German Intel Chief Announces Plan to Surveil Far-Right AfD - The Atlantic - 0 views
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at a time when the AfD seeks to informally push the limits of acceptable political speech, where and how should the state draw the legal line between what’s allowed and what’s not, particularly when it comes to a party that sits in Parliament?
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“It shows you how difficult it is in a democracy … to define very clearly what is beyond the border of what’s acceptable,”
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It brings up the question, to what extent can an open society actually defend itself against its enemies?”
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After World War II, its constitution and institutions were designed with the underlying goal of preventing the rise of another Nazi regime
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is just one of many particular aspects of German democracy—some codified in law or in the constitution, others unwritten rules of political engagement—aimed at protecting democracy and combating extremism, particularly on the right.
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“The basic idea behind [the German political system] is that certain boundaries must be drawn within democracy, that should make it impossible for an antidemocratic force to take over power,”
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More than five million people supported the AfD in the 2017 federal elections, earning it 12.6 percent of the vote nationally and more than 90 seats in the German Bundestag. And as of October, the party is represented in all 16 of Germany’s state legislatures.
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Some of the party’s most visible politicians have promoted a revisionist view of the country’s dark past, most notably Björn Höcke, who leads the “Wing,
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He has called Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, a collection of thousands of gray concrete pillars down the street from the Bundestag and the Brandenburg Gate, a “monument of shame” and once downplayed and defended a Nazi activist’s Holocaust denial. The party co-leader, Alexander Gauland has also come under fire: He referred to the Nazi era as a mere “speck of bird poop” in the country’s otherwise illustrious history and said that Germany should be proud of its World War II soldiers.
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"It may be that the majority of the AfD doesn't agree with everything Mr. Höcke says. The decisive thing is that Mr. Höcke isn't marginalized and isn't isolated,”
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when it comes to involvement in certain topics or committee assignments—intelligence, or the culture committees that oversee museums and memorials, for example—lawmakers have rejected or delayed AfD nominees they find offensive or inappropriate.
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The AfD “triggers the kind of debate that you want to have in a live democracy, where people have to define the terms on which debate has to be had, again and again,” he told me. “It is also ... a signal that democracy wants to defend itself, no matter how difficult.”