Ironically, banning the AfD is what Hitler would have done.
Dems would do it here in a moment.
Still this false assertion abounds, that National Socialist German Workers Party was somehow a “right-wing” party. In truth, it was always only slightly to the “right” of International Socialism, the kind of Communism represented by the Soviet Union.
There was and still is a lot of internecine competition between various flavors of socialism, but they are all on the same wavelength - a command-and-control economy, with a militaristic hierarchy structure of government, not subject to elections of popular opinion.
The AfD is NOT a “neoNazi” organization, as they still maintain the position of elective politics, and representation on the national level of a set of sound fiscal and moral beliefs.
There are 4 curious things playing out:
1. The entire report is reportedly under lock-and-key (meaning it’s confidential and limited to who can read it). As of yesterday...the Interior Minister (who is leaving her job in 2 days)...admitted she had not read it. The new guy...has yet to read it.
If they were to vote or carry out the ban...they’d have to allow all members to read the report.
If you ask me...there’s likely a executive summary of 20 pages, but the full report is a minimum of 200 pages. I doubt that any of the Bundestag members want to volunteer to read the whole thing.
2. A discussion has started up...within the police, federal employees, and military....if you are a AfD member, you may have to be let go. Considering 25-percent are now polling as supporting AfD...there’s to be problems if you suddenly dismiss 300,000 fed employees.
3. The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, who wrote the report...seems to have a lot of information. It begs the question, did they have a secret-agent or two infiltrate AfD? If so...it would sound a lot like the Bavarian Secret Police of 1919 who hired Hitler to infiltrate the Nazi Party as a secret agent for them.
It would be silly to suggest this, but it begs the question....where did they get their data/info...for the report?
4. AfD says they will take this to court....so judges will drag this out and any banning action...probably can’t take place for at least six months. But the judges will ask...where did you get the information/data?
Even more ironic, the Weimar republic used emergency laws to censure newspapers and political speech. Hitler was prevented from speaking in several German states, and Nazi newspapers were stopped publishing hundreds of times.
And then when the Nazis gained power (a majority but always less than 50%)they used these laws to act against their enemies.
It made the Machtübertragung so much easier.
One would have thought the Germans remembered their history.