interview
Constitutional Court ruling
No state money for the NPD – does that also work for the AfD?
NPD demo in Gera 2011: The party now has a different name and is politically dead.
© Hendrik Schmidt / DPA
The former NPD received no money from the state for six years. The highest judges in Karlsruhe have rightly judged this. Is the approach also suitable against the AfD? A conversation with party researcher Carsten Koschmieder.
Mr. Koschmieder, Germany’s highest court has allowed one to exclude anti-constitutional parties such as the NPD from public funding. Is that good news?
In their ruling banning the NPD in 2017, the Karlsruhe judges suggested through Blume themselves that the party should be defunded because it wanted to destroy the constitution and democracy. That’s why the verdict was expected. What’s interesting is that the donation privilege has been removed and you can no longer deduct donations from your taxes.
How badly will it affect the party?
The NPD has now renamed itself “Die Heimat”, but in principle it has been dead for a long time. It no longer receives state funding anyway. It used to be the more radical version of the AfD, but anyone who is radical today feels just as at home with the AfD.
Around ten years ago there was heated discussion about banning the NPD. Did the debate have an impact on the party’s decline?
No. But it was never as successful as the AFD was or is now. Their voters then switched to the AfD and the NPD was thrown out of the state parliaments in which it was previously.
Will the Karlsruhe financing ruling have an impact on the AfD?
Certainly many voices will now point out that withdrawing funding could be an alternative to a lengthy and uncertain ban process. Especially since the judges in Karlsruhe could see it as more proportionate than banning the party entirely. A ban on parties is always a blatant interference with democracy.
Dr. Carsten Koschmieder is a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. Right-wing extremism and political parties are among his main research areas.
© FU Berlin / stern
Are you against a ban on the AfD?
I’m in favor of it if the best constitutional lawyers agree that it works. A failed case against the AfD would be a disaster because it would give the false impression that it is not a nationalist, racist and anti-democratic party.
Don’t you think that a ban would at least limit the right-wing structures associated with the AfD and their influence?
The right-wing extremists would certainly be less present in the media and on podiums. And of course it would be good if the party didn’t get money from the state to destroy it and spread right-wing ideas with its Desiderius Erasmus Foundation…
… but?
This does not release political actors, especially center-left parties, from implementing policies that deprive right-wing extremists of their breeding ground: they should take people’s concerns seriously. And they don’t say that we have too many “foreigners”, but rather: What will happen to my apartment and my rent? Will globalization ruin my job and will my child get a proper education? Will I fall into Hartz IV? Prohibition proceedings or not – something has to be done against right-wing extremist attitudes in many places in our societyhappen: for example, improving political education, investing in schools, Democracy must become more tangible. And by the way: If the CDU continues to campaign for the AfD, the AfD will also need less money for its election campaigns.