AfD verbieten – ja oder nein?

In the organizer's words:

Ricarda Lang, Angela Furmaniak, Thorsten Mense and Lukas Wallraff discuss the pros and cons of banning the AfD from a left-wing perspective.

The AfD is right-wing extremist and extremely dangerous- no one on the left doubts this. At the same time, no one knows the perfect strategy to stop them. Some polls show the far right as the strongest force. Would a party ban do any good? Neither in the last Bundestag nor in the coalition government was there a majority in favor.

But now, after the election, the debate is in full swing again, and thousands are demonstrating on the streets these days. We want to discuss the pros and cons of banning the AfD from an anti-fascist perspective.

Green politician Ricarda Lang is in favor of a ban: "The mothers and fathers of the Basic Law gave us the instrument of a party ban because they knew that it is possible for parties to use democratic means to come to power in order to then destroy them."

Lawyer Angela Furmaniak also believes that banning the far-right party is the right step, because "the AfD tramples on constitutional values such as human dignity. A party ban is an important means of stopping the normalization of AfD politics."

Sociologist Thorsten Mense disagrees with them, criticizing the extremist tones of the ban debate: "The AfD comes from the middle of society, it is only a symptom, not the cause of authoritarian developments." He not only considers a ban to be illusory, but is convinced that it would not be able to stop fascization.

Lukas Wallraff is skeptical about a ban for a completely different reason. He believes that "our democracy is strong enough to prevent an extreme right-wing takeover." If the party is banned, he fears that right-wing violence will escalate completely.

An event with:

🐾 Angela Furmaniak is a lawyer and works as a criminal defense lawyer in police and assembly law. She is on the board of the Republican Lawyers' Association (RAV), which supports the "AfD ban now!" initiative.

🐾 Ricarda Lang is the former chairwoman of Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and a member of the Bundestag.

Thorsten Mense is a sociologist, author and journalist for jungle.world and Konkret, among others.

🐾 Lukas Wallraff has been with taz since 1999 - first in Germany and in the parliamentary office, now in the head office.

🐾 Lotte Laloire moderates this talk. She is a taz editor and publisher of a book on the extreme right.

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