A group of public organizations has launched a new campaign to ban the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which has become one of the country’s most popular parties in recent months.
According to DPA, the campaign “Protect human dignity – ban AfD now” announced on Monday aims to sway the parliamentary majority in Germany to introduce a bill to ban the party in the coming weeks.
The campaign participants also announced protests against AfD, in particular to be held at the party’s national conference in Essen at the end of June.
“In recent years, AfD has turned into a party dominated by extreme right-wing forces. It spreads racist nationalist ideas, ridicules democracy and attacks the rule of law,” the initiators of such a move explain.
In their opinion, banning Alternative for Germany can destroy the organizational structure of the party, deprive it of state funding and deprive it of legitimacy.
Director of the Buchenwald Memorial Foundation, Jens-Christian Wagner, who joined the campaign, said that “anti-constitutional parties must be deprived of the opportunity to abuse democracy in order to abolish it.”
The banning of Alternative for Germany has been repeatedly discussed in recent months. Critics point out that the trial will be very long and its outcome in the Federal Constitutional Court will be open.
There are also fears about the effects of a ban on the party, which has won the support of almost one in five voters in Germany in recent months. Both German citizens and Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke out against such a move.
