This is great news. However, I can’t help but fear that people went back to their private lives afterwards thinking “well done, we defended democracy”. Where to go from here? How to keep people engaged in fighting the right? What are realistic next steps for those of us wanting to do more than voting and the occasional demonstration, *other than violence?*On another note, how might one approach minorities concerned by the indicated policies to join the movement?
It’s hilarious because the left can’t admit any of their own mistakes. For example, the mass migration into western nations. People said this would cause crime to increase, homelessness, economic turmoil, etc and were simply branded racist for their valid concerns. Now all those things are happening and the left still can’t admit to any of it being true. They just bury their heads in the sand and keep yelling “racist!” and “fascist!” if people don’t want millions of foreigners shipped into their home town and supported by their tax money. Oddly they themselves are the ones promoting racists and fascists if those are the only people who are willing to listen to their legitimate concerns. The left is completely delusional on an individual level and even when you point this out to them, support it with facts, they never admit fault or reconsider their positions. Right now the left media is sensationalizing “fascists” but not covering the crisis caused by their own policies. What do they expect that to result in?
Again, the left brought in tons of “migrants” who wouldn’t even be coming if western nations hadn’t blown up their countries, people said wait a minute, why are we letting people come here from the very countries we are supposedly fighting a “war on terror” against and blowing up all their stuff, won’t they be upset with us, aren’t they incompatible with western values, won’t they compete with us for jobs, won’t we have to spend our taxes supporting them? All of these things and sure enough there are a ton of problems now as a result of the actions of the left and when a political party rises in power to stop them the left starts yelling “facists!” Do they really not understand that people would rather vote for fascists than have their countries destroyed and overrun with people who literally hate them and their way of life?
The left wants people to peacefully accept the destruction of their society. They refuse to look at any of the damage their policies have caused. Honestly my only conclusion is that this is simply the powers that be setting people up to implement fascism.
The most entertaining part is now they’re talking about banning the party that is offering to counter these policies. As if the party came out of a vacuum and simply wants to get rid of all immigrants. The left is incapable of seeing it’s own role in things. Now they want to ban a political party, censor it, spy on it, etc while calling them fascists as they themselves pull out every authoritarian trick in the book crushing the will of the people as they bray about protecting democracy.
See Trudeau violating the constitution, stealing people’s money and locking them out of banking, just because people successfully protested against him and his COVID nonsense. The left IS the fascist authoritarian state they keep claiming people should be scared about if the right wins.
They want mass deportations of German Citizens with the wrong skin colour and People who don’t think like them That’s textbook fascism. Also either they compete for Jobs with us (Good, we have a shortage of workers as Germany is overaging), or they siphon of tax money. You need to decide which scapegoat you use
It doesn’t matter if it is fascism. That’s the whole point. The left is refusing to admit that their policies are having a negative impact on people and they’re embracing fascism because at least those people are agreeing that it is a problem.
Western nations are playing the “we have no workers” game after decades of stagnant birth rates because people have no money. Not because people just suddenly decided they don’t want a family. Parroting this is just more of the same lies that people are sick of hearing.
The government can use policies to boost birth rates domestically and it should be doing so sooner rather than later if they are sincere. Instead, they are keeping the youth impoverished, and telling them the solution to their problems is immigrants. Not only that but then they try to play on their sympathies saying they’re “asylum seekers” when those SAME governments are the ones making them refugees by destroying their countries. How does it make sense to blow up Syria, try to topple the government, and then welcome in their “refugees”? That is extremely paradoxical and I don’t think you’ll find any historical precedent for welcoming in the very people you’re dropping bombs on. It’s obvious those people are extremely resentful and have no interest in assimilating and that is exactly what the evidence supports. Using Germany as an example it would be like welcoming in Russian immigrants while at the same time you’re doing all you can to kill Russians and destroy their infrastructure. Where are all the Russian asylum seekers and refugees being ferried into Germany by international organizations? Why is it just hand picked countries this is being done in? Because it’s all a sham and the left refuses to admit what is obvious.
Immigrants can both take work AND siphon tax money. It is propaganda, which is used often, to try to say “they’re saying X but Y so which is it? They can’t both be true!” Actually, yes, they can both be true. Bringing in foreigners to work for dirt cheap and live in subsidized housing is exactly that and it’s the kind of thing people are sick of seeing. Meanwhile, where are the politicians working on raising western birth rates?
Have any politicians proposed sweeping reforms to child tax credits? Are they working hard to fix the housing situation for young people so they can have the actual space to house a family? No. They aren’t. They’re working as hard as they can to blow up other countries, bring those populations in, pay them nothing, use tax money to support the corporations, and tell everyone that if anyone resists them it’s because they’re racist fascists.
So, people are deciding, well I guess I’m a racist fascist because that is the only avenue I’m being given. Certainly the left isn’t interested in addressing any of the problems they’re creating they just call you a racist if you talk about the out of control rape and other issues.
There WILL be a fascist take over and dumb people ignoring legitimate concerns of the general populace and labeling them fascist will be the cause of it. You’re building those fascist parties up every day when you keep parroting propaganda and ignoring what is obvious to the average person. They will flock to whoever will promise a solution even if it’s ethnic cleansing. To me it seems entirely manufactured and that this is the desired conclusion.
Western populations are so exploited they won’t even reproduce anymore due to lack of resources. Their own government is telling them not to worry that they have no chance of having a family. Don’t worry because there are some other people who have been horribly exploited in places like Africa and the Middle East who we can bring it to replace you. If you think this is a problem it’s because you’re racist.
The left is literally the dumbest most propagandized people I’ve ever seen that they go along with this. You have to either be incredibly stupid or incredibly evil to keep parroting stuff like “we need more people” in response to the government fucking everyone, literally everyone on the whole planet, for the sake of further concentration of power and wealth. Imagine seeing this and going along with it while pretending you’re fighting fascism.
If you had to boil down, the german constitution into one short sentence, it would be ‘Never again’.
So displaying the german flag at such an occasion, is acually one of the few occasions where it is appropriate to use it in an political context IMHO.
And as a bonus point it gives nazis a taste of there own medicine, by taking symbols & language used by the opposition for your own movement. But in an non-stupid way this time.
That video seems cut off. Zizek never gets to explain how Beethoven was criticizing anything with the second part of his symphony. How can lyric-less music criticize anything?
I believe at the time the Church had rules about musical timing for its music and things like certain chords and i think 3/4 timing as a whole were considered a sin.
Reminds me of Oswald Mosley (leader of the British fascist party c. 1930s) saying that it didn’t matter if they won tomorrow or after a hundred years. Thankfully he was wrong about winning… but truly these fascist fuckers will always pop up somewhere.
We know it’s a bad idea, we know it’s a dangerous idea, we know it’s a deadly idea, and a complete failure in practice. Sign me up! /s
Let’s just appreciate for a moment how great of a choice Ode to Joy is for the European Anthem. It’s a very memorable tune which honestly kind of slaps in a way that few anthems do.
Still not as great as La Marseillaise (which is not even a song, but a war chant meant to be hollered), but one of the best anthems out there nonetheless.
The Pete Seeger version that I’ve often heard sometimes called Ode to Joy/Russian Song has fantastic lyrics. Not speaking German, I’m wondering if these folks are singing the same translation?
Well, you should read the Partys Program, look info what their leaders say and realize it was a mistake. If you think they are right in their views, you may just be an asshole, sry about that.
Well, I did read their 2023 Party Program, and I’m afraid it’s pretty polished to appear mainstream. I was shocked on how many points appealed to me on first glance, like plebiscites, the prohibition for judges to be affiliated with a political party, universal basic income or transparent financing of political parties.
You have to actually study it, interpret it with their mindset in mind and compare it to the populist playbook used in countries like Italy, Hungary or Poland to detect the underlying fascism. It’s a shiny piece of deception.
That’s the “neat” thing about the party and their voters: They are used to not base things on facts. So they write one thing into their party program and do the other thing or not, just like they want and they promise a third thing in conflict with the first two. E.g. according to their program oft 2023 the reforms they want would help the rich, but all their voters (which are poor on average) believe that their polices would help them.
Btw some crazy points from their program:
Abolish any inheritance tax
Set a total max for the amount of money you have to pay taxes for, so if you are rich earn more and don’t pay a cent!
They went from “there is no climate change” to "climate change always happened, we have nothing to do with it, CO2 is a essential part of live, we should make more!“
Stop all wind energy projects
"Landwirtschaft: Mehr Wettbewerb. Weniger Subventionen” Which translates to “More competition and less subsidies for agriculture” and still they manage to claim the farmer protests for them.
Kids born in Germany should not have a chance to German citizenship if the parents do not have it. Regardless if they live their whole live here.
Ignore EU policies when convenient, reimplement border controls (or in other words, leave the EU)
Strive for assimilation of migrants (Yes the use the word “Assimilation”)
Only grant asylum to people which can fill job roles where there is a provable gap in demand and local workforce.
Do not mention homosexuality in school
Do not grant any abortion rights, force any consultant to persuade a pregnant women to keep the child.
And I could go on. I think its pretty obvious what kind of political party they are, even from their program. Sure they have some good points in there too, but so do other parties which are not far-right and science deniers.
<span style="color:#323232;">Abolish any inheritance tax
</span>
That not seems that crazy. I mean, someone lost his beloved one and in addition to his grieve he has to pay a tax. Right…
You lost your parents and you pay the state for the privilege to keep their inheritance… Sounds good this way ? (and no, to the rich people it change nothing)
<span style="color:#323232;">“Landwirtschaft: Mehr Wettbewerb. Weniger Subventionen” Which translates to “More competition and less subsidies for agriculture” and still they manage to claim the farmer protests for them.
</span>
On this I have a double feeling. On one hand I have seen the disasters of the subsidies to the agricolture like the milk quotas and the farmer paid to not cultivate the field while importing product from outside, on the other hand this make sense only if you eliminate the unfair competition from outside and make everyone play by the same rules.
<span style="color:#323232;">Kinds born in Germany should not have a chance to German citizenship if the parents do not have it. Regardless if they live their whole live here.
</span>
Stupid idea, I agree.
<span style="color:#323232;">Ignore EU policies when convenient, reimplement border controls (or in other words, leave the EU)
</span>
As long as they are prepared to be ignored by the others… and no, border control does not means to leave the EU. It means check what and who enter in your country, because I don’t see the problem with border controls that keep the illegal people and goods out of my country.
But I see what they mean and I agree with you.
<span style="color:#323232;">Only grant asylum to people which can fill job roles where there is a provable gap in demand and local workforce.
</span>
Mmm… asylum should be granted only to people in danger for some serious reason, in other words it should be an exceptional case, not the norm. I agree it is really stupid to tie it to fact that who ask for it should be able can cover for a local workforce gap.
So yes, they have some very stupid ideas, but other does not seems too bad and I am sure that if some other parties would propose them in a better language they would be approved by a large part of the population.
But as long as the people (and who is in charge) don’t understand that afd and all the parties like it are a consequence and not a cause the problem will be never solved.
Just so you know, inheritance tax in Germany inly kicks in, if the inheritance is over 500.000 Euros and then it is 20% I believe. So your argument actually falls a tad short here.
Also the current competition in agriculture only promote the commulation of farms into companies. The farmers who actually need support don’t get it, which further accelerates the industrialisation of farming. Which is what the protest is about, not that many farmers get that they are being exploited by their own lobbyists and the AfD.
Lastly, while the AfD has for some time been saying they want the EU to stay and Germany being part of it, they are now discussing a German Exit. As if that did any good for the UK. It would likely be even worse for Germany. My guess is, that they felt offended by Meloni for saying that they would not work with the AfD on anything.
Just so you know, inheritance tax in Germany inly kicks in, if the inheritance is over 500.000 Euros and then it is 20% I believe. So your argument actually falls a tad short here.
I don’t understand your point. I get that the limit is high but it does not make any difference: you lost your parent and you need to pay for the privilege to keep their inheritance. How many money you could or want to tax is irrelevant in my opinion. It is a tax that should be deleted for everyone.
Also the current competition in agriculture only promote the commulation of farms into companies.
Which can be not that bad to me
The farmers who actually need support don’t get it, which further accelerates the industrialisation of farming.
Maybe. But what the subsidies have done until now are only damages: they have not helped the farmers and have not stopped the industrialisation.
I don’t really know what the solution could be but to me the subsidies are not the solution.
Lastly, while the AfD has for some time been saying they want the EU to stay and Germany being part of it, they are now discussing a German Exit. As if that did any good for the UK. It would likely be even worse for Germany
True, but this is a consequence, not the cause.
For example, why do you think that Meloni won last time ? Not because suddently 30% of the Italian population became fascist but because she aknowledged the problems people have and that the left (and the EU) choose to ignore. Remove the causes (read: do what is good for your people) and you remove the ones who want to destroy EU because people would not have a reason do destroy it.
It's beautiful. Many of the comments here demonstrate that Lemmy still needs to learn how to not feed the trolls, and I wonder if it's something similar that's needed in real life politics.
No ofcourse not. But Germany isn’t a nazi regime today like it was back then. It’s “just” one party that has grown the past years. Those protests show that the silent majority won’t let them assume power and that we have learned from history.
Germany has a very strong democratic system and there are a lot of democratic ways of getting rid of such a party in a democratic way. For example it is likely that their funding is beeing stopped, so they have to finance themselves. Additionally it’s highly likely that part of their party is being forbidden. And Germany even talks about forbidding the whole party. That’s something the court has to decide.
This is the action. It pushes back against fascist talking points in the public discourse and makes it harder for fascist to make themselves seem publicly accepted.
And you want to give the state the power to get rid of any group it deems undesirable? Or do you want to break the law to get rid of them yourself? This protest is the sign that the majority will not go along with fascist talking points, it makes clear that those talking points have no space in public discourse. This is how democracy is supposed to work.
The Nazis here meet in random places like mountain ranges at night time and the rare time they pop-up in protests it’s with police protection and unannounced beforehand.
Seems ridiculous, but true. By the way, by your own definition, you are cool with Nazis too, since you killed zero Nazis and let them even have nice gatherings in forests and mountains - perfect place to assault people if you ask me.
How do you think it started in Germany? Much easier to get them now than to wait till they gain some power like they did in Germany.
Going trough your comments, it gets clear that you are just into simplistic black and white thinking and solutions that sound easy. So a perfect target for populist. For some reasons you just happen to stumble on the more right side of history, without any understanding why nazis are bad. I’m not even sure you know what nazis are. But for sure, why don’t just all good guy come together an kill all the bad guys?
I'm action orientated against decades of inaction by representative governments captured by corporate interests, crazy that.
Almost like we're heading towards the extinction of our species or something, and we have people like you defending these problems with a "just wait until it gets even worse" approach to taking urgently needed action.
I don't even need to go through your profile to know what sort of person you are, it's quite telling from this miserable conversation.
Almost like we’re heading towards the extinction of our species or something, and we have people like you defending these problems with a “just wait until it gets even worse” approach to taking urgently needed action.
Like I say, you think in simple extremes. But there is actually quite some room, between kill nazis and do nothing. And again - you are the one arguing to wait till it gets worse yourself - since you don’t want to kill the nazis in your country until they are in power.
I don’t even need to go through your profile to know what sort of person you are, it’s quite telling from this miserable conversation.
I know, you have the unique ability to form an opinion without any information.
I understand your longing for immediate action and I share the emotional need to cut off the snake’s head sooner than later. Those who break the social contract of tolerance for each other should not be protected by it. Unfortunately it is a matter of fact that violence will always spiral out of control. First you just want to get rid of the fascists. Assume you succeed and don’t get reprimanded by law. Then you know how to get rid of someone and can act on it. What stops you to get to your rivals that want to strip you from your new found power? Chances are real you drift off into dictator mannerisms yourself.
The only way to not become what you try to eliminate is not to use excessive violence to begin with. Use the law. Use intimidating mass demonstrations. Use social pressure by making their views unspeakable again. Be better, stand for your values, organize with like minded folk and don’t play into the stereotype of left groups always splittering into incapable small groups that cannot cooperate and coordinate
You assume that murdering people is somehow addictive. That is not true for sane people. See for example soldiers or self defense situations. The other commenter is right that sane people will stop being violent, once the threat is eliminated. Even some absolute psychos will only kill while it’s acceptable and go back to suppress their desire for violence when it no longer is acceptable by their scociety.
At sone point violence may be the only way to defend freedom and democracy. However, I disagree with the other commenter that the time is now.
I should have worded it better - violence is the easy way. Easy is tempting. It’s harder to debate with people. Inherently better, no doubt! It’s a pattern in history that the number of people in power being corrupted by it is not low. Admittedly, not unfathomable high either, but it happens.
Last, sanity can slip in extreme situations and this, hopefully fictional, scenario is extreme in my book
Ah, I see. On the one hand here’s a green light and all you need to do is point it out to people. On the other there’s a green light and you’re saying “fuck the system, let’s go 200m down the road where the light is red and cross there”.
And you want to give the state the power to get rid of any group it deems undesirable?
The state already has the power to get rid of any group that seeks to destabilize our democratic system. This is a very central part of our constitution (see article 9, 18, 20 or 21). It’s basically a way to deal with the paradox of tolerance, if you’re not familiar with that concept here’s the wikipedia definition:
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society’s practice of tolerance is inclusive of the intolerant, intolerance will ultimately dominate, eliminating the tolerant and the practice of tolerance with them.
Ultimately, it is within the law to personally get rid of a group that wants to destroy our free and democratic system:
Article 20 […] (4) All Germans shall have the right to resist any person seeking to abolish this constitutional order if no other remedy is available.
This is usually interpreted as including physical violence.
Mobilization is the first step. You will not get people to start beating up fascists, who for the past 20 years haven’t been to a single demonstration. Also having millions on the street for a cause puts pressure behind politics to take the more activist protests serious and respond to their demands. Also with the right wing media and propaganda machine it is crucial to have so many people out, that are considered otherwise apolitical or non radical, because the narrative of the right was that they represent the silent majority and that everyone against them is a leftist radical. Now they are struggling with absurd photoshops that the masses were fake.
It’s important because it takes away the right’s talking point about speaking for the silent majority. This is the majority, and it’s not silent anymore. You can tell that the AfD is already in crisis mode over this. Hopefully we can keep it up until the general election.
How many fascists have you attacked? Or are you just a basement-dwelling keyboard warrior that hasn’t done even the slightest gesture, not even joined a protest like this, against nazis? STFU.
About 300 people opposed to the mosque broke through police barricades and started punching anti-racism protesters on the steps of the Bendigo Town Hall on Saturday afternoon.
Seems like the Nazis were the one doing the punching. But than again we also have militant antifa in Germany (love those guys) - that’s just not a very effective way of fighting an ideology. People don’t change their believe after getting punched in the face - go figure.
Eh it was pretty even, but yeah they had buses of people and we only found out they were coming on the day so certainly outnumbered and the cops were not helping us that's for sure.
Maybe, maybe not. In the end the mosque was built and they stopped coming down. The result was all we could ask for.
Oh and mad respect for German Antifa. You guys literally invented it.
Sorry for antagonizing you, you seem like a decent dude - a bit radical for my taste and we disagree on bunch of topic, but at least we agree that nazis are bad. I take it.
Yeah, nah you too mate! I’m certainly a bit of a dickhead, so I won’t blame ya.
I always grew up being told I’d get less radical as I got older but iunno I just look at the state of the world post 2000 and I’m seeing all this shit come back that I thought was left behind 100 years ago. It’s tiring.
Its an ideology that uses an idealised, aggrandised historical basis to promote nationalistic attitudes, often using a perceived threat from a scapegoat minority who are both strong enough to be a threat to regaining said past, while also being weak enough to easily eradicate. Where people are rallied behind authority figures who promise to fix the issues plaguing the citizens today, whilst greatly personally gaining from the hierarchical social structure they implement.
Predominantly, it’s the political system Mussolini used.
People today also often use the word to describe all totalitarian systems that are used to dominate people. Believing that everyone who personally has an opinion that differs from yours should be violently beat into submission or should otherwise be eradicated is totalitarian. And doing this on the basis of believing your conviction are superior is fascist.
While I share your sentiment regarding dealing with fascists with violence, there were no fascists to fight at these protests. The protests are in response to fascists growing political power and backroom planning that became public and not against fascists showing up in person. When that happens people do fight them (or try to, the cops protect them).
I agree that ultimately, force is needed to get rid of fascism. But that doesn’t have to be physical violence, a somewhat functioning democratic system usually also has legislative force that can be used first. The German constitution was written up immediately after the horrors of the nazi regime and WWII. And it offers a lot of tools to fight fascism without physical violence. Political parties can be made illegal for example and individuals can lose their constitutional rights if they use them to destabilize the state. Of course, this won’t get rid of fascists but it may weaken them enough to not be a threat anymore.
People are protesting, among other things, for these tools to be used right now, before it’s too late and before physical violence is the only way out.
I think that’s pretty obvious. Using these powers will literally break up the country since AfD owns Eastern Germany. They should have acted much earlier.
One needs to distinguish between three types of people here: AfD functionaries who draw up deportation plans, definitely fascist, core voters, generally inherited from the NPD, who vote for the AfD because of those deportation plans, definitely fascist, and then protest voters who vote for the AfD despite those plans. Also despite the rest of their programme.
Long story short in Germany the left parties have been captured by (at best) labour aristocracy and neoliberals at worst, their policies led to a severe lack of social housing, an explosion of precarious employment, and it’s not like the labour aristocracy is above agitating against “freeloaders not pulling their weight”. We have a gigantic precariat, many more are afraid of landing there, and a significant portion of that precariat is pissed enough at the establishment to vote AfD because it’s the only party that hasn’t betrayed them so far, or they want to show a middle finger to the other parties, or both, take your pick.
What’s crucial now is that this protest moment is used to actually address those very legitimate grievances of the precariat. To invest in all that good stuff – housing (now with great insulation), public transport so people don’t need to buy expensive electric cars, district heating so people don’t need to buy expensive heat pumps. No land in large cities to build housing on? Expropriate it, doesn’t even need a change to the constitution. Pay for it all with wealth taxes which somehow have been completely cancelled when was it 90s? Suddenly all that anger that the AfD tries to redirect at immigrants will be gone, protest voters can stop voting for Nazis and clean their consciousness, and we’ll all be happy (for the moment).
As you noted states can have tools against fascism and other takeovers themselves. Physical violence can be one of those tools first. Historically seen its the most successful tool. Nothing has made more fascists disappear than deadly force.
Simply taking away their platform and organisations is not enough. This isn’t exclusive to fascism, but political movements in general. They will still remain a danger that way. They would still be a threat to real democracies, if we had any, by still being able to abuse and manipulate the system, swindling their way into power or undermining established constitutions, rights and laws. And in undemocratic systems they still can take over simply by corruption, propaganda or working their way up by more honest means.
It has been a while, but look at how in the 89-91 plenty of governments have been overthrown despite banned oppotisions.
You can’t really be this silly. You can’t ethically study this shit, it would need two groups, a control group that doesn’t get desensitized by the horrible things the other group does to people. But you can personally observe the changes in people of places of authority and stress over time. There’s maybe a few studies in the past, like the Stanford one, Milgram I think, that ethicists discourage.
The Stanford prison experiment was faked mate. Guards were told to act cruel and the results were pre-written.
Biological truths such as 'x causes y in humans' needs to be backed up by some very serious science, a few choice studies from the 60s barely scratch the surface of that. Because there are a million influencing factors in each and everyone's life that can drastically change the way we respond to events.
Kind of obvious how it works isn’t it? You become hateful as you fight evil, and you become more and more accepting of cruelty as long as it’s to the enemy. Happens in wars all the time.
Actually, it does. Since the AFD had more voters in the eastern states of Germany (that was DDR in the past) bigotry against people from eastern Germany have increased again. It was never completely gone, but now you find people openly speculating people from eastern Germany are less intelligent, “inbreds”, etc. And that comes a lot from supposedly anti-fascist leftists.
A lot of people just want violence or don’t like people in general or have something else wrong with them and believe slapping an “anti-fascist” label on their violence somehow makes it good violence. Other ways do work and they are a better choice. Insulting, being cruel and being violent against people should never be your go-to idea and you certainly shouldn’t be trying to shame people into being violent.
Many AFD voters can be turned in better ways, instead of making them fear violence and insults.
I love the fascist-punching enthusiasm, but a good movement will need diversity of action to get things done. Support the antifascist who beats nazis in brawls, and the antifascist who plans rallies that sing songs and march. Both are valid, and both are important.
I’m an enthusiastic supporter of punching Nazis in the face. One punch and Richard Spencer ceased to be a threat in my country. We always need Nazi punchers. Just violent enough to pierce the veil of invulnerability fascists need but not violent enough to create martyrs for their movement.
“Righteous Violence” is at the core of fascism, but the rest of it is in propaganda techniques. There are many “nice” fascist ambassadors politely wheedling their way into every formal and informal organization of people. They would be much more successful if there was not already a widespread revulsion of fascism throughout almost all countries exposed to it. That revulsion isn’t just passed down, it has to be taught. Gigantic public demonstrations like this are the opposite of moments like this which have been happening in my country since 2016. Huge anti-fascist demonstrations are very important to resist fascism, since they are trying to peddle their ideology as natural and something all people believe and only a few are brave enough to claim. They have to be proven wrong for the kids they otherwise would appeal to.
Only if you just want to hide the causes in the short term.
But let’s assume that you destroy afd, do you really think that all the people that vote for them will change their mind while having the same problems ? You basically only said to them to shut up, do you really think it will work well ? Maybe for the next electoral deadline, but then ?
Whatever are the causes, if you just remove the consequences you don’t solve the problem.
Let’s assume that afd grow only becasue Russian money and disinformation (which I personlly don’t belive like I don’t belive that Fratelli d’Italia won because suddently 30% if the italian population is fascist), do you really think that destroying afd will stop the flow of money and disinformation ? They simply will choose (or build) another group to give the money to making better choices.
And you will end up in a situation where the far right group will be able to paint you as the bad guy because you oppose things that basically will be the same things afd is proposing now but with a much nicer dress so that they look acceptable.
No but they will loose all their existing structures money and the personnel involved is “burned”. They can’t just found a new party. So it buys a few years to tackle the problems in other ways.
I would not be that optimist about the “few years”, expecially because I don’t see the will to fix the problems which leaded to the afd (and far right in general) grow.
To me this just seems something like “hide the dirt under the rug and hope that it will go away”. And it is a stupid path to follow
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