Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Here we are again. If anyone as much as hints at politics from the "other side", their account is immediately nuked. But it's all good when you guys do it. 80 highly political comments, all good. But no, hn is not political. And if it is, it surely is neutral and rational... Sure.

And no, this were no protests against the "far right". It was an attempt to get the only opposition party in Germany banned, which is more than scary.



> And no, this were no protests against the "far right". It was an attempt to get the only opposition party in Germany banned, which is more than scary.

The protests certainly weren't that. At the one I was at, the speaker made it abundantly clear that the protest isn't even against the AfD in particular (tho you could see lots of signs against them), but for democratic values.

What should be noted is that both the protests and recent calls for a ban of the AfD were sparked by a report [1] of a meeting where some neonazis (including someone quite high up in the AfD) were literally making plans for how to force people with a migration background (including those with nationalities) to leave Germany.

[1]: https://correctiv.org/en/top-stories/2024/01/15/secret-plan-...


Force people who aren't allowed out of the country, exactly as the law says.

The protests in my and the surrounding cities were extremely focused on the afd. On the current push to ban it. And making highly illegal (and absurd) comparisons between the afd and Nazi Germany. Which just for foreigners reading is super illegal and if done by the other side is punished by incredibly high fines and regarded as one of the worst crimes our justice system knows.


AFD is not the only opposition party in Germany.

The opposition in the German Bundestag is quite large. Of a total 736 seats there are 319 opposition seats. 78 of those are occupied by AFD politicians. The largest oppostion party is in fact the CDU/CSU with 197 members.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundestag


Yet curiously, all those parties share the same politics in the relevant topics, and all work together to prevent the afd to take part in any (federal or local) government. Even where they have massive votes. That is not how the party system is supposed to work.


Outcry of an affected one? Democracy has the achilles heel of aborting itself, not only once that happened. That is why of course parties that want to keep that system need to fight parties that want to abolish it - and til there nothing is wrong in the party system, but it a starts when such a party comes to real constitution changing power.

Just for the books, neither the demos (nor myself) were directly for forbidding the AfD (sure, a lot of people are), because that is not the solution to the underlying problems.


But the exact opposite is happening. By sabotaging the popular vote via cross-party alliances, democracy is already effectively abandoned in Germany. And those who did it make up false statements of that very party being anti-democratic. It's frightening, it's scary. I'm very scared for the future


Not letting an extremist party with 20% or unfortunately even a tad more into power is not sabotaging the popular vote? Each party is free to form a coalition or not, by their conditions and principals. The party has clearly shown and expressed that its anti-democratic. I mean, come on, you know you are too much Nazi if even Le Pen doesn't want to continue coalition with you [1], lol. Funny btw also how the NSDAP cried ANTI-DEMOCRATIC before they did what they did.. rest is history.

Besides that, stop dreaming on, we have too many far rights, but the 20% you call popular vote is still at least half protest votes, barely supporting most points of that party, but so frustrated with the other politics.

[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-25/france-s-...


The afd is not anti democratic. Otherwise they would be banned.


Even the parties in power hardly share the same politics on most topics.


I don't think that's true, at least if you look at the topics that Germans think are most important. Which are also the topics of the opposition. There we have statements of parties which are quite different. But effectively when they are part of the government, they all collapse to the same politics. In particular, the FDP and CDU are guilty of this. The others are completely interchangeable anyways.


HN doesn't nuke accounts. Also, who told you HN is not political or neutral? Did HN promise that at any point in time?


The guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), and also dang many many times.

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politic

> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.

And hn absolutely nukes accounts


“Only opposition party” is a fundamentally fascist way of seeing things.


I genuinely can't follow that train of thought




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: