Germany’s domestic intelligence agency last week classified the largest opposition party, the AfD, as “confirmed right-wing extremist.” This has intensified debates over whether or not to ban the party.
On Friday, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was classified as “confirmed right-wing extremist” by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Now, there has been a first fallout: two AfD politicians and parliamentarians are not allowed to accompany Hesse’s Minister for European affairs, Manfred Pentz, on a trip to Serbia and Croatia. Pentz explained that he could not expect international partners “to sit down at the same table with representatives of a party that has been confirmed as right-wing extremist.”
Further measures also threaten the radical right-wing party: several federal states want to examine whether being a civil servant, including judges, police officers, teachers, or soldiers, is still compatible with being a member of the AfD.
I’d love to see a conversation of smart people discussing how we solve the underlying problems of fascism
Solve anxiety. The hatred, the desire to put down others, all that is caused by anxiety short-circuiting people’s minds, acting on, put very hand-wavily, reptilian instead of higher mammalian instincts, including social ones1. Without underlying anxieties fascism has nothing to latch onto, and nothing to make even worse so it can propagate and perpetuate itself.
Key anxieties to address nowadays, and feel free to add your own, are economical security, “will I be poor in the future”, as well as social alienation, “can people be trusted”. Both require overcoming neoliberalism. Also, yes, solve anxieties regarding the future of the planet but that’s more about saving the planet so we may continue to live on it than anti-fascism for the simple reason that eco-fascism is overall negligible as a political force.
How? First of all, stop acting from anxiety.
1 Is that where the “lizard people” thing comes from?
I never thought that I’d be impressed by soap
Propaganda feeds the anxiety. We have to understand that propaganda is not free speech, and shut it down.
The other big source of anxiety is the capitalist tendency to drive working people into a situation of precariousness so that they remain compliant. Mitigating that requires a social safety net similar to that provided in northern-tier social democracies.