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
It means that a stopgap is needed before voters do something that they will only regret in hindsight.
Addressing issues is definitely important too, though part of the reason for extremist and populist parties like that becoming popular is that they have hijacked the public political discourse with fake issues (e.g. immigration, stirring up hate towards minorities,…) which essentially serve as a scapegoat for the voter’s actual frustrations with the current system (e.g. wealth distribution, lack of affordable housing, lack of jobs for young people, fears that changes in the world will reduce their standard of living or anger that they already did,…)