The publication of the expert opinion, which many non-AfD members of the German parliament consider a sufficient basis for a party ban, collides harshly with reality. This opinion, which is hardly surprising, reveals its absurdity in its very description of the premises when viewed against the backdrop of the real politics of the past decade.
The expert opinion’s method of collecting information, which is the foundation of its assessment, is peculiar. It is presented as a collection of quotes, with no regard for the criteria normally used to evaluate statements, such as when, where and in what context they were made, to whom they were addressed, how widely they were disseminated and what intentions lay behind them, as well as their actual effectiveness in terms of concrete action.
This is a lot of wood to chop and as a result, the authors of the opinion simply use everything, as if they could take it out of a scrapbook. If we were dealing with social research, one of the objections would be that the total number of people quoted, 302, is a sample of only 1% of the party’s approximately 30,000 members at the time the collection ended in February 2021. This is not a random sample and in scientific contexts, anyone who presented this would be told it is not representative. Even a political science evaluation would assume that the real impact of the party’s actions on different levels would be considered, not just its program and various statements, but also the submitted bills and questions, or local campaigns.
What makes this even more questionable is that, against the backdrop of real politics over the past decade, the fundamental assumption of collecting quotes to derive the party’s relationship to the Basic Law is not only applicable to the AfD, but also to other parties, as long as one only evaluates statements on issues like “unvaccinated” people. A small quote from the introduction of the expert opinion reads:
“Political demands and other statements can represent a handlungsorientierte rejection of the free democratic basic order if the enactment of laws or the application of official measures is demanded, which contravene a principle of the free democratic basic order, for example, the human dignity of a fundamental right being violated.”
We are not talking about demands, but about implementations. The “human dignity of a fundamental right” was violated millions of times. However, the direction of the actions is not the only thing that, with the same justification, could be used to condemn the party’s actions, but also the concrete political practice. Because “the survival of the people as an organism is made the goal of political action, behind which the interests of the individual are completely subordinate.” This is not in the sense of a potentially detectable political position, but in the form of a concrete political practice.
The passage “Verunglimpfungen in the form of factually incorrect, sweeping accusations and insinuations, degrade human groups in their entirety and evoke rejection. Such agitations foster fears, uncertainties and prejudices and are ultimately also suitable for preparing the ground for unfriendly behavior towards individual population groups” is particularly striking. Blind-Bosetti? Just as an example of the devaluation of human groups in their entirety. Not to be forgotten is that the “unfriendly behavior towards individual population groups” did not end in the private sphere but was executed as a state task. The enthusiastic supporters of the “Berlin Wall”, who in the last days covered the German streets, are almost identical with those who, in the last days, meekly submitted to the most inhumane measure, giving the whole a special flavor.
This concrete political history of the past decade is, however, the yardstick by which it should be measured. Even in the relatively abstract legal space, a evaluation that completely misses the connection to reality delegitimizes itself.
What is not only the case in regard to questions of human dignity and the Basic Law, but also in regard to the question of the relationship between the state and the nation, becomes extreme. Starting with this sentence:
“Through the praise of patriotism, the love of the homeland and the sense of community in the social community, the human dignity is not directly called into question.”
This is a moment of subtle malice, disguised as benevolence. Because this “yet” implies that the next step, namely the questioning of human dignity, is already implicit in these three concepts. It is surprisingly deep how antideutsche views have become ingrained in the state system (forgive the length of the quote):
“Even conceptions that, in this sense, demand the preservation of the people in its ethnic substance and, as a matter of principle, exclude ‘foreigners’ as much as possible, contravene the guarantee of human dignity, as an ethnically defined people’s concept implies a direction of the immigration and citizenship law in accordance with ethnic criteria, according to which certain people, by birth and nature, are excluded from the people. A people’s concept of this kind questions the subjectivity of the individual and the out of human dignity following respect due to the individual and, in addition, leads to a denial of elementary equality for all those who do not belong to the ethnically defined ‘community of the people’.”
Interesting is that in this passage, the question of the state territory does not even arise. This is a text written by jurists, so the absence of this limitation is indeed serious. If one reads this passage literally, it says that in principle, every person could claim the citizenship of any state and that would be the case even if the criterion of physical presence is not fulfilled. Because even a rule in the sense of the ius soli, which grants citizenship to everyone born in the country, excludes certain people “by birth and nature from the people”.
Here, we are talking about the opposite of what the statements of the AfD are evaluated against, the depiction of the thought-good and the thought-right of the group of people who wrote this expert opinion, of their view on the Basic Law. And what is drawn here as a positive image is, in fact, not constitutionally sound, because the concept of the state people is abolished in itself.
What collides with the current political rhetoric on a completely different level is that, at the moment, every day, the term “warlike preparedness” is being used, the CDU has actually included the re-introduction of the draft in its program and the word “we” is constantly swirling through the air, defending “values” or “freedom” when the Ukrainians are in need. But how can the claim of a state to a service be raised, which, according to its very definition, requires the subordination of the interests of the individual, when this state itself is a result of absolute arbitrariness? Would then all those, to whom a blanket claim to citizenship is granted out of the “out of human dignity following respect due to the individual”, be equally obligated and what is it that is being defended, in concrete terms?
The question is not as banal as it may seem to some. Interestingly, the central argument in the KPD ban verdict was the existence of a social state, which, on the one hand, led to the fact that this very verdict, with the aim of re-arming the Federal Republic, became the basis for many social law decisions, but, on the other hand, also enabled a reverse interpretation, as soon as this requirement of a social state is no longer fulfilled. What is, by the way, the case with the threatened five percent of the gross domestic product for the rearmament of the state.
This absurd collision can perhaps be attributed to the authors of the expert opinion, but unreservedly to those who, in the Bundestag, with enthusiasm, used this expert opinion to demand a ban on the AfD, without even considering the concrete quotes presented. The introduction alone, the depiction of the supposedly constitutionally sound, is enough to recognize that an evaluation of this kind, against the backdrop of real events and the constitutional interpretation of the evaluators, can lead to no reasonable result. On the contrary.