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Germany: Intelligence agency says entire AfD 'extremist' (www.dw.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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Germany's spy agency BfV has labeled the entirety of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as an extremist entity.

The BfV domestic intelligence agency, which is in charge of safeguarding Germany's constitutional order, said the announcement comes after an "intense and comprehensive" examination.

"The ethnicity-and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order," the BfV said on Friday.

Hopefully this inspires the other parties to to start the process to see the AfD banned. I know the report might not look like much, because of how obvious the findings are. But previous attempts at banning them have failed because such an official report was missing. So maybe our political system starts getting its shit together.

As we say in Germany: Hope dies last

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[–] 7 points 1 year ago (1 child)

It buys us time to elect a party capable of making good changes. As long as a conservative or centralist government is in power I would agree with you that the root causes will not change, in fact with Friedrich Merz and the grand coalition things will get worse faster. But if we can buy the population some time not going fully into fascism we can hopefully point to the decline into fascism brought on by the CDU/SPD/FDP and elect politicians that actually care to serve Germans.

I think it's important to treat the rise of fascism, the growing wealth inequality, the new wave of media, as a flu we have to fight but also get through. We need to build up anti-bodies against these things. That means taxing wealth, strengthening unions, breaking up monopolies, etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It buys us time to elect a party capable of making good changes.

    That's a nice thought and obviously you know more about the AfD and German politics than I do, but on the US side I can say that the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing. Even after two terms of G.W. Bush (2000-2008), one of Trump (2016-2020), one lucky escape* (Biden 2020), and Trump now in a 2nd term, the Democrats make the same mistakes that they always have. It's a safe bet that 2028 in the US won't be any better.

    It would be great to hear what kinds of remedies are under way in Europe to fix the status quo as you describe. If anything like that is happening, it doesn't make the news over here. I can say that nothing seems to be happening in the US beyond some meaningless posturing.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I think in the US we've seen a small rise in characters like Bernie pulling in new blood along the same ideological lines like AOC which didn't feel present 20 years ago. I also think Obama's tenure was sold to the public as a period of progress and change and I think in all actuality whatever good it did it wasn't enough to steer the boat. To me that was the sign that the US was likely too far gone from a political standpoint to recover. BUT if there is a chance, I think the past 25 years have been a clear enough signal to me that things must drastically change for things to get meaningfully better. Trump is the dark side of that "drastic change" coin and we've yet to see what the good side looks like but I would argue the US is running out of time to figure out which side of the coin is going to come up the winner.

    Britain is seeing a minor rise in Wealth Inequality awareness. I think that knowledge could be the exact anti-bodies the world needs distributed to reverse this course. In Europe wealth taxes, capital gains taxes, etc are higher than in the US but still not enough. Unions are also more prevalent, at least in Germany. I like to compare it by saying both the US and Germany are on the same graph of declining living standards and for the exact same reason, Germany is just a decade or two behind the US. We still have a lot of power in the hands of the people, but it seems to me that the media is still able to whip up 30-40% of the population into being conservative despite their best interests and something like another 30% being too moderate to make a difference.

    Right now we have a conservative government, things will only get worse while they're in power, but if the wealth disparity conversation continues anywhere in the world and billionaires are removed from the population, the entire world benefits. If the next progressive government enacts a tax plan like Die Linke's or takes step to removing land lords from existence or provides a UBI I think the results will speak for themselves rather quickly.

    It's a big pendulum, right now in Germany and the US it's swung to the right (yours further than ours) but it all comes down to how effective the left swing can be. Take hold of all the power you can at the local level, form a union, conquer the state level offices, and educate people. That's the best advice I can give.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Thanks for the good thoughts and it's interesting (I guess not that surprisng) to hear that Trump and MAGA are, for now, even worse than the AfD if I understand what you're saying. I'm pessimistic about local activism here being good for anything at the moment. Changes have to made at the federal level, which for me mostly means kicking out the Democrat establishment. The idea of AOC running against Chuck Schumer in a primary would be an example of that, though I don't know if she would have a good chance of beating him. I'd say she has no serious chance of being elected president in 2028. Of course I'm open to being surprised.

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