We must suppress your freedom to save your democracy. It’s more than a well-worn social media meme; it is happening at this very moment in Germany and France. A political ruling establishment desperately trying to retain its slippery hold on governing power is calling for harsh crackdowns on fundamental liberties enjoyed by citizens of free societies, including the ability to choose candidates for office and the right to be informed.
In Germany, a frail coalition government is staring down the proverbial muzzle of a rightist populist surge that gains strength by the day. In April, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party topped a national political poll for the first time. An Ipsos survey found AfD support at 25%, while the conservative CDU/CSU bloc, headed by current Chancellor Friedrich Merz, came in at 24%.
Making the AfD’s rise all the more impressive is the years-long concerted vilification campaign conducted against it by government officials and agencies, leading politicians, and Germany's big-box media outlets. Terms such as “far right” and “extremist” are ceaselessly applied to AfD in all general public references.
Machinery in Action
Amazingly, the repression is only increasing with the AfD’s emergence as a leading political party in Germany. On June 29, the left-leaning Social Democratic Party, a junior member of Merz’s ruling coalition, “passed a motion calling for preparations to ban” the AfD, Deutsche Welle reports.
The state-run broadcaster dryly reported this shocking development as straight news. “The debate on whether to ban the AfD, which forms the strongest opposition force in parliament, has gained momentum after it was reclassified by Germany's domestic intelligence agency in May as a ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ group – an assessment that is now under court review after a legal challenge by the party,” DW related.
Once again, the familiar formula of an entrenched ruling apparatus operating in a so-called democracy has been rolled out to full effect. An establishment political party attempts to outlaw its most dangerous opposition and leans on expert, officious government “findings” to do so.
Thank goodness that would never happen here. Oh, wait – it already has. How can Americans forget that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a virulently anti-Donald Trump Democrat, sought to bar the presumptive Republican presidential nominee from the state’s 2024 ballot? Or that she got the Colorado Supreme Court to approve her action?
Griswold cited the pronouncements of federal judges aligned with a Democratic narrative on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, to justify herself. “Just as Colorado cannot be forced to place on its presidential primary ballot a naturalized citizen, a minor, or someone twice elected to the presidency, it also should not be forced to include a candidate found by its courts to have violated his oath to support the Constitution by engaging in insurrection,” Griswold wrote in a brief to the US Supreme Court, which eventually overturned her brazen move to disenfranchise a large segment of Coloradans. Trump went on to garner 1,377,441 votes in the Rocky Mountain State.
That is what the political establishment tried to do in America just a little more than a year ago. It is what they are trying to do in the name of democracy in Germany today.
“The moment at which domestic intelligence says this is a confirmed right-wing extremist party, there is no more room for tactics,” Social Democratic Party co-leader Lars Klingbeil declared after its motion to ban the AfD was approved. Klingbeil is the finance minister and vice chancellor in Germany’s ruling coalition government.
“Now is the time for the constitutional bodies entitled to do so to create the conditions for immediately filing a motion to determine the unconstitutionality of the AfD,” the motion stated. Translation: Now the ruling establishment must use the various weapons at its disposal to eradicate threats to its ongoing reign.
Making the ridiculous panorama complete, Frauke Brosius-Gersdorf, a law professor and key voice in the effort to ban the AfD, has been nominated by the Social Democrats, with backing from Merz’s CDU Party, for a seat on the Federal Constitutional Court, Germany’s version of the US Supreme Court.
“During a talk show in July last year, the professor not only argued that Germany’s ‘defensive democracy’ must find ‘safeguards against anti-constitutional parties’ – meaning explore the idea of banning AfD – but even expressed regret that such a solution would ‘not eliminate its following’ as well,” The European Conservative reported.
This same establishment oppression machine is humming at full speed in neighboring France, where, openly egged on by President Emmanuel Macron, leftist French members of Parliament are seeking to ban the reporting of crimes committed by migrants.
Blacking Out the News to Save Democracy
“On June 10th, President Macron spoke out against ‘the tyranny of news’ (faits divers) and said that the French were being ‘brainwashed’ about murders that hit the headlines and shocked French public opinion in recent months,” The European Conservative noted on July 4. “In line with this observation, several left-wing MPs proposed an amendment to media regulations aimed at ‘conducting an editorial review of the place of news items in the coverage of current events’ in the public media,” the news site stated.
The amendment was proposed by some 40 leftist MPs and will be voted on in the National Assembly. The text “mentions high-profile criminal cases,” EC continued. “According to the authors of the amendment, these crimes ‘provided an opportunity for political representatives, editorialists and far-right media outlets to spread racializing rhetoric.’”
Imagine this happening in the United States. Americans would not have been allowed to hear about the brutal murder of Laken Riley because an illegal alien was the killer, and such uncomfortable facts only embolden hate-filled xenophobes.
A government agency could easily be trotted out to “document” the far right’s “abuse” of such news reports in ways that have “nothing to do with averting future harm for people like Ms. Riley, and everything to do with stoking fear and punishing our immigrant communities.”
That last quote is not fictitious. It was made by Mary Meg McCarthy, executive director of the George Soros-funded National Immigrant Justice Center, in response to Congress’ passing of the Laken Riley Act in January. Soros’ son and heir, Alexander Soros, visited the Biden White House close to 30 times during Joe Biden’s four years in office.
Never forget that they tried to do this in America – because these people have not gone away. Sooner rather than later, they will try again.
