New move to ban German far right

[Jimbuna]

Not clued up on German politics but this looks like a good idea if they can see it through this time unlike the 2003 attempt.

Hopefully Sky and some of our German members can add a bit of detail.

New move in Germany to ban far-right NPD party

The NPD wants to restore borders to what they were before World War II.
Germany's domestic intelligence agency says the party takes a favourable view of historical Nazism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20728552

[ETR3(SS)]

Regardless of a political parties beliefs, outlawing a particular party clashes with the ideals of democracy itself and is a step towards the state taking the power away from the people. Reichstag Fire Decree ring any bells?

Bad idea.
Let the idiots have their say, give them plenty of publicity and make sure they have every available platform from which to express their views.
Then between laughing at them for being brain dead racist scum prosecute the bloody fools every time their idiocy makes step outside the law and hit the pillocks in the pocket.

Banning the idiots is counterproductive, give them a spotlight and milk the fools.

[u crank]

Originally Posted by Tribesman

Bad idea.
Let the idiots have their say, give them plenty of publicity and make sure they have every available platform from which to express their views.
Then between laughing at them for being brain dead racist scum prosecute the bloody fools every time their idiocy makes step outside the law and hit the pillocks in the pocket.

Banning the idiots is counterproductive, give them a spotlight and milk the fools.

Give this man a cigar.

[Herr-Berbunch]

Surely if you ban the far right, you must ban the far left too?

[CCIP]

There's not that much difference between far left and far right if you go far enough - they both kind of just loop around into the same general craziness of "down with the man, destroy the enemy, we are right and we will win, violent revolution is the only way".

And, as per Tribesman's suggestion, the far left also does a very good job of exposing its own loony nature.

Resources that would be spent on enforcing bans are probably better-invested into public education, which generally helps people with critical thinking and therefore makes them better at detecting idiots.

[Skybird]

We do not talk a ban of any far right group, we do talk about the ban of a Nazi party. And the guilt of Nazi ideology is so much beyond all doubt as something in this world can be beyond doubt, This thinking of hate, racism and supremacism is responsible for the death of dozens of millions.

So, morally there is absolutely no alternative to ban it. One must ban it. Doing so is not limiting freedom and democracy - it is ensuring the protection of freedom and democracy.

Those of you making absolute claims about total freedom turning into total tyranny by banning Nazism (hey, I am reaching my beloved Popperian tolerance paradoxon again! ) , consider whether your forefathers have given their lives in defence of freedom given to Nazism so that it can sow its seed and have a richer and richer harvest every year (Nazism is on the rise), or whether they went to war for achieving the destruction of Nazism. When hearing comments like "banning a party means clashing with the ideals of democracy", then I think some hundred thousand British and American soldiers must turn in their graves in France, Italy, Germany, North Africa. I admit my tolerance for different opinions has found its limits here.

Beside the moral position, there is the pragmatical one. A group in hiding will just reorganise and form a new organisation under a new name, most likely. A ban will not disrupt the stream of new recruits Nazis are getting due to the social erosion in many areas of Germany, and Europe. So, a ban at least is unlikely to do any damage, and will probably not cause more concerns for the intel community tracking them, then they do right now.

An earlier attempt to ban them has failed, some years ago, due to police having infiltrators and informants in the organisation, which made the court slamming any evidence for the Nazis' anti-constitutional ambition over concerns that such evidence could have been fabricated by the police, and placed by it. It is said that this time this risk doe snot exist and that there are no informants. Which makes me wonder how the police then has done its work in recent years.

Nazism sucks. Any supremacist, racist, totalitarian ideology sucks, no matter how it is named. WWII costed 60 million people their lives. Nazi racism and megalomania established a terror and an industrialized automatization of horror that forbids any tolerance for Nazism to give it room for breathing and living. In the US, people get the death sentence for lesser crimes.

Zero tolerance for Nazism. Just this. What'S so difficult to understand in that? I would contradict myself if I slam religious fanatism, Muhammedanism, Stalinism or Maoism - but save Nazism from it. It all is totalitarianism par excellence.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

Banning nazi party, absolutely. I agree with that. What I'm wondering what will be banned next? What about those euroskeptics who are causing nuisance all the time?

[eddie]

I thought the Nazi Party was banned in Germany already.

[Cybermat47]

Originally Posted by eddie

I thought the Nazi Party was banned in Germany already.

They are. They just haven't realised it yet
But honestly, because they banned the Nazi swastika, now they're using 2nd Reich flags, which is desecrating the memories of the Germans who fought in WWI