There is nothing so vile or vindictive as Lefty sore loser disease, and there is a LOT of that going around in Europe at the moment, particularly in Germany.

At the beginning of last month, I told y'all how Olaf Scholz's worst nightmare had come to pass - that the [fixed] Alternative for Germany party (AfD) had won a solid second-place finish in the regional election in Saxony and an outright victory [Beege adds: 33% of total votes] in Thuringia's.

They tried awfully hard all spring to demonize the AfD, spewing epithets from Nazis to white supremacists to terrorists to racist extremists - they used every "ist" they could think of. When that effort seemed to fall on deaf voters, what the hell - trot out comparing them to Goebbels. This earnest lady is the co-leader of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Saskia Esken.

„Vergleichen Sie jetzt die AfD mit Goebbels?“

Saskia Esken: „Ja!“ pic.twitter.com/XO19RWOuV2

— Argo Nerd (@argonerd) May 2, 2024

SHE SEEMS NICE

Even in the face of such determined gaslighting, the German people boldly exercised their own initiative at the ballot box and brought the seats home for the AfD in a surging populist wave.

Scholz's last hope to stave off annihilation was the Saxony and Thuringia elections, and...poof. He had the doors blown off, and his coalition partners - the Greens - wound up an uber minority in one parliament and completely unseated in the other.

Responding to the brutal September setback in the finest spirit of German "democracy," Scholz and the other parties immediately banded together to deny AfD the opportunity to form a regional government and be part of a local coalition as was its right by its smashing victory in both states.

...Cue the wailing, gnashing of teeth, and immediate machinations to keep AfD from forming the regional Thuringian government that would normally be their prerogative as winners and to stifle their influence as the second most powerful party in Saxony's legislature.

...If it were any other party, the AfD would now provide Thuringia with its minister-president and become part of a government coalition in Saxony. But as soon as the results were published, Scholz and many other losers of this election called for the AfD to be excluded from governing. In both states, Scholz said, ‘stable governments must be formed without right-wing extremists’. Bodo Ramelow, incumbent minister-president of Thuringia, similarly called on the CDU to form a new government. The job, he said, was up to the ‘democratic’ party with the most votes. Clearly, he did not mean the AfD. But nor could he mean his own Left Party, which managed to win just 13 per cent.

But the perhaps mortally wounded Scholz is in a real quandary now, treading water, spinning around, desperately looking for the mechanism he can use to save himself during next year's national elections.

WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THESE PESKY POPULISTS?

In the collaborative interest of self-preservation, the political priesthood answered.

Again, in the finest tradition of German democracy, they've come up with a plan to simply ban what's rapidly becoming the most popular political party in the country.

It started in, of all places, Thuringia, where the AfD won their majority but was blocked from forming a government.

They weren't happy and made it known they were hot under the collar. An older AfD member played a little game of payback, and the co-conspirators lost their cookies.

There was chaos last week in the parliament in Erfurt, in the eastern German state of Thuringia, where the Alternative for Germany (AfD) became the biggest group in the state parliament following its election victory in early September.

Last Thursday, AfD politician Jürgen Treutler, by virtue of being the parliament's oldest member at 73, was entitled to chair the first session of the new legislative period. Treutler performed this duty by refusing to allow motions to be passed and votes to be taken, essentially blocking the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and other parties from nominating a candidate for the speaker's job.

The CDU objected to this performance at the Thuringian Constitutional Court and was successful. When the session resumed two days later, CDU politician Thadäus König was elected as the new state parliament president.

Thuringia's interior minister wants the party banned for behaving badly.

The interior minister of Germany’s state of Thuringia has called for banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD), after a tumultuous opening session of the state parliament.

“Events in the Thuringian state parliament have shown that the AfD is aggressively combating parliamentarians,” Georg Maier, the acting interior minister, wrote on X.

The September 26 opening session was riddled with conflict, interrupted on several occasions, and ended prematurely, amid clashes between the AfD and other parties.

“The potential for a party ban and actions for violating Article 1 of the Constitution have long been undisputed in the case of the AfD,” the minister added.

The other competing parties in session sniffed and said that sounded like an excellent idea - that sort of thing is simply not done when we screw you over. Let's throw the duly elected bums out of OUR parliament.

Holy smokes! Didn't light bulbs go off all over Germany, and now everyone who is hanging on by a thread wants to ban the bad boys of AfD...and quickly, before they take over the whole place.

The political elite in Germany is in a quandary, wondering whether to save democracy by abolishing it by banning the party that might otherwise become the largest in next year's Bundestag elections.https://t.co/OzCc7HNA5I

— Tage Sundin (@TageSundin) October 1, 2024

They got moving on the idea this week, with over three dozen lawmakers proposing to outlaw the party to, you know:

SAVE DEMOCRACY

There is a motion in the German parliament to officially ban the AfD political party in order to "save democracy".

The left wing government's version of democracy is "you can vote for anyone, as long as it's us." https://t.co/k0ZqIfuXON

— Fortress Evropa 🇵🇱 (@FortressEvropa) October 1, 2024

Heh. What were the odds lefties would think of that?

And they've already begun talk of taking out Elon at the same time, so it'd be, like...easier.

🚨🇧🇷🇩🇪BREAKING: AFD LEADER DRAWS ATTENTION TO THE 𝕏 BAN IN BRAZIL

Alice Weidel warns us: The Green Party plans to ban 𝕏 in Germany just like Alexandre de Moraes.

I lead by example to invite more German AfD politicians to post on 𝕏❗️
pic.twitter.com/ZmCk9j0mG5

— Naomi Seibt (@SeibtNaomi) September 11, 2024

Anything is justified when you're "saving democracy" and protecting the people from their own ignorance.

The losers of the recent regional elections continue using all available legal methods to punish the second most popular party.

The thought of banning the second most popular party in Germany, the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), has cropped up again following the recent electoral successes of the party. Despite a group of lawmakers signalling their support for the federal parliament (Bundestag) to discuss such a motion, many are wary of bringing the case to the constitutional court, fearing that the court would reject a ban, thus benefiting the AfD politically.

Following the party’s first-ever regional election victory in Thuringia, and its strong second-place finish in Saxony and Brandenburg, mainstream forces are rightly concerned about their ability to keep AfD from having political influence. But instead of listening to voters and initiating better policies—like a tougher stance on immigration—they are trying to make life as hard as possible for their political rivals in a bid to undermine their credibility and popularity—such as designating the party as a “suspected extremist organisation,” withholding state funds, publishing false media reports, and agreeing to prevent the AfD from getting close to power.

An outright ban of the party has been suggested in recent years by many politicians, and the issue has come to the fore once again. A centre-right CDU member of the Bundestag, Marco Wanderwitz, gathered more than the necessary 37 signatures for the parliament to discuss backing such a motion. If a motion were passed, the constitutional court would then decide whether the AfD poses a threat to the country’s democratic order and the rule of law.

There may be some cooler heads in the crowd, however much they want to preserve their cushy jobs. For one thing, the German high courts haven't been consistently friendly to the coalition lately, and to some, this action doesn't begin to pass the constitutional smell test. 

Worse, they'd lose even more face if it got squashed.

Ya think?

...However, writes conservative publication Junge Freiheit, there seems to be an aversion among most of the Bundestag MPs to even ask the court to impose a ban—mostly because constitutional law experts believe the AfD does not meet the conditions required for a ban, namely because it does not fight the free democratic basic order “aggressively and combatively.” If the court would also see it that way, it would be a humiliating defeat for the other parties of the Bundestag.

Democracy can only be protected from itself so far. And then the people who are being disenfranchised by those who have taken it upon themselves to do the "protecting" without so much as a by-your-leave often find themselves needing protection.

They might want to throttle back a bit. 

Listen to those cooler heads.

Maybe even pay attention to voters.

Nah.

That's crazy talk when democracy's on the line.