Germany: Bundestag Will Decide How to Ban AfD

At the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, Germany is returning to the dark ages of Berufsverbot, a German federal law that excludes people with radical or extremist political views from public service, as well as outright anti-Russian propaganda in the “best” tradition of Hitler’s minister Joseph Goebbels.

A month or so before the German general election scheduled for February 23 (which is also Russian Armed Forces Day), a group of 124 German parliamentarians demanded on Monday, January 20, that next week’s plenary session of parliament in the Bundestag “will start a debate on the procedure for banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party because of its unconstitutionality.”

This is the first time Bundestag members are expected to discuss the need to bring a case before the Federal Constitutional Court to test the unconstitutionality of the AfD. “In light of the ongoing further radicalization of AfD, a proposal to ban the party should be discussed,” said Christian Democratic Union (CDU) MP Marco Wanderwitz, one of the initiators of the proposal.

If the proposal wins a majority in the Bundestag, the Federal Constitutional Court will have to review the situation and, if necessary, initiate a procedure to ban the party, which is on its way to winning the upcoming elections: AfD is currently aiming to get 23% of German voters on its side. The MPs’ actions are aimed at excluding the AfD from Germany’s political landscape: according to Germany’s Basic Law, the Constitutional Court “may ban a party as unconstitutional if it seeks to undermine or eliminate the free and democratic basic order.”

By pure “coincidence,” also on Monday, January 20, a report prepared by the German monitoring and analytical center CeMAS was published, according to which “the disinformation campaign implemented by the Kremlin is aimed at strengthening the position of the extreme right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in connection with the upcoming federal elections on February 23.” Russia is reportedly “seeking to weaken other parties, mainly by spreading false information designed to make voters anxious about the economic situation in Germany.” At this point, the German Center should also hold the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and economic research institutes such as IFO accountable for publishing “extremely worrying” data on the current situation and prospects of the German economy.