EU silences the political opposition

AfD labelled “extremist” by German authorities

The German intelligence services have just designated the second most popular political party in Germany, the AfD, “extremist”. [1] Apparently this is because their policies are “incompatible with the free democratic basic order”. And, here it is in a nutshell. For liberals democracy is not rule by the people, (the actual meaning of ‘democracy’, historically and etymologically), but is an ideology which accords with certain standards and values they have adopted.

This is probably why liberals have such a problem accepting that other countries can have different standards and values to them. The modern liberal has missed the point of liberalism. The principle of tolerance for and acceptance of diverse views had been elided to a fixed-in-stone set of values and views which were produced by that principle. They confuse one particular output with the root principle.

Designating the AfD party “extremist” is no more than a crude and transparent attempt by the state to defend itself, its current ideology and interests, against a popular democratic movement. The case is worse than Russia designating Navalny’s movement as “extremist”; AfD is far more popular in Germany than Navalny’s movement was in Russia.

Winning Romanian Presidential candidate usurped

It didn’t get much coverage in the Western media. You could easily have missed it. But the previous candidate for the Presidency of Romania was blocked by an election commission – on the grounds that there was a Russian social media campaign behind him, and issues with campaign finance declarations. [2] Since when were elections cancelled because of some “social media meddling”? Călin Georgescu was against the Ukraine war; that might be a clue. The elections are being re-run and the new candidate is also against continuing the Ukraine war. He is currently leading in the polls, [3] which strongly suggests that the banned candidate was indeed a real popular choice, (itself an indication of how over-hyped all this talk of Russian social media meddling is).

And the second most popular Presidential candidate in France was banned

Meanwhile, in France, Marie Le Penn – a “populist” ( = popular) candidate with a strong anti-immigration stance, and sceptical towards the Ukraine war was banned from standing in the next Presidential election by a court over a historical expenses fiddle scandal. [4] This was an expenses scandal at the EU Parliament. I know because I grew up in EU ex-pat circles that fiddling EU expenses was the norm. This was an entirely selective prosecution. And, for a court to ban a popular candidate from participating in an election two years in the future for a minor, historical, expenses scandal not even in the country itself is unprecedented.

Notice a pattern, folks?

These actions are all “straight out of the Russian playbook”; designating political movements as “extremist”, election commissions banning inconvenient candidates for irregularities, standard low-level corruption being used to silence inconvenient opponents through selective legal operations.

All of these things do happen in Russia. In the case of Navalny probably with considerable justification. (He was trying to wreck the Russian system in his own interests and may have been directed from abroad). I was disappointed though that the Russian election commission banned anti-war candidates from standing in the 2024 election on the grounds of irregularities.

In any event it is laughable that, in operational terms, the EU establishment uses exactly the same methods that the “dictatorial regime” they claim to despise uses!

Notes

EU silences the political opposition

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