Germany's one-party system

The time to stand up against the banning of the AfD and for the democratic rights of German voters is now.

19 August 2023, Lower Saxony, Celle: Delegates and visitors arrive at the state party conference of the AfD Lower Saxony in the Congress Union Celle. The Alternative for Germany is meeting this weekend in Celle for a state party conference. Photo: Julian Stratenschulte/dpa (Photo by JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP) Fotó: AFP/JULIAN STRATENSCHULTE

It is alarming how Germany's democracy has sunk to this level, that a moderate party that argues against immigration in a sensible way within the constitutional framework, pointing out the difficulties caused by the Islamization of Germany and the emergence of parallel societies, is now being declared extremist. President Steinmeier wants to fight for the constitution and democracy by banning a party that would have been difficult to distinguish from the pre-Merkel CDU in terms of its political radicalism. And the once conservative CDU just keeps silent, powerlessly scratching their heads that this might be counterproductive and would only bring more vote for AfD. Counterproductive, they say? Not totalitarian, anti-democratic, unconstitutional or repressive?
 

All this incitement recently paid off when a group of "New Germans" attacked Andreas Jurca, the leader of Augsburg's AfD . The migrants knew exactly who they were assaulting, calling the local politician a Nazi while beating him bloody. Oh the irony! Not a peep about it in the Lugenpress, the hunting season for those defending national interests has obviously begun without any restrictions, and the violent migrant gangs will be used by the German "democrats" to pursue them. President Steinmeier did not, of course, condemn the attack, or say that the perpetrators of political violence need to be "put in their place" this time, especially if they have a migrant background. It seems that in Germany, those who value the national interest have only two options: having their heads bashed in by either the far-left antifascists or the radical Islamists, who also enjoy supremacy over the law.

Hungarian conservative forces should finally give up the dream still lingering among them that the CDU will return to its old Christian conservative identity and become our ally in the fight for European values. It will not. Their leader, Friedrich Merz, is a textbook example of someone who grazes his cow on the conservative pastures and milks it on the liberal side. He is one of an endless line of opportunistic liberal sheep dressed in right-wing wolf's skin, even if he does not bleat against national forces as loudly as his Green or Red counterparts.

If the AfD is banned, Germany will become an unadulterated single-party dictatorship, in which pluralism of opinion and freedom of conscience will completely disappear. What kind of election is it, where voters can only choose from the palette of political forces that support nation-killing, population exchange and climate crisis extremism? In such a country, elections become completely superfluous, and the political discourse is only about who can outbid one extreme initiative with an even more destructive one.

Looking at the kind and respectable German pensioners who are buying up Hungary's Lake Balaton waterfront properties reminds me of one of our government's political principles: help the troubled in their own countries and do not bring their troubles here. The time to stand up against the banning of AfD and for the democratic rights of German voters is now, before a stream of refugees from the West, like that on our eastern borders, starts to build up. And this should not be understood metaphorically, or as sarcasm, but in a very concrete sense.

The author is editor-in-chief of Hungary Today

Cover photo: Illustration (Photo: AFP)