> the center-right party copies the far-right messages in hopes of gaining the votes of the far-right voters, then enters a coalition with them as the "voice of reason to reign them in", to ultimately just achieve normalization of those narratives, a hollowed-out democracy, destroyed political discourse and an empowered far-right party.

Now imagine you had only a center-right and a far-right party, and you have the U.S. :/

The problem in Germany has been that there was no center-right party. Center-left (SPD) and center-right parties (CDU with Merkel) met somewhere in the middle, which was a problem for right-of-center voters - there are many of them and they needed something reasonable to vote for and there wasn't. The CDU moved more to the right again, and it should because there was a giant hole in the political spectrum.

Well, someone has to represent these voters, or they will co-opt another party or put up their own candidate. And the government can’t just keep banning them, or they’ll catch bystanders (“dog-whistles”) and look super illegitimate (when you prosecute people for holding an empty sign, like Russia, you’re the baddie). Already I believe banning the AfD is stupid and would backfire egregiously in a few years at most.

Ultimately, you can’t ban ideas in a democracy, unfortunately even the idea to abolish it. What you can do it make that process harder and slower, so your opponents lose power before they succeed. Or, you know, convince people to drop the idea altogether.

"far right" as a term can cover a multitude of things, some quite reasonable and some that you don't really want.

Welcome in current Polish politics. Konfederacja from our ground in currently playing to be buddy buddy with winning party and is treated as semi part of current government

The AfD is clearly anti-democratic and will try to destroy our society if they are voted into power. CDU/CSU makes terrible politics but they are not fascist.

People putting those parties into the same category is a significant part of the problem.

That's a interesting theory. Usually what happens is the opposite: a right-wing party will pretend to be right-wing to win the election and then when in power it will do whatever the left-wing party does.

For example, they will promise you to kick one billion immigrants, and then when in power they will say that they actually can't do that because of law or economic concerns… and then they will increase the rate of immigration.

I largely agree with you, but the problem is when they try to get away with being racist in private and hide or obscure their views in public.

He might have just been hooked on snake.

In this email leak, it is all emails from members of the party, not just elected officials. It is also emails sent from the outside to party members. Is that going too far? In term of transparency, allowing the public to see everything that happens and communicate within a political party would give some insight in what kind of people a party is made from.

It is definitely an interesting discussion to have in where the lines should be drawn in transparency and public insight into political landscape and behavior inside it. In Sweden, every person, regardless of position, has their income as public information. How much a person pay it taxes is also public information, so in some sense you can guess how much assets a person own and how much they have in the bank based on what they declared.

> I do think politicians should waive some privacy rights when elected. Same thing for their bank accounts and other assets.

This would make surveillance laws socially much more acceptable. The politicians will claim:

- "We are surveilled anyway, so we can pass surveillance laws against citizens, too.", or

- "The citizens really ask for surveillance laws against specific groups (in this case: politicians). So, we will, of course, give the citizens what they want and pass surveillance laws against potential terrorists/child abusers/[whatever is currently fashionable]".

If you consider privacy or the right not to be surveilled to be important, this better should hold for the enemy (politicians).

And a [flagged] discussion linking to the source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50157664 (13 hours ago, 69 comments)

> This site is an index. The complete original emails — full headers, bodies and attachments, with DKIM signatures intact — are in the torrent.

Weird, if the original messages have been published, why do both OP and the EuroNews article linked by the GP say that "Hackers have published 281 GB of AfD emails as AI summaries" and "A website published what it said were summaries of some of the emails but not the original messages"?

That's not the whole thing. Looks like it's mostly meta data. The whole thing is some 200G+ bittorrent.

I have yet to see any actual data of this leak, even though it's all over the news.

Yes, obviously. Another article on the same news but readable without registration.

If the party is actively working, in a combative and aggressive manner, to damage or destroy the democratic constitutional system in Germany, the constitution allows for this party to be banned.

Popularity isn't a limit here, at least not in this direction. If the party were irrelevant, it would prevent the ban since the party would not be able to achieve those anti-constitutional goals anyway.

History should be a lesson on why. Wouldn't be the first time a German far right party became a dictatorship from a minority rule.

The exact purpose of a constitution is to protect people from voting their rights away. There is lots of history establishing why successful democracies need strong constitutions.

Because Germany has laws specifically to ban parties that are shown to undermine democratic order, specifically to stop another situation where they gain a majority vote.

Germans, of all people, should know the danger.

They don't get a majority. They get 28% of the votes at current polls.

Democracy is not only rule of majority. It is also protection of the constitution and minorities. So that everybody can live their life as they please. The AfD clearly is against all of that. Our constitution offers a way to defend against these forces and it is time that the process is started.

By following Article 21(2) of the Basic Law and Sections 43 et seq. of the Federal Constitutional Court Act

well for example in Romania (EU member state), they canceled the presidential elections (2024) after they were won by a person no one knew anything about.

he posted & advertised heavily nationalistic videos on tiktok and gained huge following.

court said the election had been affected by irregularities, alleged foreign interference, and problems with campaign financing and online campaigning.

> How can you ban a party that receives the majority vote of the population?

Why not?

not a majority, just biggest share

And do you also include the forced deportation of people with non-German ethnic backgrounds, even if they are citizens of Germany, in these "mildly conservative views"?

I have grown tired of people not accepting that a party can truly be far right and try to put it off as being a shift in perception of the general public.

Are you saying the AfD represents "mildly conservative views"?

What condition the Europe is in and in comparison to what?

The AfD became relevant precisely because the conservatives (CDU) were not far right enough. They exist to be more right wing than the conservatives. They are as blatently far right as it gets.

Similar to the UK. Neither cons or labour want to take action against reform, because then it labels them as the party that is overreaching

I'm not here to be an AfD apologist. I think a lot of their rhetoric is awful. However, in German constitutional law, there is a very high bar to ban a political party. In defense of the German Constitution, I think it is a good thing that there is a very high bar. If the bar was low, it could easily be abused.

Two important facts:

    > Under Article 21, Paragraph 2 of Germany’s Basic Law (Constitution), a party can only be banned if it actively seeks to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order or threaten the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany.

    > Proving the Whole Party is Extremist: Courts require proof that the entire party—not just individual members or radical factions—is systematically anti-constitutional.

    > In the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court has banned only two political parties:
    > Socialist Reich Party (SRP) (Sozialistische Reichspartei): A neo-Nazi and far-right party considered a successor to the Nazi Party, banned in 1952.
    > Communist Party of Germany (KPD) (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands): A Stalinist party, banned in 1956.

The entire point of a constitution is to remain unchanged.

The constitution protects people from voting their rights away forever just because they look for a quick solution. This has happened in the past, and to prevent it from happening again, the constitution has been strengthened to the point of banning anticonstitutional parties.

> Whatever happend to Voltares "I disprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it"?

O tempora, o mores. Back in Voltaire's (sic) days, this would have been an issue between debating gentlemen, not one of massive spreading of hate. It's the fault of media and internet, I know, but that's not so easy to stop.

Voltaire never said that. However I understand your point, the truth is Europe has been on the precipice of far-right rule for decades and the only solution the European democracies found has been to push for banning, cutting funds, censoring the beast.

Anything but address the actual issues that helped catapult them to the top.

Free speech in Germany is limited. Hate speech, nazi slogans, etc... are banned.

And regardless, banning a political party (the process for which is set in Germany's constitution) is not the same as banning its former members from speaking.

Well, given it is in none of his published works: nothing?

Even if the quote was correct, it is about free speech. Being elected and holding political office is beyond that.

It's usually superseded by "don't piss on my head and then tell me it's raining"

Added to that, these parties often get helped by Russian troll farms. A divided Europe that is occupied by infighting is great for them.

> By the way, defund billionaires. The Epstein class is behind the funding of these extremist dangerous parties.

I am increasingly aligned to the position that every billionaire is a policy failure.

Wealth inequality of the degree we have today is not sustainable.

The lesson the US should have taken from that period in Germany is that if a party leader attempts a coup once, you should not let them and their party get elected to finish the job.

You definitely can, and should.

Letting bigots and racists continue to express these views is extremely problematic.

What? The opposite is true. It was treating Hitler with kid gloves that enabled his takeover.

Even a tolerant society has to be selectively intolerant to preserve itself. The goal is maximally tolerant, not absolute tolerance.

Hypothetically, should a party running on a platform of ending democracy be allowed to participate in democracy? Should they be allowed to end it for all future and current citizens?

Does the current USA smell democratic to you? Are the powers there working or just even more generalised corruption?

Democracy is not only rule of majority. It is also protection of the constitution and minorities. The AfD clearly is against hates both, is not democratic and should be banned.

I wonder what is the longterm plan of those that want to ban the party. We have a situation where (depending on the state) more than 40% of the voters vote AfD. If you ban the party, where would one expect the current voters to go to? I don't think they would vote center-left then...

It's called wehrhafte Demokratie - not easy to translate, something like fortified democracy. The paradox of tolerance is not the clever counter-argument that you think it is, it's a general problem. An open, permissive system cannot allow a closed system to use its freedoms against it to replace it.

Come on now. AfD is not arguing for or against social or economic issues. This isn't a spat about budgets, or energy.

AfD leaders want to bring back the German nationalism of the 30s/40s, fullstop.

Can we please stop pretending this isn't the case? It's so tiring.

"People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people"

  > The paradox of tolerance is a philosophical concept suggesting that if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945),[1] where he argued that a truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance. Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices.

Democracy is not only rule of majority. It is also protection of the constitution and minorities. The AfD clearly is against both and thus is not democratic and should be banned.

Nations should act in the interests of their people. Not everyone else.

I'm not sure restricting immigration or being selective who is especially bad and pretty much every country does it to some extent. It's other stuff associated with that like buddying up with / getting paid by Putin, trying to overthrow democracy and the like that is more of a problem.

But legally pretty perilous regarding copyright and personality rights.

By some measures... yes? Take slavery, which would be considered even more right wing than whatever the current US "far right" is, but was more or less tolerated before abolition. Does that make all parties of the time far right?

>This use of language waters out the meaning. Just like calling everyone commies and nazis... also I think it'll have the opposite effect you hope.

Ah so you want the media to not report on the replacement of western populations with third world migrants nobody voted for. Got it.

Let me tell you a secret, most people even more so none Europeans use derogatory terms of that level daily in their private conversations. Considering the rape rates in the EU you can't begrudge some Germans having low opinion of Muslims.

The EU is a little bit more tame than the US, but not by much, also those are private emails, not public statements. My point is using such language is (unfortunately) not something "scandalous".

Worth considering Spain. Spain should be much wealthier than it is. And that's due to Franco.

Let's be crystal clear, parties like the AfD don't care either. History is chock full of examples where far-right leaders got into power and broke most of their promises and achieved the polar opposite for most of their followers. For example Trump campaigned on "eggs too expensive" and promptly passed legislation that allowed the farms to price-fix even harder leading to "eggs even more expensive". The same has happened again and again with the "let's make the country secure again" claims, e.g. starting WW2 did not in fact make the average German's life safer.

I don’t really understand what you’re asking, but I don’t think the AFD is really a unique phenomenon. The popularity of right wing parties is across the entire West and IMO it’s for the exact reasons I just wrote.

Harris lost to Trump in 2024 for what I see as exactly the same reasons.

It's a little condescending to treat millions of people as puppets of billionaires. Are there not billions behind the media you consume? (ycombinator...)

A lot of 'extreme views' being bandied around are not really any different to what was spoken about in the 90s, tbh. Even Tony Blair was making comments on topics like immigration which would make today's audience blush.

We've had decades of centrist governments all throughout Europe. Do they not shoulder any blame for the rise of the far-right? Or is it only the "billionaires" who have agency?

The great depression was just as much a wealth concentration at the cost of the 95% as is happening now, history will repeat itself. Speculation followed by wealth inequality followed by tarifs followed by reduced international trade. Sounds familiar.

You're probably too well informed. Most people aren't.

> the AfD doesn't even pretend to care about normal people.

It explicitly cares about people who identify as traditional Germans, who in their own eyes are "the normal people".

On the economic side, Gemini tells me that they favour deregulation, smaller government, and reducing bureaucracy for small and medium-sized enterprises (Mittelstand). They also want to increase family support payments to incentivise having children. These are all economic policies that make sense to conservative-minded "normal people".

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv98ze40jz18o

Correct, everyone is paying more except the top 1% under Trump.

You’ve taken the exact opposite point from the comment I wrote. Please try again.

too much hassle especially considering I dont live in Germany and I was only mildly interested, closing the tab is much easier

They've already been investigated by security agencies in Germany

If you allow me to play spin doctor:

Just claim that the anonymous entity wasn't anonymous. Claim it was your enemy. "Look, the Antifa hacked us. We need to ban them just like the US did"

Or blow it up bigger. "Look, the system itself is corrupt and 'the left/the altparteien/whoever' stopped using democratic measures to compete against us. That is because they cannot win on their own merit. Meaning that the system and its safeguards are meaningless."

Something like that. Given more time, one could flesh out this back-of-the-napkin thing into a likely working strategy.

___

Fascism fundamentally isn't data-driven but narrative-driven. So data alone is not going to work against it (though it is a valuable pillar).

Yeah that's also what I thought the idea is behind that, but I'm afraid that at this point, a Verbotsverfahren will not work out the way people hope it will.

If you look at the numbers of votes they're getting, you see a group of people that is so large, it will be self-sustaining, instead of fizzling out. Or so is my prediction.

Idk. I just don't see this ending up in the way we want things to end up. It's not going to affect me personally all that much, because I can be "passing" so to speak, but that's not exactly what one should strive for tbh. Keeping your head down and not caring as long as you're fine, I mean.

You don't need more evidence for a Verbotsverfahren. That's not the reason one wasn't already started. It's the unwillingness of the parliament to initiate one

Jews are grandfathered in, muslims are the new enemy.

It's hilarious watching old European neonazis allying themselves with Israel today.

The confusion is palpable.

The reality is that quite a bit of islamic attitudes and culture don‘t fit in in the west. We‘ve not figured out how to counter this yet.

There are parties like this in every European Country. E.g. RN in France, FPÖ in Austria, Fidesz in Hungary, PVV in Netherlands and so on. These populist parties get a lot of votes, mainly because the parties that have been in charge for the past 10-30 years have failing to address issues of voters. Doesn't mean that these ones are any better - they arent.

Honestly because they are fucking nazis in disguise, and it’s clear just by scratching the surface. The dog whistles alone were enough.

It’s obscene to think they would be so successful however without Russia’s active role in it.

the timing is fortunate then in my opinion :)

In Germany, a lot of things related to these themes are illegal to say.

In all fairness, handing over emails does seem like the central topic here.

Left and communist views have failed. Hence such parties rise. If the centrist parties can take bold decisions, such parties won't be needed.

I mean if 1/3rd of the people have that view then by definition it’s not “far” anything, no matter what the view is. It’s okay to just say you disagree with them