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.
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.
I don’t argue for the implementation of the legal changes discussed in the article, I argue that we already have the required means.
I argue for using these means to protect from fascism.
The better political means would be to enact changes that fix stuff for people so they don’t get the feeling the only party that cares for them are fascist, but the topic is legal means.
As I wrote before, the infringement of human rights can be justified to protect others human rights. Barring people from voting for the prospect of genocide is a balanced approach I fully support.
How these legal instruments are used in practice is a different topic from what they are meant for.
Oligarchs are a societal problem which exists independent of constitutional balance of power. Since I try to argue within the idea of legal systems this seems to me as an unrelated, while still very real problem. But that must be dealt with outside of the question of the legality of political parties. To underline my intent here, I believe that the problem of oligarchy can be fixed by parties which adhere to the humanitarian political playing field which the constitution describes. This includes for example radical leftists that use the constitutional legal construct of seizing property in the name of the state (means of production aka money) from those who abuse the property.
Democracies don’t die because they restrict political speech based on a constitution which in the case of Germany is pretty solid, they die because they disservice their population while spouting nationalist or other BS and declaring everyone else the enemy and shifting the legal framework to dismental the rule of law.
The idea of cutting these parties and movements of from gaining political traction seems blatantly obvious to me.
Libertarian BS is not the same as Libertarism. People arguing for free speech which allows for speech which is anti-humanist is libertarian BS. Libertarism in itself is a problem because it advocates for the freedom of the individual over the freedom of the collective. Which some find attractive and I myself egoistic. But that is not the the point I’m trying to make here.
In a working legal system, in a constitutional framework of sperated powers within a democratic society we cannot allow BS in the political discours, because it aims to dismental the political discours. Similarly to playing chess with a geese, you will get bit.
The only political discussion I’m willing to have with fascists is over the barrel of a gun, but since the societal contract we are born into asks of me to give my ability to exercise violence in the the hands of the state so it excersises violence in the most just way possible I demand the legal ability and the application of those means to barr fascists from everything.
And that is the point here. Fascism is not a valid political opinion, it’s a crime. Other political or mixtures of religious and political thought qualify as well and I don’t want them anywhere near a parliament.
The point I don’t understand and that might be due to my mental limitations, is why would anyone want these in a political discussion. Why give those free speech that want to abolish it?
The abuse of these legal frameworks is a problem, and that is real, but their existence is required to have a line of defense against anti-humanist BS. And towards the point that you are arguing in favor of civil rights and not for the AfD, it’s still an argument that allows for the AfD and I won’t accept that as a basis for discussion of fundamental legal frameworks of a society.
Niemals wieder is not only a phrase it must be the very spirit of any serious democratic framework and rule of law.