2023-06-07 21:43:04
SShould the Alternative for Germany be banned as a party? The question how that AfD classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has been extensively debated, but the possibility of a party ban has hardly been discussed so far. The fact that a party is not banned does not say anything about how dangerous it is. A study by the German Institute for Human Rights, which monitors the human rights situation in Germany and is largely financed by the German Bundestag, comes to the conclusion that the legal and material requirements for a ban on the AfD would be met. A ban would “serve to halt the party’s growth in power and thereby weaken the organized dissemination of racist and right-wing extremist ideas,” writes author Hendrik Cremer, a lawyer. “The concrete danger that the AfD poses to free democracy based on the rule of law could be averted in this way.”
The party pursues a racist, national-völkisch orientation. It is based on a concept of people that judges people according to their racial value and is therefore incompatible with the concept of people in the Basic Law. Even in its policy documents, the AfD distinguishes between Germans who are bearers of German culture and those who are not part of the “native culture” and therefore threaten the “continued existence of the nation”, such as Muslims. In this understanding of the people, they also exempt Germans from their fundamental rights.
In addition, the party has continued to radicalize itself after being classified as a suspected case of extremist activity by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The party as a whole is now largely following the course of the Thuringian AfD chairman Bjorn Höcke, which is based on National Socialism and also aims at a tyranny. The danger emanating from the AfD for the free-democratic basic order is “meanwhile considerable”.
Two judgments of the Constitutional Court
But what are the requirements for a party ban? The possibility of party bans is an expression of a well-fortified democracy. Article 21 of the Basic Law lays down the requirements. There it says: “Parties that, based on their goals or the behavior of their supporters, aim to impair or eliminate the free democratic basic order or to endanger the existence of the Federal Republic of Germany are unconstitutional.”
In two judgments that has Federal Constitutional Court specifies what this sentence means. Two points have to be distinguished here. The first question is when a party violates the free democratic basic order with its program. The central criterion is human dignity, as the Federal Constitutional Court confirmed in the NPD ruling in 2017. “Human dignity is egalitarian; it is based exclusively on belonging to the human species, regardless of characteristics such as origin, race, age or gender,” the court wrote in its judgment at the time.
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