this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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So their policy documents etc are lies? Based on what? Verifiable proof would be great. What is being misrepresented in there exactly?
Can you provide some of these quotes that go against their policies and confirm what you’re saying they want to do?
Ok so you do mean illegal immigrants. Can someone apply for asylum in Germany without illegally entering the country? A quick google shows that that is what the AfD are proposing - asylum seekers apply before entering the country. Germany isn’t an island so that shouldn’t be too difficult, and seems reasonable. What is the issue with only people who are granted asylum being allowed in? Believe it or not, letting everyone in and then choosing who to deport leads to large number of people who are not granted asylum just staying illegally, as the current situation in the USA shows. They try to deport illegals who have lived there for 13+ years without even attempting to get asylum, and everyone blows up at them saying they should just leave them alone.
If someone wants to rent my property I don’t let them stay in it while I process their application.
Their policy documents are half-truths that point in a direction, their speeches in front of followers are often more to the point.
And these quote collections are really all over the German-language interwebs, e.g. https://www.watson.ch/international/rechtsextremismus/291420759-rechtsextremismus-in-der-afd-diese-21-zitate-sprechen-fuer-sich
And guess what kind of materials court proceedings against Afd would be based on? Quotes and overheard conversations.
I don't. People aren't "illegal", unless you dabble in dehumanizing language.
Not currently.
It's a fairly transparent proposal to remove the rights of asylum seekers for any kind of due process and remove any kind of oversight. Regular German judges, lawyers, civil-rights organizations will all be far away.
Some private operator will get rich off running an internment camp. An airline will get rich off the flights there.
Germany is part of the EU, Germany is part of the Schengen agreement that is supposed to guarantee free movement within Europe, and Germany should help the EU as a whole succeed. The latter includes integrating refugees into the society.
How do people that just live and go to work hurt the system? (I.e. the vastest majority of undocumented and overstaying immigrants in the US.)
The US is currently doing a bang-up job deporting family father of 3 with no priors while not getting ahold of people who actually are criminal. (Iirc, 90% of the nameless, supposed "worst of the worst" gang members recently deported from the US had no priors.)
Normally, law enforcement capacity is scarce and normally, you should prioritize the cases that actually hurt society.
Incidentally, on a much smaller scale, so is Germany: Deporting the easy people, the people who show up to appointments and live at their registered place of residence.
Possibly because these people likely are a net positive to society, have built a life, have friends, have integrated to a degree, just normal humaning.
Cool story.
Ok so you basically want unregulated immigration and think that any attempts to stop it is nazi-adjacent, or just straight up nazi behaviour.
Way to argue in bad faith. People can be “illegal immigrants” which is what is being discussed. Illegal immigrants are immigrants that entered the country illegally. They broke the law. No one is saying a person is illegal. Thats the very definition of a bad faith argument, intentionally cherry picking words out of context and acting like they mean something that they don’t so you can attack them and/or the poster.
Making a process for asylum seekers to get approval to enter the country before entering the country isn’t “removing rights of asylum seekers for due process” in any way. It’s giving them due process to enter the country rather than letting them in and then having to go through endless processes to remove them if they’re not granted asylum. It makes sense. It’s the smart thing to do. It fixes many issues with the current system. What rights do you think it takes away?
You mean the MS-13 gang member who has lived in the country illegally for 13 years without any attempt to become a legal citizen, who had twice been ordered to be deported back to his home country, where he now is? That “Maryland father”? “No priors” is also a lie. He broke the law, self admittedly, entering the country illegally. He didn’t show up to multiple court cases despite admitting he knew about them.
Like I said, your position is that all immigration should be legal. Thats a position alright, but it’s a very unpopular one that only the furthest of the far left advocate for. It’s no wonder why you claim that a party who want to control immigration are Nazis and should be banned from becoming too popular.
So you didn’t get the point that was being made, or you have no way to refute it?
Nice strawman! Where did you buy it? I usually get mine at Aldi's, but I've recently wondered whether I should switch up.
On a more serious note: Of course, immigration should be controlled. It should not be cut off though.
Absolutely in good faith. There's a reason why the phrasing "illegal immigrant" was coined: It's a derogatory term to criminalize people who are usually fleeing their home countries. And often enough, it's even shortened to "illegals", making the intended dehumanization even more obvious.
Now that's a bad-faith argument! Again, that process usually centers around "welcome centers" or whatever the euphemism du jour is, in other words: offshored internment camps. I suspect there may be reasons why Italy's Albanian camp project and the UK's Rwandan camp project were each struck down by courts multiple times. Notably, cost projection for both of these were rather interesting too. But gotta make someone rich in the process, right?
Don't know the specific case; is that the case with the photoshopped knuckle tattoo though?
In any case, I was referring the sort of average profile of a person that ends up getting deported. Statistically, the chances of the deported being violent criminals is becoming much lower, the higher the number of deportations. And that's pretty logical: most people are not actually criminal, and if you're just deporting to juice the stats, you'll obviously deport the people you can arrest easily. Deportations are a shit tool if your goal is justice or safety, and they are extremely easy to abuse.
I know someone who was nearly deported and who does live in constant fear of deportation. They are not allowed to take a job, are completely dependent on the welfare, they feel absolutely miserable all the time, and they are certainly not a career criminal.
Lol. "Like I said, your position is", even to you that wording should be cue.
Your experience as a landlord seemed irrelevant to the topic.
Shall we recap this discussion between the two of us?
I'd still love to know, what you think of the positions that I wrote up above. Just take them at face value. Are those positions of a normal democratic party that should remain allowed?
I am copying what I wrote above again:
Immigration can and should be cut off at times. Here in Australia we have a massive housing crisis and cost of living crisis. We currently have all time high levels of immigration at a time when we have a housing crisis with homelessness skyrocketing. We literally cannot house the people we have, and most of the population can’t afford to buy a house because the demand far outstrips the supply which has caused house pricing to explode.
The absolute best thing we could do at the moment is to cut immigration until we can get the housing crisis under control. What good does importing another million people a year do when we have nowhere to put them?
“Illegal immigrants” is not “derogatory”, it is a factual description. They broke the law to enter the country. They are in the country illegally. They are an immigrant. Illegal immigrant. This is how language works.
Bad faith? Having people apply for asylum before entering a country is a bad faith argument? Think about what is being proposed. Someone wants to get asylum in Germany. Before entering Germany they apply for asylum. They could do that from their home in the country they’re wanting asylum from. They could do it from any other country. The AfD is just saying “don’t enter our country illegally and then ask if you can come in - ask first”, which is fair because once they’re in the country there are people who will say they should not be allowed to be deported - like you. You’re making up the existence of these “offshore internment camps” in this situation.
No, it’s the one where a bunch of room temperature IQ people thought that the annotations describing what each of the tattoos stood for were being presented as tattoos.
The US government wants to deport people who are in the country illegally. That’s the “profile”. Not a single citizen has been deported so far. Deportations are a great tool for deporting illegal immigrants. This isn’t really debatable.
Ok so you just didn’t get the point. I’ll explain it again:
Someone entering my house without being invited in is illegal entry. I offer a way for people to enter my house legally, a rental application. When someone applies to rent my house, I don’t let them move in while I review their application, because then if I chose not to accept their application they’re already in my house and I have to jump through all sorts of legal issues to get them out. Out of a place that they should not be. Instead what I do is review their application while they live in their current house, and if successful I let them move in.
Does that help?
All of your “they want to do x/y/z because they’re too woke” stuff - what actually are their policies? Do you mean that they want to defund government funded media who push certain ideologies and implement certain policies like DEI?
The “remove the outmoded political party system” seems like something most of the far left want to do doesn’t it?
I've actually bolded the one thing I still would like to see you answer in my above comment. Stop beating around the bush.
Was in the process of editing answers/questions down the bottom of my post.
For who and for what? Going to have to be more specific if you want me to respond.
Targetting dual citizenship holders first who are deemed criminals. If I had wild guess, criminals means supermarket thieves as much as climate protesters. But who knows what the end result may look like.
Fun side note: The German constitution does not allow the state to revoke citizenships unilaterally. The reason for that is that it was one the things that the historical Nazis used to legal-wash removing parts of the population. You know, just like the German constitution includes the right to asylum, specifically because so many countries refused to take in refugees from Germany in the Nazi era.
Ok so speculation on your part there about how citizenship would be revoked. Cool story.
Fun side note: if the constitution does not allow it then they can’t and won’t do it. As for the asylum one, they’re not suggesting banning asylum.
So you're just saying that I lie because of ... what? I made an informed guess on who would ultimately likely be affected, the rest of it is part of discussions [de]. And as gonservatives like to copy fascists these days, adding some form of it to the coalition treaty [de] was in fact discussed (but luckily not included in the final treaty).
To change the constitution, you only need a 2/3 majority in parliament and 2/3 in the council of states. But that's not even the point — the point is that there are political forces who want to do away with provisions in the constitution that were specifically created because of Germany's past.
I didn’t say you lied, I said you are speculating - which you are.
What you’re now talking about is legally changing the constitution. That is allowed to happen. That’s democracy. If a party gets elected and given that much power via numbers then what reason do you have to say they shouldn’t be allowed to make their democratically elected platform into law?
Look, if a country overwhelmingly want to go full nazi, then democratically that is what should happen. It doesn’t mean that there won’t be consequences for them doing so - like sanctions, tariffs, ending of trade deals, or even a world war - but if it is what the majority of the people want……that is how democracy works. You can’t say you want democracy but then say that the majority of people shouldn’t be allowed to have a say. That in itself is very authoritarian, very dictatorship. “We know better than the majority of people and we will not listen to them and we will dictate what will happen”.
Let’s say that 75% of a country want to legalize slavery for example, and all vote for the party that wants that and they win the election in a landslide the size of which has never been seen before. Do you think that a minority party that got say 5% of the votes should be able to just take power and go against what the overwhelming majority of people voted for? Why? On what grounds? Where do you go from there? You’ve just installed a dictator and thrown out democracy.
I’d love to keep discussing this as it’s interesting, no one is hurling insults, no one is breaking rules, but this is no doubt going to get removed for “bad faith”.
It appears you absolutely don't understand modern democratic societies or what they're good for, i.e. giving every one of their members a livable, just, free, safe life. That's why e.g., there are equal rights in modern democracies, including for minorities.
You're somehow equivocating "democracy" with a "dictatorship of the majority". That is, frankly, incredibly uneducated at best.
You even advocate for the option that modern societies should simply be allowed to regress into slaveholder societies. Why? How is this congruent with allowing everyone decent quality of life? And if 75% of the populace decided that you have to become a slave, would you find this just? Would you go along with it?
Man, you seem scarily enthusiastic at the prospect. But no, fascism doesn't win landslides. In a deeply polarized society with an FPTP system, Trump won just 53%. In the richer party landscape of Germany, AfD is below 30%. The way fascism wins is not with landslides but through the undermining of democratic society.
I’m doing no such thing. I’m saying democracy is what it actually is - the power of the people to exercise political control. Like this is literally the definition of democracy. Democracy is a form of government where the power is given to the people to elect a government.
Your view of a “democratic society” is not based on actual definitions. You’re talking more about “society” and societal norms. ie slavery is bad, murder is bad, etc. That’s not what is being discussed.
I’m advocating for democracy. What about this is hard to understand? Not all democracy gives the result that you want.
It’s irrelevant if I’d find it “just”. I would agree that it was democratically chosen and is the will of the people. Do you disagree with that? If 75% of the population agree on something, do you think that the 25% should get to overrule it?
Ok now there are 2 possibilities here:
There is no way you could come up with that line outside of those 2 possibilities. I displayed no enthusiasm whatsoever. I was using an example to make a point, an example at the extreme end to drive the point home. You somehow mistook this as some sort of orgasmic fever dream, or you’re arguing in bad faith. Like that quote you just made is a textbook bad faith argument. You invented something and attributed it to me based on thin air, acting like you know my intentions more than I do.
My point is that what you think is “fascism” absolutely could win in a landslide. It could happen - that’s democracy. Democracy doesn’t have to be undermined - democracy just has to be respected. Trump just won 53%….what if JD Vance wins 63% next time? 73% the time after? What if the AfD wins 60% next time? That’s democracy, and you can’t argue with that.
Arguing that they should be banned because you don’t agree with their policies is literally saying you don’t want democracy. You’re saying that government should no longer be formed democratically.
Let me turn that question around to you - if 75% of the German population agreed with the AfD policies and voted for them at the next election, no “election interference”, no fraud whatsoever, just legitimately 75% of all voters voted for them………what would you say should happen? Would you agree that they won the democratic election and should form government? Would you agree that the democratic process was followed?
You may need to look at definitions. You are simply arguing against modern democracy. It may comply with the Greek definition of the term but things have changed.
If those 75% unjustly take away the rights of a part of the citizenship? Obviously the 25% overrule them. Human rights come before majority vote.
Tell that to the person responsible for your phrasing.
Trump somehow keeps dropping hints that people won't need to vote again. Weird how that happens, especially given that the admin ignores parliament and law and due process wherever it can. Trump's ratings of course drop right now. The only reason for him to even allow another election to go ahead is if there's propaganda win to be wrung out of it.
For one thing, in Germany legal proceedings both could and should have occurred against Afd at some point in the past years. Germany shouldn't even be at this point, the constitution does allow a way out. Politicians of democratic forces literally didn't do their job.
The constitution does also include Art. 20 p. 4, legitimizing a general strike against people trying to undo the constitutional order. Realistically, it likely wouldn't happen nearly at the level needed to make a difference though.
In any case, no, you shouldn't give power to obviously antidemocratic forces.
Democracy has nothing to do with social norms etc. It has nothing to do with feelings etc. It is a system of electing a government.
No, not obviously lol. That’s not how democracy works. It’s literally not democracy. How can the 25% overrule them even if they wanted to? That’s a dictatorship.
No, I’ll tell the person responsible for your comprehension skill that they need to go back to the drawing boards because it didn’t stick. The point that was being made was that you’re saying that even in an absolutely overwhelmingly large never before happened majority winning vote, you think the other side should win……and you still think that’s democracy! Hahaha. The point was to make the point as extreme as it possibly can be to point out how bad your logic is there. The 1% of voters don’t get to dictate to the 99% just because the 1% think they’re morally superior. The 99% win because thats democracy. You don’t just give veto powers to the side you support lol.
Rubbish lol. Show us these hints - and no, the pre-election message to the Christian’s who never usually vote of “vote this once and you won’t have to again because we’ll fix everything” was NOT saying that. It was saying “just vote me in this time and then go back to not voting because everything will be so good more and more people will just keep voting for me”.
Making amendments to the constitution is not the same as “trying to undo the constitutional order”. This shouldn’t even need to be said. Constitutional amendments are a thing. They happen. Americans love their amendments, especially the second one.
Again your argument boils down to “my party needs to become authoritarian fascists and destroy democracy so the party I don’t like doesn’t get into power”, and you can’t see how that is absolutely terrible and goes against everything the western world stands for, everything democracy stands for.
You don’t get to install yourself as dictators because you think the other side will install themselves as dictators at some stage. That’s not how it works lol. You are the bad guys in that situation.
Kudos on not deleting every comment of mine btw. We’re making progress!
The “fuck up the environment” one is - without knowing their policy - I’m guessing about “renewables”?
Here in Australia more and more people are realising that our “100% renewables” power plan is a complete shit show and is anything but “renewable” and will cause greater long term damage. More and more people want nuclear because it’s cheaper, cleaner, and doesn’t require the endless resources and space that “renewables” do. Our power prices have skyrocketed to some of the highest in the world the more we shift to “renewables”. Our government still refuses to tell us how much the total projected cost of the “renewables” plan is, with some estimates putting it in the trillions of dollars realm.
So, for one, no it's obviously not just about renewables. It's about enabling environmental abuse of whatever sort. You can literally look at Trump in many ways. Afd is, in large part, propped by the same people as he is. Elmo even spoke at their party convention.
And nuclear is not cheap. The only reason why people think that is that usually the cost of building plants as well as the cost of insurance is subsidized somehow, and the cost of final storage for 100k+ years is a complete unknown. It doesn't even make sense to even think about final storage in economic terms, because who knows what people are capable of in 100k years. But when a nuclear plant is built, and has been humming along for a couple years, people start to think it's cheap because they fail to see either end of the process. Cheap nuclear is a mirage.
Solar and wind actually are cheap, can be rolled out decentrally, don't require consumables, but you have to deal with their intermittency.
Also, you have delved again into yet more topics. Which certainly is a fun distraction.
Are you going to just keep removing all of my comments that you disagree with and say “bad faith”? Funny that you removed ones where I asked someone if they just want a dictatorship of their preferred party and they literally said “yes” as “bad faith” lol
Yes, I removed many of your comments from other threads. In case you're wondering, yes, I did notice you're not arguing in good faith in this thread either.
I noticed that you’re just saying I’m arguing in bad faith because you disagree with me and want to use it as a reason to delete my comments.
I’m not arguing in bad faith. You have not shown any evidence of me arguing in bad faith.
So when you're trying to force me into ever smaller sub-discussions just to not have to give an answer, ignore any bit of information you can't use in a retort, set up the strawman about "uncontrolled migration", added the completely misguided landlord metaphor, or the misinfo about mining and recycling needed for renewables infrastructure – that was all in good faith?
We may have different definitions of "good", I suppose.
Where have I not given an answer?
“Completely misguided landlord metaphor”? I’m sorry, do you still not see the direct relevance of that? I very clearly and very slowly explained it to you. Please, explain to me why it is not relevant and is “bad faith”?
“Misinformation about mining and recycling needed for renewables”
What misinformation? You can’t just claim misinformation without ever even responding lol. What is “misinformation” about what I said? Do you think that the materials for solar panels and batteries grow on trees? Where do you think lithium comes from? Aluminium? Where do you think solar panels go when the cost to recycle them is literally higher than the cost to make a new one?
You can’t just go “misinformation!!!” and delete all my comments without even so much as showing or telling why something is supposedly misinformation lol. I mean you can because you are, but that’s weak AF and an abuse of your mod powers.
“Bad faith” doesn’t just mean “things I disagree with”.
Can you please actually provide some evidence for why those are “bad faith” arguments?
Not sure if serious but I posed the question right at the top. I posed it multiple times, I bolded it, I made you aware that I bolded it.
If you can't see a difference between running a country and renting a house ... Maybe have a think and you'll find a myriad ways in which the situations don't compare.
Of course I can. I don't need to spend time writing up everything before I allow myself to think it. But here you go:
You compared the lifetime of a battery to the half-life of nuclear waste, which is dumb. You assumed that solar panels or batteries are unrecyclable, which is false. You conveniently omitted that uranium must be mined as well, which is kind of a relevant omission.
Oh the ones that I answered last night?
Sigh……so you still don’t get the rental example. I can’t possibly make it any simpler or clearer, but I’ll try…...
Only let people in after you’ve determined they’re allowed in for good. Before you determine that they’re allowed in, they can wait where they are currently. Make sense?
I didn’t compare the lifetime of batteries to the half life of nuclear waste.
Solar panels are recyclable to an extent, not entirely, but what I said is that recycling them is cost prohibitive - which it is. It costs more to recycle them than it is worth. It is cheaper to simply buy a new panel, meaning the broken/old panels go to landfill unless someone likes losing money recycling them.
Batteries, the technology that we have now, is largely not recyclable - especially given most of the batteries are made in China from dozens of different brands, sold and installed by companies that have no way to recycle them even if they were 100% recyclable, which they’re not.
Uranium must be mined, of course, but mining 1 thing vs mining a dozen different things to make batteries and solar panels and transmission lines and wind turbines…….come on, surely you can see the difference? Do you even know how much concrete and steel is used for every single wind turbine that goes up? As time goes on we need more and more - power usage doesn’t go down - so the solar and wind farms just spread until there’s nowhere left to spread. Then what?
I asked you to clarify what you meant, and assumed it was about renewables. It wasn’t obvious what you were talking about, hence why I asked :)
Nuclear is cheap compared to literal endless spending on ever increasing numbers of batteries and solar panels and wind turbine blades and transmission lines for eternity. Take your number of 100k years - batteries need to be replaced every 10 years or so due to falling capacity and/or just dropping dead/malfunction. How solar panels are supposed to last 25-30, but are easily damaged by things like hail. Batteries and solar panels require mining of non-renewable, toxic, and non recyclable materials to create. This means enormous, ever increasing amounts of toxic landfill combined with enormous ever increasing mining.
Solar and wind are cheap to roll out (if you don’t include the transmission costs, like the Australian government refuse to), but they’re incredibly inefficient (less than 30% efficient at their absolute best) and unreliable (solar doesn’t work for a minimum of 8 hours a day, often 24 hours a day). They require consumables in a different way - every time they need replacement. Nuclear works at 100% capacity 24/7.
If you didn’t mean renewables then cool, let’s leave that one there. What did you mean then? Remember, I asked you what you meant since you were vague and non specific.