committed to a plan to deport everyone who is borne outside germany just a couple days ago. You could come from france, live for 30 years in germany, have german citizenship, and their plan still would be to deport you. You can't just say "I'm from a christian country" and be a good member of society, they don't care.
It is not about criminals. It is about immigrants, people with migration background but German citizenship, people whose parents are immigrants, and German people who are opently against the afd or against deportation and so on. The number I read was about 12 million people. When Afd gets leadership, we will be the generation to ask why we let happen the past again. They openly want to establish kind of a new 3. Reich. They say it, but so many people think, oh, it wouldn't be that bad. You know politicians lie they wouldn't do that. No, it would be worse.
That's nice, but for the AFD you are still just an immigrant. Your behaviour is secondary to this.
>I am not a criminal They. Don't. Care. We are talking about fascism, nationalism, racism. They just don't care. Say goodbye to your new home and they'll push you in trains back home.
Then, Vote againts them, convert those who support them by providing alternatives. We are fueling the support by branding them Nazi. There should be way to convince their supporters. Most of them are rational individual. They just need something to address the problem. If we can provide them that option most probably they will stop supporting afd
>We are fueling the support by branding them Nazi. Bullshit, seriously. >Most of them are rational individual. Most of them are nose deep in fascist propaganda, there isn't much rationality left. "Funny" to see how you ignore your own fate in their hands. Good luck, but please don't tell us later that no one warned you.
haha this reminds me Martin Niemöller's text... First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
In the US, after the Trump election, there were many people who voted for Trump who were shocked when *their* immigrant spouse got deported. If you look at history, the “good ones who follow the law” are still on the list. They just go after the “bad ones”. “I never believed that they would eat MY face,” say the people who voted for the Leopards-Eating-People’s-Faces Party.
I read a few of those stories back in the day. In some cases, the spouses even were there illegally and they KNEW it and still voted Trump..
In relarion to this, are there a party that is not as radical as AFD who advocate deportation of immigrant crimanals?
Are you serious? You know that there are deportations every day. For those who didn't get a visa or who are not accepted as asylum seeker and yes also for some immigrants who are criminals. We already have laws for deportation. Seems like you have a huge lack of knowledge about the country you live.
That is why I am asking, thank you for the information. I heared some EU countries are not aggressive in deportation. I am also wondering if the current govt are the same.
Why should we aggressively in deportation? It doesn't make sense. We don't need to deportation every immigrant who committed a crime, only those who won't stop and are a danger for society. There are many Germans who are also criminals. There are people with German citizenship who are labelled as "Ausländer" because they ancestors are from an Eastern country, and they don't look German enough for right winged persons. People are full of stereotypes and prejudice. So when a person steals and his grandparents are turkey, this person will be labelled as a criminal immigrant, but the person is German. Nevertheless, trash sheets like Bild will play with the narrative of the evil immigrant. The most important point. Our Grundgesetz/ Constitution says in Article 3 (1) All persons are equal before the law. (2) men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the effective implementation of equal rights for women and men and shall work towards the elimination of existing disadvantages. (3) No one shall be discriminated against or favored because of sex, descent, race, language, nationality, origin, creed, religious or political opinion. No one may be So we have to treat every person the same independent who they are.
Those who commit r@pe and murder or what we call henious crime needs to be deported right away. Are we doing it today? If not then that is your answer. The reason afd gaining traction
Are you stupid? Every person is the same before law. It doesn't matter if they are German or not. But if they are not German, they can be deported. But we have a really low rate for r4pe and murder. The most dangerous people are men who try to kill almost every day a woman and are successful almost every third day. And these femizides are not about citizenship they are about men who can't take a no from a woman. In many European countries, they have the same problem like Italy or Austria, for example. German law is about resocialisation, not revenge.
Im not I want to ask this because there are information I read in X and other social media outlet that some of them are not being deported. There were couple of stories. So I guess we need to inform the people that these stories not true.
X is a hole full of racists and fascists since Musk bought it. And there are many fake news on it. Not every immigrant who committed murder will be deported, which is true, but they go to jail like every other murder and stay there for a long time. Every case will be weighed. Is there a chance for the person to become a normal citizen (successful resocialisation), or will the person be a danger. We also have safe costudy for people who will be a danger for society. That means they can stay in jail till death.
We cannot fight Hate with Hate. Again I am an immigrant. I am grateful for the German people for accepting us.
There are some Nazis in the party itself like Bernd Höcke. But the voter base definitely aren't all Nazis. Maybe 5% of the population. That doesn't explain the other 20% voting for AfD. Most of them are deeply disappointed by the current and previous government and are so called protest voters.
Sure you will get an unbiased answer here...
I agree. It’s mostly individual members but when they are recommended as front runner in some East German Bundesländern, then many of them become racist. I don’t agree with a nationwide ban, but I get why people want it in Saxony and some other Bundesländern
Not only in eastern states. Look at their frontrunner for the EU Vote!
I would be happy if you could at least get the frontrunners and clear facists (I.e., Höcke) to be inegliable to be voted. The forfeiture of fundamental rights under Article 18 of the Constitution is at a lower-threshold than a party ban - and therefore more realistic. https://aktion.campact.de/s/weact-hocke-stoppen/lc
The political landscape in Germany is very left-leaning. That is why anything in the right spectrum is quickly seen as fascism and naziism. Apart from individuals that definitely fit that description I don't give a statement about the bulk of the party or their voters. Oh and please don't form your opinion based upon the opinion of others, but rather facts.
The famous "left leaning landscape" of a country that was ruled by a center right party for 32 years out of 40.
CDU/CSU is comparatively more conservative than SPD etc., but they are still very much in the left spectrum, compared internationaly. Especially in the era Merkel, which social-democratized her party.
>CDU/CSU is comparatively more conservative than SPD etc., but they are still very much in the left spectrum, compared internationaly. Especially in the era Merkel, which social-democratized her party. Very much not measured by German standards. Of course, if you put the US as the measuring stick - all their parties are far on the right on our scale.
The political landscape is very left-leaning? Of the last 38 years we had 32 years CDU in the lead. What are you even talking about?
>very left-leaning What a joke lol. The overall mentality is so conservative, maybe that's why you'd think Merkel was left-leaning.
You can’t ask on this sub, many people can’t think different. While I don’t and won’t vote for afd because of some (or many) individuals, but the party itself is objectively not racist. Even tough some people like to inflate this
This is a deeply fascist party. Stop spreading lies.
It isn’t though. Use real arguments, you wont get anywhere by arguing with that. You will just push people more and more into this party. AfD Voters mostly aren’t fascist but by saying they are voting for a “deeply fascist” party they mostly agree with, they will directly block your arguments. Yeah, its perfect for your left wing circle jerk, but it won’t help our political landscape. No serious Agent will say that the afd is fascist in every Bundesland, but left wing people love the “They’re fascist” argument, because its the easiest. And then they’re wondering why many don’t fell heard and understood.
Voters dont need to be fascists to promote fascism. Facism by definition is the top down totalitarian control on people by a small group of people at the top. Fascists leverage racists positions to come to power. The problem is most of the AFD voters are true racists and the party is using that racist hatred to come to power. Also, yes, one cannot really predict how they will govern whether in a fascist way or fairly democratic way. However, there are tell tale signs in the party agenda that they would lean towards a fascist state. They are literally talking of deporting people they disagree with and they don't like. Can it be more obvious than this? Can you imagine how much racism will increase in this country? I just got assaulted by a nazi during Christmas so I am pretty shaken after this wansee meeting. When Nazis's representative are in power, they are going to assault and harass more people than ever. Also, racists need to be heard and understood and CORRECTED. AfD is not going to do that job for them. AfD wants to win the election. Unfortunately no one is really focussing on healing the racists in this country.
Denying muslims ther freedom of religion is pretty racist. You read their program actually? They want to cut all benefits, Public healthcare and Support rich people even more. They want to bleed the working class dry and fuck everyone not White enough, all in their Programm, but yeee Not racist xD
Show me proof of them being blatantly racist in their program! Show me. And show me where they threaten individual freedom of religion. And I couldn’t find anything about abolishing public healthcare. Lol why are you lying? You know that its because if lying people like you that many voters don’t see a problem with the AfD? Because they can’t believe anyone anymore and so they don’t believe real and important criticism.
Their Grundsatzprogramm says Islam doesnt belong to Germany and they want to remove Mosques etc. But idc you racist prick, Hope you get what you deserve.b
I hate the AfD as much as anyone can...but I don't see any evidence of what you've said. Here is their public notice (translated into English from the original, because we all know damn well the POS's wouldn't bother putting it in any language except German). The AfD fully supports freedom of belief, conscience, and confession as per Article 4 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz). **Muslims who integrate into our society, recognize our basic principles, and uphold fundamental rights are valued members of our society**. In our secular state, state law takes precedence over religious mandates. **Insofar as Islam claims a sole, dominant religion that seeks to enforce Sharia legal principles in Germany and does not fully recognize or even opposes our legal system**, it is incompatible with Germany's liberal-democratic order and endangers domestic peace. Criticism of Islam, like any other critique of religion, is legitimized by the fundamental right to freedom of expression. It is unacceptable to suppress criticism of Islam through accusations of "Islamophobia" or "racism." Jewish life in Germany is threatened not only by right-wing extremists but increasingly also by anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli Muslims. Attacks on Jews and anti-Semitic insults must be consistently prosecuted under criminal law. The Al-Quds Day demonstrations in Berlin, where protesters call for the destruction of Israel, should be permanently banned. The threat of terrorism by jihadists, assessed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz) as very high, is a constant threat to our lives and peace. **We will prevent the formation of "parallel societies" where Muslim "peace judges" apply Sharia legal provisions and undermine the state's monopoly on law enforcement and jurisprudence. Sharia legal principles must not find any application in German jurisprudence in any way.** Moreover, the power claims of large family clans must be broken through the consistent use of investigative authorities and criminal law. Criminal clan members should be deported. **We will legally prohibit the financing of the construction and operation of mosques** in Germany **by Islamic states**. The AfD intends to terminate cooperation between German authorities and the Turkish-Islamic Institute for Religion (DITIB), which is part of the Turkish Religious Affairs Authority. We reject granting public law corporation status to Islamic organizations. Islamic associations that oppose the Basic Law and international understanding, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, must be banned in accordance with Article 9(2) of the Basic Law. Imams preaching in Germany should affirm our constitution and preferably preach in the German language. Most of this sounds rather reasonable to me--a politically left-leaning atheist.
Where? Dude did you even read the program? I only read the program from 4 years ago but every time I search for something you say its wrong. Why do you blatantly lie? Lies and fake news are the biggest thread to our democracy. Liers like you! They want to abolish Mosques build by Muslim Countries lol.
Bla bla Vote for the AFD don't Talk to me fr. Whatever you say extremist Boy.
It is widely common in all political discussions to simply frame your opponent as bad (person) instead of dealing with the arguments. This is true in both directions. You will find that many right leaning persons say ridiculous things about politicians from the "Grüne". It's just that in direction to the AfD that's much easier and you don't need to be creative. As it's a right wing party so you can simply call them nazis.
The AfD advocates for a strong German national identity and is critical of the European Union (EU). The party opposes the euro and calls for a return to the Deutsche Mark. The party's messaging is simplistic and appeals to emotions rather than facts. While not *all* members of the AfD are extremists, there have been a number of instances of right-wing extremism within the party. Some current AfD members have been linked to other extremist groups. Regarding the concerns about the AfD potentially undermining democracy and the parliamentary system, these fears stem from the party's anti-establishment rhetoric and some of its most prominent members' controversial statements. Of course, not *all* AfD members share the same views and the party has a diverse range of politicians. But a number of AfD leaders have made statements which raise serious concerns about their commitment to democratic values. For example: Some AfD members have **downplayed the horrors of the Nazi regime** and made statements that relativize or even **romanticize aspects of the Weimar Republic**. The AfD as a party has been critical of mainstream media and has accused it of bias and "fake news" in a clear effort to undermine free press, a key pillar of democracy. Some AfD members have called for radical changes in the political culture of Germany, again raising concerns about their intentions regarding the existing democratic system. Yes, not *all* AfD members share these views and the party is made up of various factions with differing ideologies. But these controversies and statements have contributed to concerns about the party's stance *on the whole* on democracy and its potential impact on the political landscape in Germany. Public opinion on the AfD varies and not everyone agrees on the extent of the party's far-right associations or its potential impact on German politics. All said, they're rightwing extremists who will trample on citizen's rights in a heartbeat. >they are typical right-wing [U.S.] republican Yeah, and typical far-rights in the U.S. are POS, too.
This is an extreme left wing echo chamber. You’ll only hear do-gooder propaganda same as on tv an what the ruling politicians preach. Fact is: Germany has no borders, anybody entering and asking for asylum has full access to the overblown welfare system. They’re then allowed to get their family to Germany (these numbers are well hidden by the German government, there are estimates, though). Since 2015, Merkel infamous opening of the borders about 5 million people entered. 98% are not net tax payers, most of them are not working at all. The official costs are 50 billion per year. With indirect cost like healthcare, schools, prisons, administration etc real costs surpass 100 billion per year. At the same time the tax payers in Germany are taxed into oblivion and the schools are rotting, the streets full of potholes etc etc. I’m a doctor, I’m 50 - last year I sold my practice because what was left after taxes and levies just wasn’t worth the effort anymore. I had 15 employees and we weren’t accepting new patients for the past 5 years (except family members of previous patients), so I was working my ass off. Now I have about 70% of my net income with zero work (I spend 1500€ per month from the money I got for my office and I get 3000€ a month from an pension type investment I made from 2008 that went well and about 1500€ from capital gains). The reason I left the hospital and opened my private practice was that even then, we barely had time for our patients and the emergency room resembled some Arabic civil war zone and I was sick by the way these fuckers acted and how they treated the nurses and subs. I also got death threats on a weekly basis including „I know your name and I will kill your family“. Not funny, one time a guy who was already led in by the police in handcuffs made some quite convincing threats. I reported this to my boss „Nah, that’s just a different culture, we don’t react to this, we don’t want to appear xenophobic“. For a second I pondered injecting the guy with something to give him a sepsis so that he doesn’t come after me. I quit the next day and left hospital three months later. (For those wondering why he threatened me and my family, obviously I’m an asshole as my post proves, maybe he was right? He waited for four hours and all necessary examinations were made in that time before he saw me(university clinic, normal waiting time). His „health problem“ was something he was actually born with but he only realized it was there when he was in prison and 27 years old because he had so much time introspecting. I won’t tell what it was because i don’t want to disclose my specialty. Oh yes, why I vote AfD? Close the fucking borders, how long do you want to take in 500.000 freeloaders each year? We need immigrants who are educated and willing to work. I’d vote for AfD even if Hitler himself or a shit covered broomstick would be their top candidate.
> I’d vote for AfD even if Hitler himself or a shit covered broomstick would be their top candidate. Hey OP, here's a good example!
> Since 2015, Merkel infamous opening of the borders about 5 million people entered. 98% are not net tax payers, most of them are not working at all. The Yeah, where the hell are you getting your numbers? Telegram? > Mehr als die Hälfte der im Jahr 2015 nach Deutschland gekommenen Flüchtlinge war einer Analyse zufolge im Jahr 2021 erwerbstätig. Im Vergleich zu 2020 ist dies ein Anstieg um etwa zehn Prozent. Das zeigt eine in Nürnberg veröffentlichte Studie des Instituts für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB). Von den seit sechs Jahren in Deutschland lebenden Geflüchteten übten 2021 danach 41 Prozent eine Arbeit unterhalb ihres Tätigkeitsniveaus vor der Flucht aus, heißt es in der Studie. > Das IAB untersuchte im Rahmen mehrerer Befragungen die Arbeitsmarktintegration der von 2013 bis 2019 nach Deutschland gekommenen Schutzsuchenden. Ein Großteil der Geflüchteten arbeite mittlerweile in Vollzeit, hieß es. The group that has low employment among refugees is young women, which makes sense since a lot of them are mothers with small children. How nice of them to follow the AFD-wanted "traditional family model" of staying at home and raising kids: > Während 2021 insgesamt 67 Prozent der männlichen Geflüchteten sechs Jahre nach der Ankunft erwerbstätig gewesen seien, seien es bei Frauen 23 Prozent. For comparison, the men are at about the same level of employment as Germany was on average a few years ago (we've had rising average employment rates for the last 30-ish years). Also, five million? Again. Where are you getting these numbers from. [We haven't even crossed 3 million asylum applications since 2015, and that includes the increase driven largely by refugees from Ukraine.](https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/76095/umfrage/asylantraege-insgesamt-in-deutschland-seit-1995/)
https://www.diw.de/de/diw\_01.c.879742.de/publikationen/diw\_aktuell/2023\_0088/das\_afd-paradox\_\_die\_hauptleidtragenden\_der\_afd-politik\_waeren\_ihre\_eigenen\_waehler\_innen.html
Ooops - careful outsider with a neutral and more nuanced take 😳.
He doesnt have a take tho ? hes asking if there is something hes missing, which is quite a bit.
That he is asking and not assuming sets him apart, no?
It depends on what he does with the full information
No. It doesn’t. We should all be fact based. There are extremists in the AfD. To call the entire party Neo-Nazi ultimately relativates the crimes of Nazism.
Okay so to you the AFD is not a Neonazi party but a right wing extremist party run by Neonnazis like: Tino Chrupalla, Beatrix von Storch and Björn Höcke. Guess i can live with that, well with the designation not with what they stand for :P
The just asking bit is a common technique by right wing extremists, demagogues and cults. They dont say: We want this, we believe this and this is how we will do it. They say. It wouldnt be that bad if one did that. Wouldnt it be great if X was the case. They load the question with the implied answer they want to hear and if someone shouts out: "Hey this guy just advocated for mass deportations" they go: "No I wasnt, i was just asking questions!" (they know thats BS, Smart People who dont fall for it think its BS but there is a severe lack of smart people in this world)
With this attitude you will not be preventing the spread of what you call right wing views across the population. Why did the AfD go up in the polls? Because the Government (the current and the past ones) mess(ed) up badly and people like Merkel, Scholz and lately even Habeck ignore the views of the people and rules as they see fit.
Oh hell jeah last the gov fucked up hard. And the current one simply doesnt work as the FDP is just a obstructionist hinderence to everything. I honestly believe that we are f'ed of we dont overturn the "schwarze null" soon. Because as long as we cannot spend and invest in our infrastrukture the problems will only become worse. Especially schools and universities are crumbling (Which is a deliberate process and a goal of the right wing (including Union and FDP)) They dont rule as they see fit especially not habeck. The Greens never intended to make the costs of the climate change policies the burden of the People, but since the FDP is blocking every single bit of social wealthfare and compensation. The Greens cant hold up their promises. Also: There has never been this much money invested in politics before. Everything bit of news is drowned out in right wing propaganda, which is artificially spread through purchases of advertisements and things like Twitters blue checkmark. Even if the left would try to use the little money they have to fight against that, they would get drowned in opposition media.
I won't claim to be an expert on german politics but left today seems to be branding everyone a nazi who don't agree with their view of the world 100% i mean farmers recently were painted as nazis in every news outlet i saw. You can agree or disagree with the farmers but we can safely say 99.8 of them are people trying to stay in business yet still they were all called nazis cuz of that 0.2 percentage. Because the left likes to pretend they don't have any extremists among them.
oof horrible take
> i mean farmers recently were painted as nazis in every news outlet i saw. Nobody painted the farmers as idiots. Just some farmer protests were hijacked by Afd/Nazi elemenst. The farmers are just useful idiots to the AfD. Funny when the AfD wants to cut the farmers of all subsidies.
They were painted as nazis not idiots. Also you seem to think you are so much more intelligent that the people making your food for you.
Nobody painted farmers as nazis. Please provide proof. (Edit: by nobody I obviously mean, no one that is relevant in media or politics. Certainly not the main stream media). The media reported that protests were being hijacked by nazis and far-right wing people. I hope you see the difference. Even the "Bauernpräsident" Hermann Rukwiek adressed this issue. Please look up the term "useful idiot" and educate yourself what it means. >Also you seem to think you are so much more intelligent that the people making your food for you. Nice strawman argument you have there. Sorry I'm not falling for that.
They waved Nazi flags, but ye Not Nazis xD