If you could go back in time and ban the Nazi party, would you? Especially given all you now know about the misery the German political party would cause before and during a world war.
It sounds like a rather thrilling premise. Back to the Future 4: Marty McFly versus Adolf and his evil henchmen! But in fact, it’s a question far less adventurous German politicians, lawyers, journalists and judges have been debating for almost a year now.
Things escalated last month, when one of the country’s domestic intelligence agencies classified a local political party, the Alternative for Germany or AfD, as “right-wing extremist”. It’s seen as a possible first step towards an outright ban. Because of Germany’s history, local law can be used to outlaw political parties that seek to undermine or abolish democracy.
But it’s actually very difficult to make those bans stick. The AfD took court action which led to the designation being suspended until judges could review the spy agency’s 1100-page report, something that might take a while.
This month, another similar incident around an AfD-supporting publication called Compact also returned to court.
In July last year, the Ministry of the Interior banned Compact for acting “militantly and aggressively” against German democratic values, and for saying racist, nonsensical, inflammatory crap like – just one ugly example – immigrants were turning all of Germany into a big “rape zone”. The magazine’s circulation is around 40,000 but an accompanying YouTube channel gets around half a million views.
The Compact ban hadn’t really worked though. The magazine mounted a legal challenge and the ban was suspended. A final decision will be made in court imminently. Legal observers say the outcome, which should come by the end of the month, is uncertain.
So, too, is the plan to simply ban people, parties and publications you don’t like. Yes, the Germans like rules. But can a ban stop people from being racist, nonsensical or inflammatory? The AfD is currently the second most popular party in the country and one imagines Compact is only gaining more readers with all this free publicity.
Some local experts argue that such bans are the correct response, given Germany’s history. But as other analysts and politicians, including the country’s new leader Friedrich Merz, have argued, they can also backfire.
If the AfD is banned when one in five voters supports it, the party looks like the victim of undemocratic forces, they say. And as Compact’s editor-in-chief Jürgen Elsässer has said, stopping his noble efforts to just, you know, make stuff up, contradicts freedom of expression. “In a democracy, you can’t ban a magazine like Compact,” he insisted outside a courtroom before a hearing.
A ban is no magic wand. Far-right ideologies and the tawdry publications that make money from them will still be with us even if the AfD and Compact are outlawed.
Recently, a German acquaintance, shocked by some younger family members supporting the AfD, angrily asked them why they’d do such a thing.
Interestingly, apart from their desire for an “alternative”, the 20-somethings couldn’t really explain their worrying new political preferences. They have jobs and money, they don’t hate migrants or democracy, they don’t think Germany is a “rape zone”.
So maybe that’s the most important thing about this ongoing debate around bans, press freedom and politics. We’re being forced to interrogate all this. Should we have banned the Nazis? Would that have changed history? Or was something else – ignorance, racism, the shape of our relationships with our neighbours and our communities, maybe just good old human nature – to blame for the horrors that came next?
