I know this is bait, but maybe their reaction should be to go and vote so that the persons who think rape should be OK (as per leaked e-mails btw) don't get to decide?
They should look at the current state of their country, look at the policies of the various parties, and select the party that in their judgement would move the country in the direction think it should move.
That doesn't seem comparable. The DNC and RNC were hacked by different actors.
My point was that this news is of the hack, and not of bombshell revelations from the emails themselves, which kind of indicates there's nothing there.
If you found the smoking gun, you would say "look I found a smoking gun!".
It's funny you assume they should care because there are "bad things" in it only because it's "right wing", right wing has been the normal ideology for most of human history, real democracy is/has center-right views.
Only in the last 100 years or so people have been leaning towards unreasonable and utopian fantasy beliefs.
Now, maybe you're actually right, I don't know anything about that AfD thing but I'm assuming my first sentence is correct since today's tech world is what it is.
This guy is defending AfD all over this thread, and here he's trying to imply that all parties are foreign-backed, since he's sensitive to AfD being pushed by form billionaires like Musk and Putin.
I'm fairly centrist in my views actually, thanks for asking, but I am generally against mass immigration for economic reasons - it transfers vast wealth to rich landowners at the cost of working people, on the order of several hundreds of billions of dollars per a year. Immigration is the reason the US is now run by Trump/Kushner/Witkoff landlords from hell, and landlord donors are the reason every major party is pro mass immigration. The irony is that you would not consider these huge sums as 'foreign backing' since it goes to the supporters of the party rather than its members (who then donate to the party). Follow the money.
I'd be first in line to hear about the more nefarious side of a party like AfD (or One Nation here in Australia) - but neither the article (nor most of our resident experts) have gone to the effort of explaining them to a layman. In fact, the article implies they are actively filtering out such people. I'm just supposed to know based on the vibes, and people like yourself who follow this stuff won't deign to explain it either. I guess I'll just wait for mainstream media to do it justice. 'Foreign backed' is too broad a term without actual comparisons, and calling them nazis for wanting lower immigration is an absurd hyperbole - something you already admitted by changing your reasons when I pointed this out.
> right wing has been the normal ideology for most of human history, real democracy is/has center-right views
Before you make such a bold claim you might want to consider that there isn't even a very stable definition of right and left wing throughout history.
When peasants lived in a feudal states, did they have left/right views? Or did they their political opinions actually matter because the only people who had any control were the Lords above them (who more than likely did have a more modern 'right wing' attitude).
Maybe it has nothing to do with the voters directly. This might frighten some of the backers who thought they would remain anonymous. When you shine a light into a dark corner, the roaches scatter.
When the state holds the biggest light and has the darkest corners, you really have to question which one are the real roaches
If we think that those in power don't also have secrets and skeletons then perhaps we're not thinking at all.
Instead of trying to play kill the character all the time, we should be focusing on pragmatic solutions to domestic and regional problems. But that would require people not being afraid of cancel culture and politics not being so toxic that good people stay well away.
> What is unusual is that the leaked emails are not published on the site directly. Instead, AI-generated summaries are shown, categorised and rated from Low to Critical.
Interesting choice. I don't feel like I'm at the comfort level where I would really trust any of those summaries - although I can respect the reasoning behind it.
I assume because of the high quantity they try to protect individual's privacy that way. Otherwise going by hand through each email would take years for PII and other links redaction.
yes and more or less all respectable news reporting in Germany is done based on the raw sources
but this AI summaries have been a mistake as now the AfD will with some degree of success go around claiming that anything bad is supposedly AI generated, even if it very clearly isn't
>Youre absolutely right. The fascist and de humanizing content might just as well be hallucinated. /s
It might not be entirely hallucinated, but it's still a real concern given all the discussions about the AfD inevitably gets filled with people engaging in motte-and-bailey tactics. For instance, are the AfD literally against democracy, or against the constitution (vaguely defined, because they're discriminating against immigrants)? In cases like these rough summaries inevitably mangle the exact policy positions, which might make them look better/worse than they actually are. You might think "AfD are fascists anyways, who cares if their positions get mangled?", but that's terrible epistemics.
and the original is available for download via torrent and most newspapers etc. have based their reporting on this
> AfD literally against democracy, or against the constitution
a huge part of the people currently in leading position had been in organizations which where so extrema radical and anti-constitutional that they have been force dissolved which has a very high legal burden to happen. This includes organizations which where out right Neo-Nazi organizations celebrating Hitler and what he did (but also many other not neo-nazi but not any less dangerous organizations/movement)
> (vaguely defined, because they're discriminating against immigrants)?
concretely defined because many of their members have been in neo nazi and other similar bad organizations which have been force desolved
and because they have very openly represented values which are against most of the extra protected/valued part of the German constitution, including in no specific order
- very publicly being against woman rights in many cases and forms, including in speeches hold in the "senate" (Bundestag)
- not "just" being against immigrants, but dehumanizing them and calling for violence against them
- their publicized anti immigration plans also go beyond immigrants seem to want to kick out anyone with different ethnicity no matter if they have grown up as a German Citizen. Sure they are a bit more vague about this, but it's the only way their numbers about people they want to kick out add up.
- campaigning for wanting to remove some of the check and balances in the constitution against extremist populist takeover
- lets also not forget stuff like that they just recently tried to conspire with the BSW to prevent elected CDU officials from taking part ins some votes
to just name a very small fraction of what they did.
Nothing there is "vague", or "maybe this are just some people" or anything like this. This party is _very clear cut_ a threat to German constitution even if this might not apply to every single member of it.
If you apply the same standards as for the process against the NPD the AfD would have been dissolved by now.
There are still some good hackers left. Hopefully this will send in place a party-shutdown procedure, because their voters don't care about already their apparent connections to Putin and Nazis. They have been grown on pure hate and 'protest against the system', and when they are in power, their voters will find out that they are much much more corrupt and uninterested in the public good than anything they claim the current 'establishment' would be. Exact same trajectory as pre WWII.
> Hopefully this will send in place a party-shutdown procedure, because their voters don't care about already their apparent connections to Putin and Nazis
You are talking down to up to 40% of certain areas in Germany, convinced you know better and that hey are all either nazis or too dumb to recognise they're voting for them.
That isn't, at all, what GP said, and the perpetual seeking of fake victimhood by y'all is so deeply boring and performative.
But hey, if 40% of people are dumber than the median, then I guess you've uncovered basic statistics. So that's something. Come on, give me a nice 'but what about' now - keep to the script. We all know nothing original or insightful is coming.
I don't think that popularity should factor into the consideration of a ban. Lots of objectively bad ideas can trend for a while which is why modern democracies emphasize constitutionalism and institutionalism. Would you not, for instance, have advocated for a ban of the NSDAP even in 1933 knowing the consequences?
Yes, had the consequences been known that would have been a good idea. The same is true for the Bolshevik party in Russia, Mao's communist party in China, Chavez's party in Venezuela, Castro's in Cuba, Pol Pot's in Cambodia, Khomeini should never have been allowed back in Iran, Lenin should never have been allowed back into Russia, etcetera. Hindsight is always 20/20 but that does not help when deciding which parties are allowed to partake of the democratic process.
AfD is a right-wing nationalist party which - like many if not most right-wing parties - does have its cadre of people with more extreme views. There'll be right-wing extremists in CDU/CSU (Christian democrats and Christian social union) as well but far fewer than in AfD since that party is more right-wing than CDU and CSU.
The same is true for left-wing parties like the communist party which calls itself 'Die Linke' where you'll find a large host of extremists. It also happens to be the party which under another name was responsible for the Stalinist government of what was ironically called the 'German Democratic Republic', three words with only one - German - being truthful. The same goes for Die Grünen (the greens) which is a far-left party grown out of the environmentalist movement which has taken up the 'progressive omnicause' of climate, migration and "palestine" as their leitmotif. You'll find left-wing extremists in the SPD (social democrats) as well but far fewer than in Die Linke and Die Grünen since those parties are further to the left.
As to AfD as a party being "far-right", well... not really. Their program isn't extreme right-wing, it mixes centre-right with centre-left policies. Their leader, Alice Weidel isn't extreme right-wing - she'd have to banish herself for being a lesbian in a union with another lesbian which tends to not go over that well in far-right circles. What supposedly makes them "far-right" is the same as which supposedly makes other similar parties in other countries - PVV in the Netherlands, SD in Sweden, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Reform in the UK, RN in France etc. - fit under that category: their stance on migration from mostly non-western, largely islamic countries. They oppose such migration because they consider the large influx of people who either do not want to assimilate or integrate or, even if they wanted to do so can not due to their sheer numbers as a threat to their cultures and societies. Many people agree with these positions which has given these parties a boost and often brought them into significant minority to actual majority positions. This is seen as a threat by those who consider immigration from those regions and cultures to be necessary for some reason - Protestant Christian idealism, import of new voters to replace the traditional workers who moved to AfD and similar parties, payment of some imagined debt of honour related to historical colonialism, import of conflicting cultures to destabilise society (i.e. 'deconstruction') to make it ready for revolution, etc. - giving rise to the application of labels like "far-right" - especially powerful in a country like Germany which has been ruled by extremists (left and right) before with disastrous results for both the country as well as the world - to dissuade people from voting for them. Since these groups tend to have control over most of the mass media they have used them to try to convince the populace that these parties need to be banished, forbidden, excluded and shunned.
What these "progressives" do not seem to have counted with is the strong rise of such parties every time they urged them to be excluded, disbanded or forbidden. Disbanding a party which only gets a few votes is doable given the control these groups have over the mass media. Doing the same to a party which gets 1/3 of the vote is a wholly different thing and raises the question who is the more "extreme", t...
I have to point out the irony of posting this diatribe under a post about a data leak that seems to pretty much confirm many of the assessments that have been made about the AfD being more than just another right-wing party.
Yes. All the parties you listed are similar: ties to Russia, members that are literal neo-nazis, ridiculous views that contradict both history and science, anti-EU, anti-Ukraine, anti-media and blaming problems on immigrants without offering any solutions to problems that actually matter.
Comparing the AfD to the Green Party is a dramatic false equivalence. Thank you for quoting Popper, it’s the best argument for banning the AfD. They are not labelled “far-right” to dissuade people from voting for them, they are far-right because their inane views are so far from what is currently considered the political centre (which has shifted to the right HARD in the last decades).
There are provisions in the German federal and state constitution and law that are there to actively combat anti-constitutinal activity. These are lessons from the Weimar Republic. 1% or 50%, does not matter. Either you play by the rules of the game, or you risk being exposed to the sanctions that be.
>Dominic Mckenzie Cummings (born 25 November 1971) is a British political strategist who served as Chief Adviser to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from 24 July 2019 until he resigned on 13 November 2020.[1]
Why should we care about a former government advisor who resigned 6 years ago, and isn't even in the same party as the government in power?
I'd like to hope so, but the security services have been remarkably relaxed about the far right and focus all their energy on environmentalists and little old ladies holding up "Palestine Action" signs.
Why would you "like to hope so"? The same laws should exist for everyone and that includes agents of the state.
As for people supporting "Palestine Action", activists always have their most sympathetic looking members e.g. elderly women to have arrested as it makes the authorities look worse.
Palestine Action have done at least two violent crimes and several hundred other offences including burglary, vandalism.
Just because people have the politics you like doesn't mean they are all sunshine and rainbows.
The Reform/Restore parties you dislike are pursuing change legally and peacefully through the ballot box.
I used to think like you, but living in a country where the far right is about to come to power, and seeing fundamental freedoms disappear by the day, I've understood why people believe that parties like Reform and AFD (and many other parties, who resemble each other as much in their ideology as in their links with Russia, a useful signal) have to be stopped in their tracks while there's a chance, and if we find ourselves in a 'first they came for the far-right' type of situation, that's a bridge we'll have time to think about later.
The normalisation of fascism, the criminalisation of resistance or even of protests, all the way to the boot stomping on your face, all those things appear so fast, too fast to react. So I can see why one would prefer to take the rights of far-right politicians away. If Corbyn came to power and witchhunted Reform, I would think much less of Corbyn but I'd still understand why others would cheer on that.
And when it comes to Palestine Action, they did the kind of violent crimes that I hope will be taught to future generations, same as we taught about resistance in WWII. I and everyone else support Palestine Action not because of the old women, but because they did burglary and vandalism against a terrorist state carrying out genocide. Sunshine and rainbows.
I don't know why you're subtly indicating conspiracy theories here. The support of certain parties, in this case far right ones, by Russia, financially/ideologically/politically, and in the other direction the support of Russia (and the apology of their war of invasion) by these parties is not a secret or a theory, it's not hidden.
Not wanting to get involved with foreign wars is not the same as supporting a war.
If any of the parties got any support from Russia directly, they would be arrested. Have they been arrested? If not, then whatever you've been told about them being involved with Russia is bullshit. The government would like to find any excuse to lock up certain individuals in the UK; this includes both those on the left and the right.
> If any of the parties got any support from Russia directly, they would be arrested. Have they been arrested? If not, then whatever you've been told about them being involved with Russia is bullshit.
You're taking "innocent until proven guilty" too literally. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
No, I am not. I've heard a lot of bullshit in politics over the last decade. You got to show me proof. Otherwise, I am not interested in such claims because they are often unfounded or straight-up propaganda.
You should demand evidence for claims, especially if they are serious as you claim.
It's a load of cobblers made up by parties that lose to explain why they are losing. It's the biggest cope of them all and means they don't have to blame their policies or their candidates.
> I used to think like you, but living in a country where the far right is about to come to power, and seeing fundamental freedoms disappear by the day, I've understood why people believe that parties like Reform and AFD (and many other parties, who resemble each other as much in their ideology as in their links with Russia, a useful signal) have to be stopped in their tracks while there's a chance, and if we find ourselves in a 'first they came for the far-right' type of situation, that's a bridge we'll have time to think about later.
I am in the UK, and Reform, which isn't far right (they are like UKIP dissaffected conservatives and reactionaries), is not going to come into power. In all likelihood they are going to split the Conservative vote.
> The normalisation of fascism, the criminalisation of resistance or even of protests, all the way to the boot stomping on your face, all those things appear so fast, too fast to react. So I can see why one would prefer to take the rights of far-right politicians away. If Corbyn came to power and witchhunted Reform, I would think much less of Corbyn but I'd still understand why others would cheer on that.
I actually like Corbyn (for all his faults), and I think he is fundamentally a good man and wouldn't stoop as low as persecuting his political opponents.
As for witch hunts, historically they've turned out to be a very bad idea. I shouldn't need to comment any further.
> And when it comes to Palestine Action, they did the kind of violent crimes that I hope will be taught to future generations, same as we taught about resistance in WWII. I and everyone else support Palestine Action not because of the old women, but because they did burglary and vandalism against a terrorist state carrying out genocide. Sunshine and rainbows.
"Violent crimes are okay when people I politically agree with do it."
It doesn't matter to me if a violent gang of thugs is left wing or right; they are violent thugs. I think you need to take a break from online politics because it has you justifying the sort of behaviour that you claim to oppose (fascism).
> Corbyn? [...] wouldn't stoop as low as persecuting his political opponents. [...] I shouldn't need to comment any further.
Weird misreading of my comment. I'm not saying he would, I'm saying even if someone as fundamentally as him did, I would think less of them. I'm not defending it.
> Violent crimes are okay when people I politically agree with do it.
Violent resistance to genocide is something I fully support, with absolutely zero qualms about what poor drone, military company, or government official gets hurt in the process. I'd expect everyone would support that, no?
> justifying the sort of behaviour that you claim to oppose (fascism).
Mate... are you serious?
An advice for you: stop supporting Russia and Israel, you could hardly have chosen a worse moral alignment.
> Violent resistance to genocide is something I fully support, with absolutely zero qualms about what unfortunate drone, military company, or government official gets hurt in the process. I'd expect everyone would support that, no?
No, I don't agree. I don't want a bunch of violent thugs roaming around the UK who think they are morally righteous committing crimes. This will have perverse side effects that you and I cannot predict.
The fact that you haven't considered this fact or don't care shows how naive you are.
> Mate... are you serious?
Yes. What you are advocating for is similar to fascism.
> An advice for you: stop supporting Russia and Israel, you could hardly have chosen a worse moral alignment.
This is the problem with almost every discussion on the net with people like you. Where did I say I support either Russia or Israel? Nowhere.
I don't care about Russia and Israel. This is full of us-vs-them politics-brained bullshit that I often encounter. I will spell it out to you, I don't care about foreign wars that I have no control over. I suggest you start reading some actual literature.
This is getting ridiculous, you've been inventing weird claims this whole discussion and condescendingly arguing against them, and getting personal on top of that. Pathetic.
> I don't care about foreign wars that I have no control over
Talking about a war of invasion by a fascist country on the border of your continent and a genocide. I'm wasting my time.
> This is getting ridiculous, you've been inventing weird claims this whole discussion and condescendingly arguing against them, and getting personal on top of that.
I've quoted what you said and responded to them point by point. You said you understand the need to persecute political opponents (those being Reform, which is a centre-right party) and support thugs that break the law in the UK (where I live).
That is what you said. I have my issues with how the British State is run. I, however, understand that I have literally no ability to change any of this.
> Talking about a war of invasion by a fascist country on the border of your continent and a genocide.
"Everything I don't like is fascism."
The genocide is in the Middle East. I have zero ability to affect events there. Israel isn't fascist either because Zionism is not fascism.
As for the Russo-Ukraine war, not every political ideology that isn't democratic western values is fascist. Ukraine/Russia is a proxy war between the Western Allies and countries outside of that alliance.
> I'm wasting my time.
You are repeating poor arguments that equate to "bash the fash", and having a poor understanding of geopolitics isn't my failing and isn't going to convince anyone that isn't an idiot or mind-raped by propaganda.
If you were paying attention, you'd see that Reform are predictably self-destructing due to their racism, jingoism, corruption, misogyny, governance, indiscipline and exposure of their lies to the public.
Dominic Cummings at best is a male Ayn Rand, decrying, denouncing and challenging everything but happy to accept largesse or break the rules as it suits him. I quite like him, as it goes.
I think Dominic Cummings is analogous to the stereotypical developer with the brain the size of a planet who never accomplishes much in a team/company because he is bad at working with and through other people.
I think Reform are self-destructing in part due to re-hiring Tory ministers responsible for the awful state of the country.
I don't know that he's bad at working with others to the extent that it causes all the problems, it seems more like he's got that visionary thing going and the vision is constantly on the move, so he can't see the first thing through.
Reform are falling apart like a chocolate orange, there's so many things, but yes, hiring the not-too-bright lunatics from the dregs of the Tories, again and again and again, wasn't ideal. I'm fine with that, let's not interrupt them.
> It is about a party exclusion procedure against an AfD district executive who is said to have expressed Holocaust denial and glorification of Hitler. About a local leader who had to resign because of a "Heil Hitler" Christmas card, or about a member who is said to have written about "Muslims" and the "dirty monster Merkel". Another documented email subject is: "Sale of swastika flags and drugs at the information booth in Bottrop by district board member - measures required."
So it's all about the party correctly applying procedures to keep out the people supposed to make up too large a portion of the party?
We are in an era now where media publish leaks without having gone to the effort of compiling the facts into a story, just AI summaries. And in past cases where there have been revelations with even global significance, we get silence from authorities too.
Maybe there's a better write up somewhere, or a month wasn't sufficient for media to work through it all, but I just got a bad Groundhog Day kind of vibe from the vagueness in that article. Is this what news is now? All the information, none of the journalism, none of the consequences.
> "Indeed, party sources told the media that although the leaked emails appeared to be authentic, the AI-generated summaries appeared to contain several inaccuracies."
Which is why I'm so confused that they did this instead of just publishing a "best hits" of excerpts or something, if the amount of content was an issue
The BitDefender article immediately goes of with labeling AfD as far-right. This is going on all over Europe when a party is against mass-immigration and "sponsoring Ukraine till the last Ukrainian". And at the same time the streets in EU's big cities look worse than ever: unsafer, uncleaner and more un-European than ever before. Immigration is not good for us, and receiving a label "extreme rightwing" (and Fascist, and Nazi) simply because you want it to stop is loosing it's power... I dont mind to be called as such anymore (and I used to even call others this label).
In European vocabulary these "anti immigration of economically not-useful people" parties are not very rightwing: they are in favor of keeping the social benefit programs alive (that's why they want immigration of such people to stop).
That's because the AfD is far right, of the worst possible kind. Their members keep using Nazi and even SS propaganda, excusing Nazi and SS actions during WW2, ... (SS was Hitler's private security service, the people actually executing the holocaust), they openly discuss adopting a version of Nazi ancestry laws, ... you know, I'll make a list
* Prominent AfD figures promote a "völkisch" concept of German identity based on ancestry rather than citizenship, and propose to make laws based on this introducing what is generally referred to as "apartheid": 2 different legal statuses for German (and European) citizens based on ancestry
* The AfD "promotes remigration" (mass deportation) with some members supporting proposals that woud mass-deport German citizens. AfD figures attended the 2023 Potsdam meeting where far-right activists discussed controversial "remigration" proposals (meaning they discussed it with actual people loudly proclaiming they are Nazis)
Or how about: they keep getting caught defending Nazis, you know the actual historical party and what they did
* AfD politician Björn Höcke was convicted twice for using "Alles für Deutschland," a banned Nazi SA slogan
* Alexander Gauland described the Nazi era as mere "bird shit" in German history
* Björn Höcke called Berlin's Holocaust memorial a "monument of shame" and demanded a reversal of Germany's remembrance culture
* Maximilian Krah claimed that not all members of the Nazi Waffen-SS were criminals.
* More general, AfD politicians have maintained documented links to far-right nationalist movements (meaning actual groups calling themselves publicly Nazis)
People that have this as a job keep accusing, sometimes with VERY worrying proof, parts and people of the party of being Nazis
* Several AfD state branches have been classified as confirmed right-wing extremist by German constitutional-protection authorities
* "Junge Alternative", was classified as confirmed right-wing extremist by German intelligence
* Police arrested eight suspected members of the "Saxon Separatists," including an AfD local politician, over allegations that the group planned to use violence to establish a territory based on Nazi ideology
* Police raided AfD district politician Philip Steinbeck's property and discovered firearms, including reportedly fully automatic WWII weapons, and substantial quantities of explosives
THAT, and other reasons, is why AfD is described as extreme right. It's not that other parties don't get into controversies, but nothing remotely close to this, plus it keeps repeating.
What nonsense! The AfD is not just “far-right”, it is (objectively!) an extremist, anti-democratic organisation and it is frankly insane that it has not been banned yet. The Economist disgraced itself by platforming someone as odious as Weidel, and in general, the media is complicit in giving a fringe party so much airtime.
You might have lost your shame, and I am sorry for you, but I assure you that the overwhelming majority of Europeans just sadly regret that people with such ridiculous views have become emboldened.
As for Ukraine: if you don’t believe that European freedom is defended there, I am not sure how to convince you, maybe an Estonian could.
So how is it "extremist, anti-democratic organisation"? you bring no proof. I have to believe you on it?
If you are done with mass-immigration in Germany, you get no sizable party to vote for because they all have been demonstrably in favour of the immigrant flood. Except AfD. Why no other party caters to the done-with-immigration demographic? If you deny your constituency for too long you are bound to create a new powerful player.
If policies were actually popular, there'd be no way for random commenters to prevent discussion of them.
And the just-had-their-emails-leaked-proving-they're-all-Nazis-AfD didn't grow out of anti-immigration sentiment, their anti-immigration sentiment grew out of the islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, and jingoism that Germany never fully stamped out, and which has resurged under an onslaught of controlled rhetoric.
Are people allowed to not want islam big in their home town?
Why can every country be "proud of their culture" and "want to conserve their culture" except white/christian countries?
Why is black-pride, or gay-pride, or african-pride, or XYZ-pride all very acceptable, except white-pride and christian-pride? The pushed narrative is obvious to me.
> Are people allowed to not want islam big in their home town?
Well Islam isn't a popular grocery store chain or something, so what you're really asking is,
> Are people allowed to not want Muslim people in their home town?
And yeah, you are allowed to want anything, but it does make you a bigot. And the opposite isn't happening, either; no cities are out there trying to ban Christians.
And no one has an issue with European countries being proud of their cultures, but culture is a set of practices and traditions, and "being white", or "being Christian" is not one of those.
Wanting to deny freedom of religion (or worse, being opposed to certain skin colors) under the guise of 'culture' is once again the kind of thing you're free to do, but also the kind of thing other people are free to consider you shitty and bad for. No one has to accept your bigotry just because you dress it up as, "it's a tradition in my hometown not to be Muslim, and not to be non-caucasian".
> except white-pride and christian-pride?
Show me anyone saying being proud of being Christian is wrong. I'll wait.
And "white pride" is a problem for multiple reasons, one of which is that it's poisoned as a term by it's use by literal neo-Nazi and white-nationalist* groups. But also because "white" isn't actually a single group, it's many many unrelated groups with no common culture, meaning the only shared attribute is the general skin color, which is why the reality is it's just racism. A Siberian yak-herder has absolutely zero cultural relation to a British plumber, yet somehow we're supposed to buy the idea that this group has one unified cultural pride? Please.
And your position is literally the bread-and-butter of the Trump administration and it's right-wing media backers, not some downtrodden viewpoint, and yet somehow you think you're oppressed? The pushed narrative is obvious to me.
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 7.5 ms ] threadFor getting hacked? No.
Same applies here.
Do remember though that the RNC was also hacked at the same time as the DNC, but only one was released right before the election.
My point was that this news is of the hack, and not of bombshell revelations from the emails themselves, which kind of indicates there's nothing there.
If you found the smoking gun, you would say "look I found a smoking gun!".
Only in the last 100 years or so people have been leaning towards unreasonable and utopian fantasy beliefs.
Now, maybe you're actually right, I don't know anything about that AfD thing but I'm assuming my first sentence is correct since today's tech world is what it is.
I'd be first in line to hear about the more nefarious side of a party like AfD (or One Nation here in Australia) - but neither the article (nor most of our resident experts) have gone to the effort of explaining them to a layman. In fact, the article implies they are actively filtering out such people. I'm just supposed to know based on the vibes, and people like yourself who follow this stuff won't deign to explain it either. I guess I'll just wait for mainstream media to do it justice. 'Foreign backed' is too broad a term without actual comparisons, and calling them nazis for wanting lower immigration is an absurd hyperbole - something you already admitted by changing your reasons when I pointed this out.
Before you make such a bold claim you might want to consider that there isn't even a very stable definition of right and left wing throughout history.
When peasants lived in a feudal states, did they have left/right views? Or did they their political opinions actually matter because the only people who had any control were the Lords above them (who more than likely did have a more modern 'right wing' attitude).
Rewarding people for being victims just incentivizes frailty.
If we think that those in power don't also have secrets and skeletons then perhaps we're not thinking at all.
Instead of trying to play kill the character all the time, we should be focusing on pragmatic solutions to domestic and regional problems. But that would require people not being afraid of cancel culture and politics not being so toxic that good people stay well away.
Interesting choice. I don't feel like I'm at the comfort level where I would really trust any of those summaries - although I can respect the reasoning behind it.
but this AI summaries have been a mistake as now the AfD will with some degree of success go around claiming that anything bad is supposedly AI generated, even if it very clearly isn't
An email states wishes to make hand bag leather from refuge skin.
But yeah, the leak basically reports forks found in a kitchen, nothing new.
It might not be entirely hallucinated, but it's still a real concern given all the discussions about the AfD inevitably gets filled with people engaging in motte-and-bailey tactics. For instance, are the AfD literally against democracy, or against the constitution (vaguely defined, because they're discriminating against immigrants)? In cases like these rough summaries inevitably mangle the exact policy positions, which might make them look better/worse than they actually are. You might think "AfD are fascists anyways, who cares if their positions get mangled?", but that's terrible epistemics.
most things aren't hallucinated
and the original is available for download via torrent and most newspapers etc. have based their reporting on this
> AfD literally against democracy, or against the constitution
a huge part of the people currently in leading position had been in organizations which where so extrema radical and anti-constitutional that they have been force dissolved which has a very high legal burden to happen. This includes organizations which where out right Neo-Nazi organizations celebrating Hitler and what he did (but also many other not neo-nazi but not any less dangerous organizations/movement)
> (vaguely defined, because they're discriminating against immigrants)?
concretely defined because many of their members have been in neo nazi and other similar bad organizations which have been force desolved
and because they have very openly represented values which are against most of the extra protected/valued part of the German constitution, including in no specific order
- very publicly being against woman rights in many cases and forms, including in speeches hold in the "senate" (Bundestag)
- not "just" being against immigrants, but dehumanizing them and calling for violence against them
- their publicized anti immigration plans also go beyond immigrants seem to want to kick out anyone with different ethnicity no matter if they have grown up as a German Citizen. Sure they are a bit more vague about this, but it's the only way their numbers about people they want to kick out add up.
- campaigning for wanting to remove some of the check and balances in the constitution against extremist populist takeover
- publicly downplaying anti-semitic terrorist attacks
- lets also not forget stuff like that they just recently tried to conspire with the BSW to prevent elected CDU officials from taking part ins some votes
to just name a very small fraction of what they did.
Nothing there is "vague", or "maybe this are just some people" or anything like this. This party is _very clear cut_ a threat to German constitution even if this might not apply to every single member of it.
If you apply the same standards as for the process against the NPD the AfD would have been dissolved by now.
I think they could've redacted using a small model like OpenAI's privacy-filter model instead of rewriting.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50163502
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50184270
You are talking down to up to 40% of certain areas in Germany, convinced you know better and that hey are all either nazis or too dumb to recognise they're voting for them.
Quo Vadis, Democratia? Ask mentalgear...
That isn't, at all, what GP said, and the perpetual seeking of fake victimhood by y'all is so deeply boring and performative.
But hey, if 40% of people are dumber than the median, then I guess you've uncovered basic statistics. So that's something. Come on, give me a nice 'but what about' now - keep to the script. We all know nothing original or insightful is coming.
AfD is a right-wing nationalist party which - like many if not most right-wing parties - does have its cadre of people with more extreme views. There'll be right-wing extremists in CDU/CSU (Christian democrats and Christian social union) as well but far fewer than in AfD since that party is more right-wing than CDU and CSU.
The same is true for left-wing parties like the communist party which calls itself 'Die Linke' where you'll find a large host of extremists. It also happens to be the party which under another name was responsible for the Stalinist government of what was ironically called the 'German Democratic Republic', three words with only one - German - being truthful. The same goes for Die Grünen (the greens) which is a far-left party grown out of the environmentalist movement which has taken up the 'progressive omnicause' of climate, migration and "palestine" as their leitmotif. You'll find left-wing extremists in the SPD (social democrats) as well but far fewer than in Die Linke and Die Grünen since those parties are further to the left.
As to AfD as a party being "far-right", well... not really. Their program isn't extreme right-wing, it mixes centre-right with centre-left policies. Their leader, Alice Weidel isn't extreme right-wing - she'd have to banish herself for being a lesbian in a union with another lesbian which tends to not go over that well in far-right circles. What supposedly makes them "far-right" is the same as which supposedly makes other similar parties in other countries - PVV in the Netherlands, SD in Sweden, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Reform in the UK, RN in France etc. - fit under that category: their stance on migration from mostly non-western, largely islamic countries. They oppose such migration because they consider the large influx of people who either do not want to assimilate or integrate or, even if they wanted to do so can not due to their sheer numbers as a threat to their cultures and societies. Many people agree with these positions which has given these parties a boost and often brought them into significant minority to actual majority positions. This is seen as a threat by those who consider immigration from those regions and cultures to be necessary for some reason - Protestant Christian idealism, import of new voters to replace the traditional workers who moved to AfD and similar parties, payment of some imagined debt of honour related to historical colonialism, import of conflicting cultures to destabilise society (i.e. 'deconstruction') to make it ready for revolution, etc. - giving rise to the application of labels like "far-right" - especially powerful in a country like Germany which has been ruled by extremists (left and right) before with disastrous results for both the country as well as the world - to dissuade people from voting for them. Since these groups tend to have control over most of the mass media they have used them to try to convince the populace that these parties need to be banished, forbidden, excluded and shunned.
What these "progressives" do not seem to have counted with is the strong rise of such parties every time they urged them to be excluded, disbanded or forbidden. Disbanding a party which only gets a few votes is doable given the control these groups have over the mass media. Doing the same to a party which gets 1/3 of the vote is a wholly different thing and raises the question who is the more "extreme", t...
Comparing the AfD to the Green Party is a dramatic false equivalence. Thank you for quoting Popper, it’s the best argument for banning the AfD. They are not labelled “far-right” to dissuade people from voting for them, they are far-right because their inane views are so far from what is currently considered the political centre (which has shifted to the right HARD in the last decades).
Let's save democracy by abolishing democracy!
Why should we care about a former government advisor who resigned 6 years ago, and isn't even in the same party as the government in power?
edit: retracted the "resigned in disgrace" part
As for people supporting "Palestine Action", activists always have their most sympathetic looking members e.g. elderly women to have arrested as it makes the authorities look worse.
Palestine Action have done at least two violent crimes and several hundred other offences including burglary, vandalism.
Just because people have the politics you like doesn't mean they are all sunshine and rainbows.
The Reform/Restore parties you dislike are pursuing change legally and peacefully through the ballot box.
The normalisation of fascism, the criminalisation of resistance or even of protests, all the way to the boot stomping on your face, all those things appear so fast, too fast to react. So I can see why one would prefer to take the rights of far-right politicians away. If Corbyn came to power and witchhunted Reform, I would think much less of Corbyn but I'd still understand why others would cheer on that.
And when it comes to Palestine Action, they did the kind of violent crimes that I hope will be taught to future generations, same as we taught about resistance in WWII. I and everyone else support Palestine Action not because of the old women, but because they did burglary and vandalism against a terrorist state carrying out genocide. Sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah, those are all 100% genuine, nothing made up there. Completely legit.
If any of the parties got any support from Russia directly, they would be arrested. Have they been arrested? If not, then whatever you've been told about them being involved with Russia is bullshit. The government would like to find any excuse to lock up certain individuals in the UK; this includes both those on the left and the right.
You're taking "innocent until proven guilty" too literally. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence.
You should demand evidence for claims, especially if they are serious as you claim.
I am in the UK, and Reform, which isn't far right (they are like UKIP dissaffected conservatives and reactionaries), is not going to come into power. In all likelihood they are going to split the Conservative vote.
> The normalisation of fascism, the criminalisation of resistance or even of protests, all the way to the boot stomping on your face, all those things appear so fast, too fast to react. So I can see why one would prefer to take the rights of far-right politicians away. If Corbyn came to power and witchhunted Reform, I would think much less of Corbyn but I'd still understand why others would cheer on that.
I actually like Corbyn (for all his faults), and I think he is fundamentally a good man and wouldn't stoop as low as persecuting his political opponents.
As for witch hunts, historically they've turned out to be a very bad idea. I shouldn't need to comment any further.
> And when it comes to Palestine Action, they did the kind of violent crimes that I hope will be taught to future generations, same as we taught about resistance in WWII. I and everyone else support Palestine Action not because of the old women, but because they did burglary and vandalism against a terrorist state carrying out genocide. Sunshine and rainbows.
"Violent crimes are okay when people I politically agree with do it."
It doesn't matter to me if a violent gang of thugs is left wing or right; they are violent thugs. I think you need to take a break from online politics because it has you justifying the sort of behaviour that you claim to oppose (fascism).
Weird misreading of my comment. I'm not saying he would, I'm saying even if someone as fundamentally as him did, I would think less of them. I'm not defending it.
> Violent crimes are okay when people I politically agree with do it.
Violent resistance to genocide is something I fully support, with absolutely zero qualms about what poor drone, military company, or government official gets hurt in the process. I'd expect everyone would support that, no?
> justifying the sort of behaviour that you claim to oppose (fascism).
Mate... are you serious?
An advice for you: stop supporting Russia and Israel, you could hardly have chosen a worse moral alignment.
No, I don't agree. I don't want a bunch of violent thugs roaming around the UK who think they are morally righteous committing crimes. This will have perverse side effects that you and I cannot predict.
The fact that you haven't considered this fact or don't care shows how naive you are.
> Mate... are you serious?
Yes. What you are advocating for is similar to fascism.
> An advice for you: stop supporting Russia and Israel, you could hardly have chosen a worse moral alignment.
This is the problem with almost every discussion on the net with people like you. Where did I say I support either Russia or Israel? Nowhere.
I don't care about Russia and Israel. This is full of us-vs-them politics-brained bullshit that I often encounter. I will spell it out to you, I don't care about foreign wars that I have no control over. I suggest you start reading some actual literature.
https://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html
> I don't care about foreign wars that I have no control over
Talking about a war of invasion by a fascist country on the border of your continent and a genocide. I'm wasting my time.
I've quoted what you said and responded to them point by point. You said you understand the need to persecute political opponents (those being Reform, which is a centre-right party) and support thugs that break the law in the UK (where I live).
That is what you said. I have my issues with how the British State is run. I, however, understand that I have literally no ability to change any of this.
> Talking about a war of invasion by a fascist country on the border of your continent and a genocide.
"Everything I don't like is fascism."
The genocide is in the Middle East. I have zero ability to affect events there. Israel isn't fascist either because Zionism is not fascism.
As for the Russo-Ukraine war, not every political ideology that isn't democratic western values is fascist. Ukraine/Russia is a proxy war between the Western Allies and countries outside of that alliance.
> I'm wasting my time.
You are repeating poor arguments that equate to "bash the fash", and having a poor understanding of geopolitics isn't my failing and isn't going to convince anyone that isn't an idiot or mind-raped by propaganda.
If you were paying attention, you'd see that Reform are predictably self-destructing due to their racism, jingoism, corruption, misogyny, governance, indiscipline and exposure of their lies to the public.
Dominic Cummings at best is a male Ayn Rand, decrying, denouncing and challenging everything but happy to accept largesse or break the rules as it suits him. I quite like him, as it goes.
I think Reform are self-destructing in part due to re-hiring Tory ministers responsible for the awful state of the country.
Reform are falling apart like a chocolate orange, there's so many things, but yes, hiring the not-too-bright lunatics from the dregs of the Tories, again and again and again, wasn't ideal. I'm fine with that, let's not interrupt them.
> It is about a party exclusion procedure against an AfD district executive who is said to have expressed Holocaust denial and glorification of Hitler. About a local leader who had to resign because of a "Heil Hitler" Christmas card, or about a member who is said to have written about "Muslims" and the "dirty monster Merkel". Another documented email subject is: "Sale of swastika flags and drugs at the information booth in Bottrop by district board member - measures required."
So it's all about the party correctly applying procedures to keep out the people supposed to make up too large a portion of the party?
We are in an era now where media publish leaks without having gone to the effort of compiling the facts into a story, just AI summaries. And in past cases where there have been revelations with even global significance, we get silence from authorities too.
Maybe there's a better write up somewhere, or a month wasn't sufficient for media to work through it all, but I just got a bad Groundhog Day kind of vibe from the vagueness in that article. Is this what news is now? All the information, none of the journalism, none of the consequences.
Which is why I'm so confused that they did this instead of just publishing a "best hits" of excerpts or something, if the amount of content was an issue
Yesterday The Economist interviewed AfD's leader, in proper English:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cGGDu8sgXY
The BitDefender article immediately goes of with labeling AfD as far-right. This is going on all over Europe when a party is against mass-immigration and "sponsoring Ukraine till the last Ukrainian". And at the same time the streets in EU's big cities look worse than ever: unsafer, uncleaner and more un-European than ever before. Immigration is not good for us, and receiving a label "extreme rightwing" (and Fascist, and Nazi) simply because you want it to stop is loosing it's power... I dont mind to be called as such anymore (and I used to even call others this label).
In European vocabulary these "anti immigration of economically not-useful people" parties are not very rightwing: they are in favor of keeping the social benefit programs alive (that's why they want immigration of such people to stop).
* Prominent AfD figures promote a "völkisch" concept of German identity based on ancestry rather than citizenship, and propose to make laws based on this introducing what is generally referred to as "apartheid": 2 different legal statuses for German (and European) citizens based on ancestry
* The AfD "promotes remigration" (mass deportation) with some members supporting proposals that woud mass-deport German citizens. AfD figures attended the 2023 Potsdam meeting where far-right activists discussed controversial "remigration" proposals (meaning they discussed it with actual people loudly proclaiming they are Nazis)
Or how about: they keep getting caught defending Nazis, you know the actual historical party and what they did
* AfD politician Björn Höcke was convicted twice for using "Alles für Deutschland," a banned Nazi SA slogan
* Alexander Gauland described the Nazi era as mere "bird shit" in German history
* Björn Höcke called Berlin's Holocaust memorial a "monument of shame" and demanded a reversal of Germany's remembrance culture
* Maximilian Krah claimed that not all members of the Nazi Waffen-SS were criminals.
* More general, AfD politicians have maintained documented links to far-right nationalist movements (meaning actual groups calling themselves publicly Nazis)
People that have this as a job keep accusing, sometimes with VERY worrying proof, parts and people of the party of being Nazis
* Several AfD state branches have been classified as confirmed right-wing extremist by German constitutional-protection authorities
* "Junge Alternative", was classified as confirmed right-wing extremist by German intelligence
* Police arrested eight suspected members of the "Saxon Separatists," including an AfD local politician, over allegations that the group planned to use violence to establish a territory based on Nazi ideology
* Police raided AfD district politician Philip Steinbeck's property and discovered firearms, including reportedly fully automatic WWII weapons, and substantial quantities of explosives
THAT, and other reasons, is why AfD is described as extreme right. It's not that other parties don't get into controversies, but nothing remotely close to this, plus it keeps repeating.
You might have lost your shame, and I am sorry for you, but I assure you that the overwhelming majority of Europeans just sadly regret that people with such ridiculous views have become emboldened.
As for Ukraine: if you don’t believe that European freedom is defended there, I am not sure how to convince you, maybe an Estonian could.
If you are done with mass-immigration in Germany, you get no sizable party to vote for because they all have been demonstrably in favour of the immigrant flood. Except AfD. Why no other party caters to the done-with-immigration demographic? If you deny your constituency for too long you are bound to create a new powerful player.
Now please show you proof...
Ah yes, "useless eaters" (or in German, "nutzlose Esser"), you might even say!
Now where have I heard that before...?
If you prevent the discussion of popular policies like reducing immigration, then you end up with parties like the AFD. Same thing here in Australia.
And the just-had-their-emails-leaked-proving-they're-all-Nazis-AfD didn't grow out of anti-immigration sentiment, their anti-immigration sentiment grew out of the islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, and jingoism that Germany never fully stamped out, and which has resurged under an onslaught of controlled rhetoric.
Why can every country be "proud of their culture" and "want to conserve their culture" except white/christian countries?
Why is black-pride, or gay-pride, or african-pride, or XYZ-pride all very acceptable, except white-pride and christian-pride? The pushed narrative is obvious to me.
Well Islam isn't a popular grocery store chain or something, so what you're really asking is,
> Are people allowed to not want Muslim people in their home town?
And yeah, you are allowed to want anything, but it does make you a bigot. And the opposite isn't happening, either; no cities are out there trying to ban Christians.
And no one has an issue with European countries being proud of their cultures, but culture is a set of practices and traditions, and "being white", or "being Christian" is not one of those.
Wanting to deny freedom of religion (or worse, being opposed to certain skin colors) under the guise of 'culture' is once again the kind of thing you're free to do, but also the kind of thing other people are free to consider you shitty and bad for. No one has to accept your bigotry just because you dress it up as, "it's a tradition in my hometown not to be Muslim, and not to be non-caucasian".
> except white-pride and christian-pride?
Show me anyone saying being proud of being Christian is wrong. I'll wait.
And "white pride" is a problem for multiple reasons, one of which is that it's poisoned as a term by it's use by literal neo-Nazi and white-nationalist* groups. But also because "white" isn't actually a single group, it's many many unrelated groups with no common culture, meaning the only shared attribute is the general skin color, which is why the reality is it's just racism. A Siberian yak-herder has absolutely zero cultural relation to a British plumber, yet somehow we're supposed to buy the idea that this group has one unified cultural pride? Please.
And your position is literally the bread-and-butter of the Trump administration and it's right-wing media backers, not some downtrodden viewpoint, and yet somehow you think you're oppressed? The pushed narrative is obvious to me.
https://goebbelmail.com