ℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖@world: /# :blinking_cursor: on Nostr: How does banning a party work in Germany, and why do we even want to ban a party? a ...

How does banning a party work in Germany, and why do we even want to ban a party?

a simple explanation

One of the German intelligence agencies, specifically the "Bundesverfassungsschutz" (Federal Constitution Protection Agency), has produced a more than 1000 pages long report about the AfD, a party you surely know by now.
The report contains a thorough analysis of AfD's ideology and their connection to extremist groups all over the world.

In itself, this report and the work the agancy does is something like a warning system. The agancy itself can not make any decisions about the legitimacy of a party, and neither can they interfere or disrupt a parties political work. All they are allowed to do is to listen in and collect proof of a parties anti-democratic/unconstitutional tendencies and plans using intelligence gathering techniques like hiring informants, tapping phone lines, analyzing network traffic, etc... This is only allowed, if significant concerns have been raised about a parties or other groups members might be acting against our constitution or are planning serious action against our democratic state. If a preliminary analysis confirms those concerns, the agancy gets the power to use said surveillance against the party or organisation.
In the case of the AfD, they have been a suspected extremist party for several years now, allowing the agancy to surveil their communications and inner workings, until they came to the conclusion, that the AfD is indeed fighting our democratic state and are following a right-wing extremist ideology, something that is incompatible with our constitution.

Now that a flag has been raised, there are obvious reasons the party needs to be hindered from successfully eroding or even destroying our democracy. In Germany we have a paragraph in our constitution that allows for a ban of all parties, groups, and organisations that are aggressively attacking the foundation of our free democratic state, are planning to remove the constitution, or to significantly alter it by force or with other antidemocratic means.
How that works: The ONLY way to ban a party here in Germany, is to task our supreme court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) to review a parties incompatibility with our constitutional law and to declare a ban on them and all following organisation's trying to bring back that party. The review process often takes years and is extremely thorough since banning a party is a pretty extreme "ultima ratio" measure.

The idea behind banning a party is not to convince them or their voters that they were on the wrong path or to punish them in favor of other parties. The paragraphs for banning a party, group, or organisation state explicitly that a ban is only constitutional when it is done to protect the state, it's institutions and citizens from harm coming from said party, etc.
The voters will still be there. The members will still be extremist. But the party as an organized way of preparing harmful actions will be destroyed and all following attempts to bring it back under a new name, with a new image, etc. will be outlawed as well.

Last but not least, our German supreme court, which specializes explicitly on dealing with issues related to the constitution and the constitutional rights of the people, will not start the process of banning a party on its own. It needs to be tasked with that by either the parliament (Bundestag), the senate (Bundesrat), or the acting government (Bundesregierung).

After having been tasked with the review, the court will start a long investigation into the organisation, in our case the AfD, and will collect evidence that supports the claim that they are unconstitutional. For that, it also uses the 1100-page report of the "Verfassungsschutz", police reports, other court cases against the party, etc.

Should the court decide the AfD is actually unconstitutional, which in my opinion, and the opinion of many experts here, is highly likely, the party will be banned and ordered to seize all its operations, and to disband their headquarters and all other places they've worked in. They will also be forbidden to found a new party trying to replace it. If the party continues to organize action, not as a party any more but as a banned organisation, law enforcement will enforce the ban and disrupt any action taken by members of it, that contribute to the goals of the former party.

Now that the report is public, the pressure on our government, parliament and senate is rising to ask the Supreme Court to review a ban of the AfD. If this actually happens remains to be seen.