The vice-president of the court said that the party’s political concept was incompatible with the German constitution’s guarantee of human dignity.
Germany’s highest court ruled on Tuesday that a small far-right party will not receive state funding for the next six years because its values and goals are unconstitutional and aimed at destroying the country’s democracy.
In its judgment, the Federal Constitutional Court wrote that Die Heimat, formerly known as the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), “continues to disregard the free democratic basic order and, according to its goals and the behaviour of its members and supporters, is aimed at its elimination”.
Presiding Judge Doris Koenig, the court’s vice-president, explained the unanimous decision by saying that the party’s political concept was incompatible with the guarantee of human dignity as defined in Germany’s constitution, the Basic Law.
They were referencing the US far-right’s desire to recreate the failed slave state known as the Confederate States of America (CSA, aka The Confederacy). The CSA was formed in Feb 8, 1861 by seven Southern US states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Texas; South Carolina declared secession in Dec 1860; Arkansas, North Carolina, and Virginia joined by mid-1861, making the number eleven) when their goverments declared secession from the US, an action not recogized as legal under US law.
The principal reasons given by the states that found it important enough to document were the preservation and expansion of chattle slavery of those of African descent and enforcing white supremacy (this is the “states’ right” that US conservatives refer to). The white supremacists were concerned about the potential abolition of slavery, the ban of slavery in new provinces, and freestates’ refusal to enforce runaway slave laws aft civil war when Confederates attacked Fort Sumter, a US Army fort off the coast of South Carolina.
The CSA was marred not just by a particularly brutal form of slavery but also great wealth disparity and a severe lack of industrial capacity, due to its agrarian, plantation-slavery economy, run by its slaveowner aristocracy. Their military thus lacked domestic arms manufacturing capacity. This resulted in having to rely upon imported arms that quickly saw problems due to naval blockades, and suffered from a lack of professional soldiers and officers.
On March 18th, 1865, the CSA’s government adjourned for the last time, dissolving officially by its president on May 5th of that year, 5 days before his capture while attempting to in womens’ clothing (actually a thing - TIL). The span of its existence (4.25 years) is shorter than the airing of the creepy American child beauty pageant reality TV show “Toddlers & Tiaras” (4.8 years).
tl;dr - “The Confederacy” is referring to the failed slave state that fucked around and found out.
Hi, thanks for the lenghty explanation. Sorry, I should have been clearer in my reply, I am aware of what the confederacy was, historically. My concern was more about what they meant when saying that the GOP might have wanted to return to that. I do know a thing or two about American politics, but I just don’t recall ever hearing about them having similar stances.
Make no mistake, I am not defending the Republicans here. From my point of view they are definitely the worst of the two parties and some of their policies are downright evil (including but not limited to: privatizations, opposing welfare, opposing national healthcare, opposing public transport…).
My entire point in this was just saying: I don’t think they are as bad, evil, dangerous or even criminal as the neo nazi parties currently running in Germany, in particular the topic of discussion, NPD.