Posted on 10/10/2025 3:43:36 AM PDT by Jacquerie
1. The Classification of the AfD by an Administrative Agency
In the spring of 2025, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV, Germany's domestic intelligence service) classified the political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a "right-wing extremist" organization. This classification granted the authorities the power to place its members and supporters under police surveillance without prior judicial authorization, including measures such as intercepting private communications or the BfV recruiting informants within the party.
This "judgment" was not delivered by an independent court. It was created by an administrative agency directly under the authority of the Interior Minister.
2. Repression of Free Speech: The Criminalization of Dissent
This repression not only affects AfD leaders, members and activists. It extends to ordinary citizens. Pensioners, shopkeepers and students are now being prosecuted for criticizing government policy on immigration, climate or healthcare. They are treated as criminals, even as terrorists or arsonists, on charges of "inciting hatred."
3. The Quarantined Area: Institutionalized Directed Democracy
Since 2015, an unwritten but inflexible rule has governed the federal parliament (Bundestag and Bundesrat) and regional parliaments: no coalition may be formed with the AfD, and no AfD vote will ever be recognized as legitimate. This Brandmauer (firewall) to relegate the AfD into a quarantine, has the direct effect of suspending political competition by freezing the political landscape.
4. Towards an Outright Ban on the Opposition
As if this were not enough, government circles are now openly considering banning the AfD altogether, under the fake pretext of "protecting the constitution." Annalena Baerbock, former foreign minister from the far-left Greens party, declared in early 2024: "We must not rule out banning the AfD if evidence of extremism continues to mount."
Saskia Esken, co-chair of the SPD, added: "The AfD is no longer a democratic party. It is the duty of our constitutional state to prevent it from acting."
The Shadow of the Reichstag Fire
Germany today faces a fatal spiral. Either it accepts true pluralism and freedom of expression — without which democracy cannot exist — or it succumbs to the temptation of eliminating dissent by judicial and police means, silencing the only genuine opposition. If that happens, it will not be the AfD that is destroyed, but German democracy itself.
A left wing Reich, just like the one in the 1930s.
Exactly. The Reich was always leftwing. It was called National Socialism. Not National Capitalism.
The National Socialist German Workingmen’s Party of the Third Reich was ALWAYS a left-wing entity. It was the “kinder, gentler” form of socialism in regards to the Soviet International Socialist Party, the Communist party, which was only slightly more to the left of the Nazi ideology. The two competing forms of socialism actually preached about the same message, but the “true believers” of either faction were in a deadly competition for the same kind of control of whatever regime they directed their efforts toward.
A pox on both their houses.
The designation of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as a “right-wing extremist” organization is a deliberate attempt to paint them as a “reconstitution” of the Nazi party, and of course, they are nothing of the kind. If they are actually a “right-wing” party, then by definition they CANNOT be made out to be “Nazi” or “neo-Nazi”.
The Socialist Democratic party in Germany already occupies that part of the political spectrum.
Ditto, and kudos to all.
Years ago, we were legal residents in Germany and I worked all across Europe. To our American standards, there were and are precious few conservatives. The CDU and CSU, the SPD and many of the smaller parties are all just 'different-flavored sprinkles on the ice cream.'
With internationalist notions -- the EU is in fact an internationalist organization de facto and de jure -- many Europeans think back to the empire times, to royalty which Europeans still prop up, and to what Tusk stated clearly last March: "Europe today lacks the belief that we are truly a global force." He, an EU advocate, rues that the EU is not such a force, which is why we've seem the parade to President Trump's office, lobbying him to be their ally. In internationalist goals....
As opposed to the left wing National Socialists Reich?
Should be entitled “another left wing Reich”.
Will review.
Or how about the Reich that called itself the German Democratic Republic? Interestingly, their national railroad was called the Reichsbahn.
When I was in Germany in the early 1970s, the CDU was starting to go "RINO" after its founders, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhardt, had left the scene. the Rheinischer Merkur (Rhineland Mercury) was a major conservative newspaper, but it ceased publication about 15 years ago.
Dividing Germany into East and West worked once before and partition might be the best outcome now.
Long back, an op-ed which I no longer can reference, basically said the same. Paraphrasing 'there are no real conservatives in Europe' in this time.
There’s already been a left wing Reich in Germany, some 80, or so years ago. That didn’t work out well for them then, either.
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