Germany’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), which are holding coalition talks, have proposed a law that will block people with multiple extremism convictions from standing in elections.
Germany’s centre-Right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPD), which are holding coalition talks, have proposed a law that will block people with multiple extremism convictions from standing in elections.
While the idea sounds good I don’t think anyone should be setting a precedent to say it’s okay for elected governments to ban opposition parties from running based on their political views. Ultimately the people should hold the power.
Because that hasn’t caused us any problems up to now has it? Maybe we should be setting a minimum standard for a political office, and maybe that minimum standard should include not being committed of certain crimes as is being proposed here 🤷♀️
Nah, that’s the paradox of tolerance. A democracy cannot allow fascists to run without dismantling itself. Also fascism and other “political views” that dehumanize are not a political view, they are chargeable criminal offenses in many countries.
That is a dangerously reckless and ignorant take of the paradox. The paradox is a rejection of protecting the intolerant, and their use of an argument they do not adhere to themselves. It does not mean we should build the tools and laws of fascist oppression to combat fascism.
It’s no different to a “means test” for voting. It sounds great initially, but falls apart if you dig deeper. The virtue of the means test is determined by who governs the means test. Once you create it, you have created the attack vector, and all the fascists have to do if they weasel their way into power is simply change the terms of the means test — you’ve already completed and normalized the hard part for them. As an example, Trump is currently using a 200 year old law to deport any immigrant an ICE agent chooses, without trial. He’s using this law because it gave the president blanket unilateral powers to apply it as they see fit.
Another example from the US that has assisted fascism in denying blacks their right to vote. An old law declared anyone convicted of a felony ineligible to vote, then conservatives created the war on drugs to target and persecute blacks and the left. All they had to do was make non-violent drug offences a felony. As a result, millions of blacks have been denied the right to vote. All because the gov could decide who could and couldn’t vote because of X, and any future gov could control the terms of X.
No. The tolerance paradox generally is interpreted to mean that any tolerant society that tolerates intolerance destroys itself. See Wikipedia first paragraph tolerance paradox. Any serious democratic constitution bases itself on humanism and the idea that human rights cannot be infringed on except to protect the human rights of others. Allowing participants in political discussions who question that is outright fucking stupid. They must be excluded, deconstructed, and fought in the streets if necessary. Using the US as an example for anything democracy related is on the same level as using China as an example for well implemented communism.
So you agree that whoever is currently in government — which are highly-influenced by their oligarchy, everywhere, to varying degrees — should be able to dictate who can and cannot be involved with politics?
Congrats! You’ve made the EU great again! You’ve now given the majority the ability to eliminate political opposition, all challenges to the status quo, and supported a current/future populist achieve their goal of dictatorship. Time to pat yourself on back, now off to the gulag!
Why are you arguing in favor of parties that want to infringe on people’s human rights?
I fail to see how any movement of change within the spectrum of a constitution based on human rights would be negatively affected by the deligtimisation of anti-humanist factions.
What do oligarchs have to do with that anyway?
How does any of that lead into dictatorship?
What about separation of power?
What about other means of political influence, like wide spread worker strikes, those wouldn’t be affected by the dismantling of political parties.
Why the fuck are people spouting libertarian nonsense in defense of fascism?
And pertaining to the gulag: no you.
“Protocol 1, Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to vote in free and fair elections.”
https://www.ohchr.org/en/about-democracy-and-human-rights
You are the one arguing that infringing “extremists” human rights is valid to protect everyone’s human rights, ignorant of the fact that all the government has to do to disenfrachise entire groups of people is redefine what “extremism” means (e.g. like declaring protests and property damage of Tesla to be “terrorism”). You are using the exact same logic fascists use to seize control.
Do you think you get to decide what “extremism” is? To me, many global leaders are/were “extremist” and should be serving life in prison for their crimes – multiple members of the Bush admin in the US, numerous members of Israel’s government and military, etc – but most of worlds dominant political classes do not agree that wars and genocide (which have killed thousdands/millions of people) are “extremist” enough, or “extremist” at all. How can they justify these crimes? Because they committed these crimes fighting terrorists/extremists!
Oligarchs own the lion-share of the media, corporations, capital, and political financing – everywhere – therefore they heavily influence the definition of terms like “extremist”, “terrorist” or “anti-humanist”, both socially and legally.
I’ve given you concrete examples. I suggest you read up on modern history and how dictatorships are formed, and what civil liberties and human rights actually are.
You don’t know what libertarianism is. Libertarianism is not libertarian politics, political parties, or the fascists/conservatives who bastardize it for power/profit. It is the opposite of authoritarianism. If you believe that democracy, human rights, and civil liberties should be protected, you are a libertarian. You can’t be anti-libertarianism, without being pro-authoritarianism; just like you can’t be anti-ANTIFAscist, without being fascist.
For what it’s worth I don’t believe you are arguing in bad faith, but I do believe you are uninformed/misinformed. You can either admit that there are major flaws with your argument, and that it has a potential to cause more harm than good, or you can dig in and continue resorting to logical fallacies.
Wehrhafte Demokratie macht BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
There allready is precedent for banning parties. History and current events both show that people are fully ready to vote fascists into power. And also, you know what’s one of the big reasons so many people vote for fascists? Fascist propaganda. Banning fascist parties will help have fewer fascist citizens around (at least after a while).
@FourGreenFields @twinnie. add populists to that
People are easily manipulated. There needs to be some guardrails.
It’s not based on their views but after multiple convictions for extremist activities. That sounds reasonable (on paper) to me for now. Not that I won’t be surprised if anything useful comes of this.
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