Banning the nation’s second-largest political party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has become a matter of constant conversation. Yet, a prominent academic has warned that there could be serious consequences for breaking the democratic system.
Germany’s AfD was declared a “right-wing extremist” organisation by the outgoing leftist government earlier this year, triggering a legal challenge. Meanwhile, some German states have moved to ban AfD members from serving as police officers or becoming civil servants.
Left-wing politicians even openly speak of outright banning the AfD altogether as incompatible with the post-war German constitution. This would see the state remove the elected members from parliament. Such discussions are now a weekly topic of headlines in Germany, despite the party having come second in this year’s national elections, with one-fifth of all votes being cast for the AfD, or over ten million ballots. Far from being a niche or fringe party, the faction now serves as the official parliamentary opposition and recently polled in first place nationwide.
While eliminating your political opposition at the stroke of a pen may seem appealing to the German left, a prominent academic has now spoken out to warn against the move, predicting that undermining the basic principles of democracy could be detrimental to the country.
Speaking to Euronews, chair for Modern and Contemporary History at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Professor Andreas Rödder, is reported to have said: “The German Left should think carefully about what it is doing and what consequences it has for liberal democracy.”
The report cites Rödder as one of the “most important intellectuals” of Germany’s centre-right, so he is by no means an instinctive supporter of the AfD, which has eroded the support of the centrist Christian Democrats, just as populists have done to neoliberal “conservative” parties continent-wide.
Nevertheless, using language now increasingly heard in some European states, he told the publication: “A ban that would eliminate all votes for the AfD and thus lead to [a left-wing] parliamentary majority” would be a “sure path to civil war”.
Hellbound and Down 