The vice-president of the court said that the party's political concept was incompatible with the German constitution's guarantee of human dignity.
The vice-president of the court said that the party's political concept was incompatible with the German constitution's guarantee of human dignity.
Germany's highest court ruled on Tuesday that a small far-right party will not receive state funding for the next six years because its values and goals are unconstitutional and aimed at destroying the country's democracy.
In its judgment, the Federal Constitutional Court wrote that Die Heimat, formerly known as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), "continues to disregard the free democratic basic order and, according to its goals and the behaviour of its members and supporters, is aimed at its elimination".
Presiding Judge Doris Koenig, the court's vice-president, explained the unanimous decision by saying that the party's political concept was incompatible with the guarantee of human dignity as defined in Germany's constitution, the Basic Law.
Props to OP for making it clear in the post body, but the headline made it a bit more clickbate-y than it should have been. That article is about NPD, a very minor and actual neo nazi party. The anti-right protests that have been happening recently, instead, are about the AfD (alternative for Germany) party, which is set to gain a sizeable 23% of the votes for its far right coalition ID during the next European elections.
In other words yeah they are cutting funds from a far right party, but not from the far right party.
AfD is an actual Neo-Nazi party as well. Their positions, goals, external and internal communication and even the wording they are using are indistinguishable from the NPD. German article on this topic:
The Homeland argues that NATO fails to represent the interests and needs of European people. The party considers the European Union to be little more than a reorganization of a Soviet-style government of Europe along financial lines. [...] The Homeland is strongly anti-Zionist, frequently criticizing the policies and activities of Israel.
The Homeland's platform asserts that Germany is larger than the present-day Federal Republic, and calls for a return of German territory lost after World War II, a foreign policy position abandoned by the German government in 1990.
Except for the anti-zionist thing (the American GOP is seemingly Zionist and antisemitic at the same time) and the German-specific stuff, this sounds a lot like Republicans.
Germany's highest court ruled on Tuesday that a small far-right party will not receive state funding for the next six years because its values and goals are unconstitutional and aimed at destroying the country's democracy.
Presiding Judge Doris Koenig, the court's vice-president, explained the unanimous decision by saying that the party's political concept was incompatible with the guarantee of human dignity as defined in Germany's constitution, the Basic Law.
Die Heimat adheres to an ethnic concept of German identity and the idea that the country's "national community" is based on descent, the judge said.
"The propagation of the ethnically defined community leads to a disregard for foreigners, migrants and minorities that violates human dignity and the principle of elementary legal equality," Koenig said.
In its eastern German strongholds of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, polls show the AfD as the most popular party ahead of elections this autumn.
The demonstrations followed last week's news that some members of the far-right party had attended a secret meeting in November last year where they allegedly discussed plans for mass deportations of immigrants and Germans with a migrant background.
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