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Post Reports - Episode Summary
Should Germany Ban Its Far-Right Party?
Episode Overview In this episode, hosts Martine Powers and Elahe Izadi, along with producer Emma Talkoff, discuss the contentious debate in Germany regarding the potential ban of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, a far-right political entity that has gained significant traction in recent years. The conversation explores Germany's unique constitutional provisions that allow for the banning of political parties deemed to threaten democracy, contrasting this with American views on political freedom.
Key Themes
The Rise of the AfD
- The AfD, established in 2013, began with a focus on German pride and has since shifted towards extreme anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBTQ positions.
- The party is often compared to the MAGA movement in the U.S., emphasizing nationalism and traditional values.
- Recent polling shows the AfD as one of the most popular political parties in Germany, now standing as the largest opposition party in parliament.
Legal and Constitutional Context
- Germany's post-World War II constitution includes provisions for banning parties that aim to undermine the democratic order.
- Public sentiment is split on whether to invoke this measure against the AfD, with many fearing it could backfire, further radicalizing support for the party.
- The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution has labeled the AfD as a "confirmed right-wing extremist" group, leading to renewed calls for an investigation into the party's constitutional compliance.
Public Opinions on Banning the AfD
- Many Germans oppose the idea of banning political parties, even those as extreme as the AfD. They argue that such actions could push the party underground, making it more dangerous.
- There's a strong sentiment among citizens that addressing the root causes of AfD support through dialogue and policy changes is more effective than outright bans.
Key Discussions
Perspectives from Experts
- Marie Bröckling, an investigative journalist, notes that the AfD's rhetoric targets minorities, advocating for "remigration," which is seen as unconstitutional if it involves deporting citizens based on ethnicity or background.
- Conversations with Bundestag members reveal differing strategies on how to handle the AfD, with some advocating for political engagement to win back voters, while others emphasize the urgency of preventing historical mistakes.
The Dangers of a Ban
- The episode discusses the potential consequences of banning the AfD, including:
- Confiscation of party assets.
- Closure of party offices.
- Exclusion of AfD politicians from parliament.
- Concerns are raised that a ban could incite civil unrest and embolden supporters, leading to further radicalization.
Historical Context
- The historical backdrop of the Nazi regime influences current German political dynamics, with a collective memory that stresses the importance of preventing the rise of extremist ideologies.
- Past attempts to ban parties, such as the neo-Nazi NPD, highlight the procedural complexities and political ramifications of such actions.
Conclusion The episode concludes with a reflection on how the rise of the AfD resonates with current political trends in the U.S., particularly the MAGA movement, suggesting that Germany views these developments as warnings of unchecked extremism. The discussion emphasizes the delicate balance between protecting democratic values and ensuring civil liberties in the face of rising political extremism.
Call to Action Listeners are encouraged to engage with the complexity of the issue, recognizing the lessons to be learned from Germany's historical context while considering the implications for contemporary democracy. ```
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Emma Talkoff:Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.
0:35Colby Itkowitz:In August, I visited the town of Zemfenberg, a couple hours outside of Berlin. It has this really picturesque town square, and on the day that I visited, that square had been transformed for a summer festival. That's Emma Talkov.
0:49Emma Talkoff:They're one of the producers on our show, and this summer, they reported from Germany.
0:54Colby Itkowitz:There were these long picnic tables where people were drinking big glass mugs of beer. There was a bouncy castle set up for kids. There was someone grilling bratwurst. And at one end, there was a temporary stage where politicians were greeting everyone and giving speeches.
1:16Colby Itkowitz:It was this really lovely afternoon scene, almost a storybook setting. But if you listen to what was actually being said in these speeches, they painted a very different picture. According to these local politicians, Germany is on the brink of collapse.
1:36Colby Itkowitz:In their speeches, these politicians talked about a laundry list of things that they see going wrong. They talked about immigrants overrunning small towns and wind turbines destroying the natural beauty of Germany and wanting to burn pride flags. Basically, this general sentiment that the country is going downhill and they alone have the solution to that.
2:03Emma Talkoff:This was a political rally for the Alternative for Deutschland, or the AFD, which is Germany's far-right populist party. They're often compared to the MAGA movement here in the United States.
2:14Colby Itkowitz:Here's Hans-Christoph Berndt. He's the AFD leader in the Brandenburg State Parliament, which is where this town is.
2:27Colby Itkowitz:He says, they can't stop us anymore. If there can still be a rescue for Germany, then it's the AFD. Only the AFD can save Germany.
2:39Emma Talkoff:Germany's far right has seen a surge of support in recent years. According to polls, the AFD is one of the most popular parties in the country. Still, many others oppose the AFD. They see the AfD's platform as a threat to German democracy. And they have a proposal for how to fight back.
2:57Colby Itkowitz:German democracy is built to make sure that a party like the Nazis can never come to power again. So they have this built-in, last resort, break glass in case of emergency option for stopping a party from taking over and then dismantling democracy. Basically, they can investigate whether a party violates the German constitution. And if it does, that party can then be banned. And a lot of people right now are saying it's time to ban the AFD.
3:28Emma Talkoff:From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbe Ekowitz. It's Tuesday, December 9th. Today, an argument that is dividing Germany. Whether to take the drastic measure to ban their far-right party.
3:46Emma Talkoff:Emma, hi. It is so exciting to have you on this side of the microphone.
3:50Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, exciting to be here. Hi, Colby.
3:52Emma Talkoff:You know, Emma, I've covered politics here at The Post for a long time. I've covered American democracy. It's hard for me to wrap my head around this idea that a country could ban a political party.
4:06Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, Colby, I was really intrigued when I first learned that Germany has this option to ban political parties. I worked a lot on this story with Aaron Wiener, who's the Berlin bureau chief for The Washington Post.
4:18Emma Talkoff:It's a really interesting philosophical debate because it's unlike one that I think we would have in America.
4:24Colby Itkowitz:Aaron explained to me that part of this is because of different ways that America and Germany think about protecting democracy and free speech.
4:31Emma Talkoff:In the United States, political parties, political speech, it's all protected. Here in Germany, it's a little different and you're not allowed to make pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic statements. These things are against the law here in a way that they wouldn't be in the United States. And likewise, you can't have a political party that's advocating for the subversion of the core principles of the Constitution. So Emma, I want to learn more about kind of the principles of the AFD, like who they are, what they stand for. Is there a belief that they are subverting the core principles of the Constitution?
5:07Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, that's the big question. The AFD came onto the scene around 2013, and at that time, what they were advocating for was mainly German pride and independence from the rest of Europe. But since then, they've only moved further and further to the right. So they've made things like anti-immigration, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ stances bigger and bigger parts of their platform. Immigration specifically is at the heart of this question about whether the AFD could be banned. Basically, if they advocate for deporting or pushing out German citizens just because they or their parents are immigrants or because they're not white or not Christian, that would violate Germany's constitution.
5:48Colby Itkowitz:I wanted to talk to an expert to understand more about this.
5:52Emma Talkoff:My name is Marie Bröckling and I'm an investigative reporter based in Berlin and I mostly report about the AFD.
5:59Colby Itkowitz:I asked her about some of the things that I saw at that AFD event and whether they fit into this question of constitutionality. When I went to that event in Soppenberg that I was mentioning to you, they had these tents that said Zeit für Remigration. Yeah, it's their favorite word. Zeit für Remigration that I saw, that means time for remigration.
6:18Emma Talkoff:If you go to their rallies, it's always remigration, remigration, remigration. I think a few years ago, many Germans, if you would have asked them, what is re-migration? Everybody would have been like, what does that even mean? I only know immigration. And now it's a very common word. It's been repeated in media over and over and over again. And they mean re-migration in the sense of also pushing citizens to leave the country. People who are non-white, people who are part of minorities. And that is unconstitutional. What she's saying is deporting citizens would be unconstitutional. Is that the issue that got people calling for the AFD to be banned?
7:09Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, and a lot of people tuned into this issue in early 2024.
7:17Colby Itkowitz:There was this really explosive article published in an investigative news outlet called Correctief. Reporters had snuck into this highly secretive AFD strategy meeting in the city of Potsdam.
7:29Emma Talkoff:Oh, wow. What Corrective reported back then was that AFD politicians met at this villa outside Berlin and they discussed these ideas of pushing citizens with migration background to leave the country.
7:48Colby Itkowitz:At the meeting, speakers targeted groups who they consider foreigners, including asylum seekers and also naturalized German citizens who they felt weren't assimilated enough into German culture. They wanted them out of Germany.
8:03Emma Talkoff:Honestly, it's not the first time that this has ever been reported. There were previous instances, but I think it's never become this clear before. And also this whole picture of these people sitting in this room and this villa just made it so scary suddenly. It just seemed very, yeah, like they were really planning it. They were actually considering how to put this into practice.
8:28Colby Itkowitz:This article about the secret meeting touched off a huge wave of protests.
8:40Colby Itkowitz:And there was a swell of support for banning the AFD.
8:49Emma Talkoff:In the aftermath, of course, AFD politicians have denied that this was anything they actually planned to do. Some of them have denied that this was even a topic at all. But yeah, I think it really shook a lot of people in Germany and scared them. Well, yeah, Emma, because I think, you know, when you hear about this group having like a secret meeting and talking about how to push out certain groups of people out of Germany, you think about the Nazis and how they singled out specific groups of people, Jewish people, gay people, disabled people, and deem them unfit for German society.
9:30Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, totally. And I think people are afraid that once you start categorizing different groups of people as unfit for citizenship, it could lead to something worse.
9:39Emma Talkoff:German history plays such a major role in this whole debate. So the reason why we even have this measure to ban a political party in our constitution is because the founders of our constitution looked at our Nazi past and were like, we need a last resort. And so a lot of the debate in Germany around right extremism is always centered about the idea or it's really part of the German identity that we can never let right extremists take over this country ever again and commit such crimes. And so honestly, nowadays, when people, minorities in Germany, say that they don't feel safe, that they are scared, this is shameful for all Germans.
10:31Emma Talkoff:This is almost unbearable, because it was supposed to never happen again. So it sounds like this reporting really brought up a lot of deeply rooted feelings for Germans. So then what happens?
10:47Colby Itkowitz:That story broke in early 2024. Then in February of this year, Germany had national elections. The winners of that election are the center-right Christian Democratic Union, or the CDU. That's the party of the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz. So they won the most seats in parliament. But then the party that came in second was the AfD. Just like in a lot of other countries, the far right in Germany saw a surge of support in last year's election. And the AFD is now the largest opposition party in parliament.
11:25Colby Itkowitz:Now, the other more mainstream parties in the parliament refused to work with AFD. So for now, the AFD hasn't been able to get any of their legislative goals done. Since the spring, the AFD has actually been neck and neck with the CDU in polls. Because Germany has a lot of political parties, that means that they are both hovering at around 25 percent, which is the highest of any party.
11:50Colby Itkowitz:But then, right around that same time, something else happened that actually reignited calls to ban the party. Germany's domestic intelligence agency got involved. They're called the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. And they have a lot of power. They actually have the ability to surveil political parties to make sure that they aren't violating the Constitution. And that's exactly what they've been doing with the AFD. In May of 2025, the intelligence agency published this long report. It's over a thousand pages saying that they think the AFD is, quote, confirmed right wing extremist.
12:26Colby Itkowitz:And they pointed to widespread racist and anti-Muslim sentiments in the party when they made that conclusion. Now, the AFD has opposed that ruling, and that's now being fought over in court. So we're waiting on kind of a final decision on that. This came up a lot in the speeches I heard at that summer festival that we heard earlier in the episode. The AFD was talking about this ruling and saying, look, this is a political witch hunt. We are being targeted by the government.
12:53Emma Talkoff:Say more about that, because how does the AFD defend itself against these accusations that they're violating the Constitution?
Read the full transcript
13:01Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, I think they're very careful to toe the line, especially their higher-up leaders and more public-facing members. Well, they'll say, look, we are advocating for things that are perfectly legal. At the summer festival that I went to, I pulled aside one of the AFD politicians, Fabian Young.
13:19Emma Talkoff:I will have my speech in a few minutes. So I will take the speech and then I will come to you. Is it OK? Yeah, I'll be here.
13:28Colby Itkowitz:Thank you. He's 29 years old. He's a member of the state parliament there in Brandenburg. I wanted to get his response to that preliminary ruling that his party is right-wing extremist.
13:40Emma Talkoff:We think they are only labeling the AfD as extremistic because they want to make it harder for us to get political power.
13:51Colby Itkowitz:What will happen if the party does eventually get banned?
13:55Emma Talkoff:If the party gets banned, democracy in Germany has finished.
14:00Colby Itkowitz:He was saying like, look, a lot of people voted for us. If you ban this party, then you're ignoring those people's votes. You're silencing them.
14:10Emma Talkoff:25 % of the people are voting us. And if you are cutting the AFD, these people have no voice in the parliament and in the democratic process. And that's a big problem for democracy and not the AFD is existing.
14:26Colby Itkowitz:One thing I'll note here. So when the federal office for the protection of the Constitution made this ruling saying that the AFD is confirmed right wing extremist, people like Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio actually both chimed in to say that they thought it was anti-democratic. So that was a moment that you could see these resonances and this growing alliance actually between the AFD. Yeah.
14:48Emma Talkoff:So is the U.S. policy then, or at least some of our highest leaders, supportive of the AFD or at least, I guess in this case, not supportive of banning the AFD?
14:57Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, they are. And that support has actually only grown since I was in Germany this summer. There's been some interesting reporting in The Post lately that there was an AFD supporter in Germany who's now seeking asylum in the United States because she says she's being persecuted for her beliefs. And there's also been reporting that there are some high-level Trump strategists who are now working with the AFD to help them in their strategy. And in fact, later this week, AFD politicians are scheduled to meet with House Republicans here in D.C. So there are definitely these growing ties.
15:28Emma Talkoff:Because there are so many similarities. I mean, as you have been talking and we've been listening to the people that you interviewed, so much of what the AFD is saying sounds like the rhetoric of the MAGA movement.
15:42Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, Colby, there are a lot of similarities in the rhetoric. And in fact, in recent days, we've seen the Trump administration using language that directly echoes some of this rhetoric from the AFD. So, for example, in recent weeks in talking about updates to the United States asylum policy, Trump wrote on Truth Social, quote, only reverse migration can fully cure this situation. And we also saw the Department of Homeland Security tweeting, quote, remigration now. So we're seeing actually some of the same language being used by these two parties. And I think that's really important context for this conversation.
16:18Emma Talkoff:So let's say a decision is made to ban the AFD. What does it look like for that process to actually get underway? Who would have to, I guess, start it?
16:30Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, so it's a little bit complicated. Basically, one of the branches of the government would have to ask Germany's Supreme Court to open a case looking at whether the AFD poses a viable threat to the German constitution. Basically, the other parties would have to sort of come together and say, we want this process to begin. They wouldn't decide we think this party should be banned, but they would ask the court to look into it. One way this can happen is for members of Germany's parliament, which is called the Bundestag, to vote on it. But there is massive disagreement in the Bundestag right now about whether this is the right move.
17:08Colby Itkowitz:Aaron Wiener, the Berlin bureau chief, and I sat down with some Bundestag members to talk about this. Aaron talked with Gunther Krings, who's a lawmaker from the governing party, the center-right CDU. Aaron asked him what he thinks about voting for the AfD case to go to Germany's high court.
17:24Emma Talkoff:It's all theoretical questions right now. I don't think we are at that point yet. Maybe we'll never be at that point. But again, I wouldn't rule out that we might have to consider such a step. If the Bundestag, if it somehow came to a vote in the Bundestag, you know, tomorrow, would you vote for it? Tomorrow? No, because I don't think that we have the material and the evidence yet. So it would be premature right now.
17:56Colby Itkowitz:The bar for the court to actually ban a party is really high, which is a good thing, right? It's so the option isn't abused by parties just banning each other for political reasons. Many on the center-right, like Krings, also think that there are better ways to combat the AFD. They hope to win back some of the voters who have swung further to the right, the people who vote for the AFD now. They have this hope that they can just defeat the party through politics, win elections, have policies that are popular enough that people don't need to go to the far right, and they will move back to the center-right.
18:29Colby Itkowitz:But there are a lot of lawmakers in more left-leaning parties who feel differently. They say it's absolutely not the time to hesitate.
18:37Emma Talkoff:Hi, I'm Emma Talcott.
18:41Colby Itkowitz:Nice to meet you.
18:42Emma Talkoff:It's not a bad view here. No, that's true. It's small, but...
18:47Colby Itkowitz:Aaron and I met with Ralph Stegner, a longtime Bundestag member from the center-left Social Democratic Party. People in this camp say, look, the Nazis rose to power through official democratic channels, they were elected, and then they destroyed democracy.
19:01Emma Talkoff:So we lost democracy once. We cannot be unserious about anything that could only come close to some of this could happen again.
19:13Colby Itkowitz:Stegner also said something that really stuck with me. He says he often thinks about what would happen if the AFD did come to power and then down the line, he had to sit down and explain to his own grandchildren why he didn't do more to stop them when he could. That's why he wants to start this process as complicated and messy as it may be. It's a difficult thing to do, far less than the secure bet if you start a procedure like that, but nothing you can run away from and definitely nothing where you could later on, if things go wrong, could argue I didn't know what my responsibility was.
19:57Emma Talkoff:after the break why many people even those who oppose the afd are scared that trying to ban them could backfire we'll be right back
20:20Emma Talkoff:Right now during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.
20:53Emma Talkoff:So Emma, we've established that the AFD is more popular than ever in Germany right now, but it still sounds like the majority of people don't support them. So how do voters just in general feel about potentially banning the AfD?
21:10Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, that was something I also really wanted to understand. So Aaron Wiener and I met up in Charlottenburg, which is this really lovely neighborhood in the west part of Berlin. We wanted to know more about what average Germans or like at least the Berliners out on a weekday afternoon think about the idea of a ban.
21:32Colby Itkowitz:So we approached a few people who were out having coffee or picking up groceries.
21:40Colby Itkowitz:You're hearing 77-year-old Gudrun Rothberg. And she says, I'm completely against banning political parties in a democracy. Because it doesn't change anything except that they disappear underground and become completely uncontrollable. I think we should listen more closely to where the real problems lie. why people vote for these parties. It was interesting because basically everyone we talked to that day said more or less the same thing. We talked to a half dozen people and they all said like, look, I'm not a fan of the AFD. In fact, I like really don't support them, but I don't think that they should be banned either.
22:14Colby Itkowitz:I think it's also interesting that this is a similar argument to the one that we heard from the AFD politician Fabian Young, but coming from a totally different perspective.
22:22Emma Talkoff:It sounds like people are kind of suspicious or at least wary that this is an effective way to combat this party. But since this is in the German constitution, has it ever been tried before?
22:36Colby Itkowitz:So in the 1950s, when this constitution was still new, Germany banned a Nazi successor party and a communist party. But I think the possibility of starting this process and having it fail is something that's really present for Germans because that's also happened much more recently.
22:57Colby Itkowitz:Germany has tried and failed multiple times to ban the neo-Nazi party NPD. The first time that happened in 2003, it was over a complicated procedural issue. Basically, they hadn't gone about collecting evidence against the NPD in quite the right way, and they had to throw that out. But then in 2017, they failed again. And that time it was because the court said that although this party definitely advocated for things that were unconstitutional, constitutional, they are neo-Nazis, there wasn't enough evidence that it posed a genuine threat to German democracy. That's because they had been kind of waning in popularity.
23:32Colby Itkowitz:They weren't winning elections. They were seen as this kind of fringe group that only a few people supported. This gets into a really interesting question about viability. Basically, in order to meet the threshold for a constitutional ban, a party has to be considered a legitimate threat to German democracy. So they have to have enough support that they could plausibly gain control of the government. Now, that's obviously not in question for the AFD. As we've talked about, they have a lot of supporters. In fact, they have so many supporters that it starts to raise the opposite argument. It becomes this Goldilocks or kind of catch-22 situation, right?
24:10Colby Itkowitz:Like, what would be the perfect size for the party to be viable but not so big that it feels too big to ban? So I think with all that context, people are really worried about the consequences of trying to ban the AFD and then having that effort fail. For one thing, they think it could serve as a kind of stamp of validity on the AFD in their positions.
24:33Colby Itkowitz:I think what's also interesting, though, is that there are a lot of concerns that people have about what would happen if there was a successful ban. Yeah, because what does that even look like?
24:43Emma Talkoff:You know, could they no longer run for office? Like they couldn't show up on a ballot? Like what would be the practical effect of banning the AFD?
24:52Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, I asked Marie Brookling, she's the investigative journalist we heard from earlier, that question. immediately all
25:00Emma Talkoff:assets owned by the party would be confiscated all of their offices would be closed and all of their the AFD politicians would be bared from entering the parliament so yeah it would definitely it would create scenes that are potentially very could turn very violent and could definitely I think, in our social media age be used to victimize the party also.
25:34Colby Itkowitz:I think people are really worried that, like, even if you ban a party, obviously support for these ideas is not going to go away. So banning the AFD could just embolden their supporters, further radicalize them, and also they could just start a new party. So banning them doesn't fully deal with this issue.
25:51Emma Talkoff:How likely is it then that they're going to ask the Supreme Court to do this? Like, what are the next steps?
25:58Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, Colby, there is a deadline for this in the sense that Germany's next federal election is likely to happen in a couple of years, although it could be sooner. At that point, the AFD could gain enough seats in parliament to start enacting their legislative goals, and they could prevent a ban from happening. But to be honest, I think right now there isn't a lot of appetite for starting this process. For me, there was a moment that helped crystallize where things stand towards the end of my time in Berlin. I had spent a lot of time with this group that's in favor of banning the AFD. They're called AFD verboten jetzt, AFD ban now.
26:36Colby Itkowitz:And I went out with some members of this group to a big protest and parade that was happening in the center of Berlin to support the rights of refugees. Say it now! Say it here! Refugees are welcome here! So this is an event that would be, like, completely opposed to the goals of the AFD. I spent the day with members of this group. They didn't want to give me their names because they're worried about being targeted by the AFD or having their information revealed online. I followed them around as they were trying to get people in the crowd to carry signs that say, ban the AFD now. I noticed something kind of surprising.
27:15Colby Itkowitz:Do you feel like people are reluctant to take the sign? I mean, a little bit, maybe.
27:21Emma Talkoff:I mean, even within the left, there's like dissent about whether banning the party is the right move or not. So I guess that might be a reason, but also just like carrying a sign around is like a hassle. So I guess a bit of both, maybe. I think there's just fear about like what happens if the ban doesn't go through, if we try banning them and it isn't successful, or if the ban is successful, but then there's a lot of voters who lost the party that they would like to vote for, essentially. So I think there's fear of civil war, unrest, stuff like that. So I think that's an issue, even among people who are very against the AFD, just out of fear.
28:07Colby Itkowitz:But to these activists, all the downsides of trying to ban the AFD are far outweighed by the idea of just letting them gain more power. Here's another person I spoke to at the march.
28:18Emma Talkoff:Yeah, to me, it all doesn't make sense. They are worried, like, yeah, they're going to be angry, and then there's going to be riots or whatever. But if that's what you're scared of, like, why then are you not scared of this party being the government? That's even scarier than it. So, Emma, after all of the reporting that you've done on this story, what are you left with what is your takeaway yeah colby one thing that i didn't expect is that in a
28:48Colby Itkowitz:lot of the conversations i had with people who were opposing the afd either activists calling for a ban proceeding to begin or protesters who showed up at afd events is that they specifically said that they were motivated by the rise of the maga movement and by the developments over the last year here in the U.S. and that that is what they were looking to as a cautionary tale. I think as Americans, it's surprising, maybe even a little humbling, to hear Germans say that they are looking to us as an example of what can happen if a far-right movement is left unchecked.
29:28Colby Itkowitz:Emma, thank you so much.
29:30Emma Talkoff:This has been so, so fascinating. Thanks for having me, Colby. Emma Talkoff is a producer on our show. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. If you want to support the in-depth, on-the-ground reporting you heard in this episode, subscribe to The Washington Post. For a limited time, you can access The Washington Post for just 99 cents. That's unlimited access to all of the posts for only 99 cents every four weeks. That's a great deal for the first year. After that, it'll cost$12 every four weeks. and you can cancel anytime. Go to WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe and grab it before it's gone.
30:09Emma Talkoff:That's WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe. Today's episode was produced by Emma Talkoff, who reported this story with Aaron Wiener. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to David Herzenhorn, I'm Kolbie Echowitz. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from The Washington Post.
30:33Emma Talkoff:Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.
From the publisher
To many Americans, the idea of banning a party that has support from a significant portion of voters might seem undemocratic. But Germany, guided by its determination to avoid a repeat of Nazism, included a provision in its post-World War II constitution to allow banning parties that aim to subvert the constitutional order.
Now, as Germany’s far-right party – Alternative for Germany (AfD) – surges in popularity, the country is in a heated debate over whether to ban it. “Post Reports” producer and reporter Emma Talkoff speaks with host Colby Itkowitz about how Germany is wrestling with the question of how to fight political extremism.
Today’s show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Ariel Plotnick and mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Aaron Weiner and David Herszenhorn.
Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
