Germany weaponises new NGO bill against the Right (by Ralph
Schoellhammer)
Who
will defend democracy against democracy’s defenders? This might sound like a
joke, but it should be taken seriously in Germany. For over a year the
country’s Greens and Social Democrats have been pushing for a law that would create
mandatory government support for
NGOs that engage in “supporting democracy, creating diversity, preventing
extremism, and enhancing political education”.
On its surface, the law
appears to be designed to ensure long-term funding for institutions outside of
the government sector, but a closer look reveals that in its current form it
would primarily support “progressive” causes. Left-of-centre NGOs would have a
permanent advantage, and their public funding would be secured even with a
conservative federal government in charge.
At this point, the
initiative by Left-wing members of Germany’s ruling coalition to force
taxpayers to finance Left-wing NGOs is only being kept at bay by the smallest
partner in government, the Free Democrats. The party continues
to point out that
creating a law which targets Right-wing extremism but remains silent on other
forms of radicalism, such as Islamism, is insufficient and demonstrably
partisan.
This anti-democratic new
law is not just a financial issue, but an attempt by the government to tilt the
political playing field against anyone with Right-of-centre politics. Despite
their hopes to the contrary, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the Greens know that
banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) — which would be the main target of
this new law — is not going to happen. As a result, they are trying to
outsource the suppression of their opponents to civil society — ideally via
selective funding for government-approved NGOs.
Germany’s Minister for the
Interior, Nancy Faeser, makes no secret of the intentions behind the law,
saying that “no
stone will remain unturned”
in finding out who supports the New Right and that “those
who mock the German state will feel the strength of the state”. The idea of making mockery of the government
punishable by law, all in the name of “defending democracy”, is, to lean on a
cliché, pretty Orwellian. What is the point of a liberal democracy if citizens
are no longer permitted to criticise their politicians? Having led Germany down
a path of sustained economic decline, the ruling coalition now wants to silence
its opponents.
Faeser hopes to
“discourage” support for Right-wing parties rather than punish it — for now, at
least. Not even 24 hours ago a German bank refused
to process an
individual donation to the AfD, sending a letter to the person in question
stating that the bank “does not engage in such transactions”. After this
incident became public, the bank apologised and attributed the mistake “to
human error”.
Trying to exclude those
who have different views from public life, by way of a thinly veiled threat of
debanking, is not democratic. Instead, it represents abandoning democracy for
something closer to totalitarianism.
