Last week, a supersecret assessment of Alternative für Deutschland by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) leaked to the press. This document was supposed to prove, in excruciating detail, why the AfD is so evil and so fascist and so Nazi and so Hitler, and in this way make a preliminary case for banning the party. In fact its contents turned out to be such an arrant joke that it sapped all remaining momentum within the German political class to prohibit the AfD. I suspect even the “Right-wing extremist” classification of the AfD is now in jeopardy and may well be thrown out by the courts, that is how bad this much-heralded supersecret assessment turned out to be.
It took a few days for the full impact of the report’s idiocy to really sink in. That’s how it is with really stupid things – the incredulity they inspire must first dissipate. Finally, though, on Tuesday of this week, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt announced that the dubious evidence marshalled by the BfV was “not sufficient” to support ban proceedings. Dobrindt also said that the whole debate had become “counterproductive” and that it was time to begin finding ways to “end social polarisation”, whatever that means. Hours later, it emerged that Chancellor Friedrich Merz had ordered the entire CDU leadership never to say another word about banning the AfD. If everyone will just shut up, Merz believes his party can “avoid further debate” and avoid “giving voters the impression that the CDU is aiming to eliminate a rival party” – which is of course exactly what the CDU was hoping to do until the BfV fucked everything up with its retarded 1,108-page collection of dyspeptic Facebook-grade political takes.
There are still a few scattered calls for ban proceedings coming from the Left, but their heart isn’t in it and they don’t matter anyway. Without Union votes, no ban application will ever get to the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe. Raed Saleh, an extremely obnoxious politician who heads the SPD faction in the Berlin House of Representatives, whined to the press this morning about how “appalling and disgraceful” it is that outlawing the opposition is no longer on the table and that his party is now being asked to “engage in political debate” with the AfD instead. Federal Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, also of the SPD, likewise fervently hopes that the AfD might still be banned and she thinks the Interior Ministry should spend more time “evaluating” that BfV dumpster-fire assessment. Since Hubig is Justice Minister and not Interior Minister it doesn’t really matter what she thinks the Interior Ministry should be doing. I don’t understand why so many are citing Hubig’s remarks like they mean anything.
The implosion of this ban-the-AfD arc seems like kind of a big deal to me. Since 2021, the party has been ‘under suspicion’ of Right-wing extremism, but despite four years of snooping the BfV has been able to come up with nothing that is not some combination of legally irrelevant, harmless, banal, uninteresting, stupid and a complete waste of government resources. At some point, you have to put the question: if the AfD is so evil and so Nazi and so fascist and so Hitler, why can’t anybody, anywhere, adduce any evidence of its evil Nazi Hitler fascism?
The Federal Republic is not a serious country, so nobody has any interest in questions like this. Instead the exclusions, defamations and petty parliamentary attacks on the AfD continue apace, deprived of any real justification:
- The Greens in Saarland, dismayed at the dimming prospects of an AfD ban, have proposed that we should be working instead to strip key AfD politicians of their democratic rights, including their right to vote, their right to stand for election and their ability to hold public office. According to Volker Morbe, state Chairman of the Saarland Greens, this is necessary because of the dogshit BfV assessment that I very much doubt he has even read, and also because “the AfD is not a protest party, but an organised threat to our free democratic order”. Politics is a massively frustrating social and cultural process whereby a lot of people just keep saying the same refuted things over and over, sometimes for whole decades, and never ever stop or explain themselves or address any counterarguments ever.
- As has become customary, the cartel parties voted to deny the AfD a vice-presidential post in the new Bundestag. The vice presidents oversee parliamentary debate and issue calls to order. As long as the AfD has no representatives in this position, the vice presidents of the cartel parties can misuse their office to sanction the AfD selectively without fear of reprisal. They do this primarily by issuing AfD representatives an inordinate number of calls-to-order for the slightest trivialities. Pundits then argue on the basis of these disproportionately issued calls-to-order that the AfD has no respect for parliamentary debate and is therefore undemocratic. This tiresome game has been going on for years.
- The cartel has also joined forces to deny the AfD all committee chairmanships. These are traditionally awarded to each party in proportion to its strength in the Bundestag. As the second-strongest party, the AfD has a claim to six chairmanships. By keeping the opposition out of committee leadership, the cartel hopes to minimise the ability of the AfD to shape legislation and also to exercise oversight. As the largest opposition party, the AfD would ordinarily receive the chairmanship of the powerful Budget Committee. The idea is that the parliamentary opposition should control this committee in particular to exercise oversight over Government spending. Happily, the SPD, the CDU and the CSU helped exclude the AfD from this post, in one stroke both defending democracy and also clearing the way to spend taxpayer money with just a little bit less supervision. It is always fun to see how incentives align like that.
That is all a prelude to the latest childish pettiness – a kindergarten fight over who gets to play with the colourful wooden blocks.
Each party receives a large room in the Reichstag for internal discussion and debate. There are only a few such rooms, and they are awarded to parties pragmatically, based on their size. Since the government moved from Bonn to Berlin, the SPD has had room 3-S-001, a 462 square-metre hall. In the last election, however, the SPD was absolutely decimated; its remaining 120 representatives hardly justify retaining a room of this size, which ought to go to the AfD as the new second-largest party. The SPD, despite being the third-largest party, has literally refused to leave, insisting that the AfD should get a much smaller room, which offers half the space of room 3-S-001, and this for 25% more representatives.
By all accounts, the arrangement is unworkable, but the SPD refuses to give up its half-empty hall. Its primary argument – and I swear this is real and not just something I have made up – is that it has internally and unofficially named room 3-S-001 the ‘Otto Wels Hall’, and because Otto Wels is an SPD hero who spoke brave words against National Socialism in 1933 it would be inappropriate to give the room to the evil fascist Nazi Hitler party. This is like how I get to name my favourite park bench after Armin Mohler in my mind and then refuse to let anybody to the Left of pre-war Ernst Jünger ever sit there.
The SPD has been able to keep the AfD out of room 3-S-001 because, you guessed it, it has the total collusion of the cartel. The so-called Senior Council is responsible for logistical decisions like this and all the other parties on the Senior Council voted to stick the AfD in the over-small room, despite problems as basic as fire safety.
Intriguingly, the SPD manoeuvring has drawn fairly widespread condemnation. Handelslbatt, no friend of the AfD, complains that the SPD is engaging in an “unspeakable, transparent power game” with its schoolyard dispute, rightly pointing out that the AfD will be significantly hindered in its work by the terrible conditions. The progressive Tagesspiegel, even less a friend to the AfD than Handelsblatt, laments that the move will “fit seamlessly into the AfD’s narrative about the evil cartel parties”. Even Jan Sternberg, writing at the SPD-adjacent RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland, thinks it is a bad idea. Admittedly, he must first clear his throat with a great wad of projection, informing us that “the AfD is not a normal party”, among other things because “it does not view its rivals as competitors, but as enemies”, which is totally not a perfect description of the way other parties view the AfD. Otherwise Sternberg is angry because “the AfD has gratefully seized the opportunity” granted it by the stupidity of the SPD “to play the victim once again”. Our political discourse is like a middle-aged woman with a cluster-B personality disorder: the problem with victimising the AfD is it gives the AfD the chance to be a victim, which is very wrong of the AfD and totally their fault.
The case against the AfD has collapsed, but it is still the evil fascist Nazi Hitler party, and I conclude with three observations about this predictable but deeply stupid state of affairs:
1) The major reason parties do not change parliamentary procedure or ignore tradition to disadvantage the opposition is that they fear the day they are no longer in power and the erstwhile opposition does the same to them. With every passing day, the cartel parties increase the stress on the firewall and also the cost to them of its inevitable collapse, and they do this with absolute heedless abandon. I guess this is because they are really, really stupid. I can’t think of any other reason.
2) The AfD is the strongest party in East Germany, and all of these slights dealt to the AfD in the Bundestag feel a lot like a general and pervasive disrespect towards East German political preferences from the West-dominated establishment. Parties favoured by East German voters don’t get proper parliamentary facilities, they don’t get committee chairmanships and they have to be berated for their alleged democratic defects all the time, because East German allegiances to liberal democracy will always be suspect. It is a terrible look, and I cringe internally every time I hear West German pundits and politicians using AfD-exclusive terms like “the democratic parties” and “the democratic middle”. They should not talk like this.
3) These incredibly tone-deaf tactics merely increase the popularity of the AfD in East Germany. This dynamic has become so obvious that you’d be justified in saying that the AfD and the cartel parties have developed a perversely symbiotic relationship. The AfD depends on the exclusion, the insults and the foul plays to grow, while the evil fascist Nazi Hitler party is the only glue holding the cartel parties together. A lot of potential energy has accumulated in this profoundly stupid system and I have no idea what will happen when it is released, but I know things cannot endure as they are forever.
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