I urge you to read the "Wahlprogramm" with Google translate, the legal text that defines what a party stands for in this election, it's ~70 pages for each party, but there is a summary for every topic. http://www.bundestagswahl-bw.de/wahlprogramme_btwahl2017.htm...

It's not much different from what the other parties aim to do. The only real one being, that the AFD wants a hard cap on immigration. If you read media covering the German election you never find them having the, you know, legally binding document of their goals. Because in reality everything is much more tame and realistic. The assaults against parties always happen because someone said something, never do they source what actually is defined by the party.

Höcke said some goddamn stupid shit, that you will barely find anyone agreeing. But his words alone were enough for all the opponents to tarnish AFD's name and it became the Nazi party forever. Last week the AFD split because of that into a new "Alternative Center" just because of that.

I won't vote for them, but how is the want to get blacklisted words like "Volk = People" and "Vaterland = Fatherland" to be reclaimed and used freely again that evil? Nobody in Germany can defend their historic achievements, because their ancestors were criminals. The AFD whishes to reverse that. The climate change part is a thing that the AFD fiercly debated for long inside their own walls, but they never claimed to deny that either. The official statement, is that the blind deactivation of Nuclear energy can lead to skyrocketing electricity prices, where they don't question climate change itself, but the human component in it. By their words, it is not clear whether man had influence or not and to act on something that is not set in stone is foolish.

I don't agree with them on that or will vote for them, but I must defend the them on simply calling them stupid and racist, because they are not, or the words of one or two people are weight more than a legally binding election plan.

Nationalist movements regularly combine widely accepted populist left-wing positions with xenophobic ideas (and proceed to disregard the left-wing ones once in power). I live in Denmark; the Danish People's Party here is also very left-wing on niche social issues and uses that to trick people into voting for them. Trump used this strategy so well that you had followers of Bernie Sanders switching allegiances to vote for him. And of course the original Nazi party adopted many socialist ideas in the beginning, stealing votes from the Social Democrats and Communists.

Out of interest, how is a cap on immigration xenophobic?

Is the mere introduction of a cap xenophobic? Or is there some set limit on the cap you could have, below which you are xenophobic?

I know the answer is probably 'X type of people want this cap on immigration, therefore the cap on immigration is X-ist!', but just wanted to make sure.

Because the cap is arbitary. It says that no matter what kind of person someone is and whether they are a partner or relative of someone who is already a national or legal resident, they are not allowed residence.

It gets even worse if you apply an immigration cap to refugees and asylum seekers as well, at which point you're saying that the arbitary immigration cap is potentially more important than their survival.

Because it's proposed out of prejudice towards these immigrants, and not out of a rational argument. Germany has a demographic problem and needs these people.

The cap, for one, would involve closing the borders, so we're talking about a cap of around 0 of people seeking asylum. A cap on immigration violates human rights law. Children of migrants born in Germany would not get German citizenship under the AfD program. EU citizens would be excluded from the social benefits that German citizens receive in Germany and other EU countries. That would also be unconstitutional.

Of course, having positions that violate present law does not necessarily imply xenophobia, but it is quite telling that the AfD only wants refugees that are qualified workers and does not want to give foreign citizens the rights Germans have.

They are voted into the Bundestag, where they must represent what they signed off to represent. You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals, or the Verfassungsschutz can fuck a party over. Honestly, read their Election program. They have many things in common with even the left parties, like SPD and Die Linke. They are for the minimum wage, they want to extend unemployment benefits to be combined with the amount someone has worked, so people that worked for long don't fall into bankruptcy just for being layed off and have to move. This will help immigrants as well, compared to parties like the FDP which are against a minimum wage for all without limiting rules.

I don't think a hardcap on legal immigrants combined with a border partrol to stop illegal ones is Xenophobic. The argument is founded, as Bavaria's social system collapsed for couple of months last year when the big immigration wave came. I'm aginst a border patrol and hard cap, but the AFD is in no way Xenophobic for wanting it the other way.

> You can't just 180 from what you defined as your goals

Of course you can. You're working off the bizarre assumption that a party manifesto is binding in any way whatsoever.

One of the most famous instances is in 2005, when the SPD went into the election with "no sales tax increases", and CDU advocated for "2% sales tax increase". In the end, they formed a coalition, and arrived at the compromise of 3% increase.

There is absolutely nothing legally binding about a Wahlprogramm. Our constitution is quite clear on that, Art. 38 Abs. 1:

Members of the German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal and secret elections. They shall be representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders or instructions, and responsible only to their conscience.

Wait, what?

What gives you the idea that the Wahlprogramm is ever legally binding? It's basically a mission statement that primarily serves as advertising and is usually signed off by the party's federal convention.

I suggest you stop reading the advertisement materials and instead listen to the actual statements of the actual politicians. I'm not a big fan of claims of "dog whistling" but you don't even need to look for coded language to find extremely revolting statements made by actual party officials. And no, these things don't become any more palatable in context.

The AfD is ideologically diverse, yes, but there is a significant influence of quite literal nazis, supremacists and xenophobes. You know what you do if your reputation becomes tarnished by extremists you don't wish to associate your movement with? You form a new movement and strongly disassociate yourself from the extremists.

If your party is the new favorite of Reichsbürger, neo-nazis and xenophobic old men, maybe you should actually distance yourself from them if you don't want to be associated with them.

The Left's reputation is tarnished by antifa. The Greens' reputation is tarnished by pedophiles. Why do you think the AfD deserves a free pass?

The AfD is agitating against refugees and muslims in general. And even the top politicians from the AfD do regularly make rather extreme and controversial statements, not only the even more extreme members like Höcke. The most recent one is probably Gauland, one of the party leaders, who talked about disposing of Aydan Özoguz (responsible for migration in the federal government).

The AfD also has quite a few extreme policy positions that distinguish them from the mainstream German parties. They want to leave the EU and abolish the Euro. They deny that climate change is man-made.

They want to restrict certain freedoms for muslims and they cling to the traditional view of family.

Practically everything in that program is right-wing:

* strengthening the role of the president, weakening the parties (the weak presidential role in Germany is a direct result of the experiences in Nazi Germany)

* reducing the size of the members of parliament

* reducing payments for members of parliament (they currently earn around 10k/month)

* introduction of direct voting (e.g. reducing complex matters to yes/no decisions)

* introduction of a tax wastage crime

* removal of anti-discrimination laws

* higher military budgets

* return to immigration laws where descendence from German bloodlines is needed for naturalization

* higher punishments, especially for the youth

* more surveillance

* anti islam positions

* promoting population growth to counter immigrants

* removing public financial support of daycare

* anti abortion

* lowering tax rates

* forced unpayed labor for long time unemployed

the only left wing positions are:

* pro minimum wage, but no actual numbers given

* guaranteeing more personel in the health care sector

All of this isn't really surprising as the AfD came into life as a right-wing fork of the CDU, the mainstream conservative party in Germany.

* introduction of direct voting (e.g. reducing complex matters to yes/no decisions)

As a Swiss I have to comment on this.

First, is this really a right-wing point?

Where I vehemently disagree is with the sentiment carried with the "explanation" of direct democracy that you added.

Every parliament will boil down complex issues to "simple" yes/no decisions. Or how do you imagine a parliament can vote on anything?

Furthermore a right to a referendum is literally just consulting the people for a yes/no vote that already happened in the parliament. In Switzerland you need to collect a certain amount of signatures of voters within 100 days to mandate a public vote on the exact law that was passed by the parliament. Changes in the constitution mandate a referendum.

Another part of Swiss democracy are popular initiatives. You can propose a change to the constitution like adding "The State mandates a minimal wage". If you gather enough signatures the people will vote if they want to add this to the constitution. If it passes, the executive is required to propose laws that implement the change.

You have a good point! I don't have an opinion about direct voting per se, because, as you rightly pointed out, it seems to work just fine in Switzerland. In the context of German political culture, though, I'm pretty sceptical that we'd see results comparable to Switzerland. One point: Germany has very large differences in voting turnout split by income bracket in anything smaller than federal elections. Even in federal elections the difference is enormous: One example is Hamburg 2013, where about 50% of the poor voted, but 90% of the rich.[1] This obviously heavily skews the results. My impression is that Switzerland has lower differences in turnout by income bracket?

[1] = http://www.wahlbeteiligung2013.de/fileadmin/Inhalte/Studien/... - search for "Stadtbericht Hamburg"

Could you give me a source for the claim that the Wahlprogramm is legally binding?

I was always under the impression that it was more a declaration of intention, to be fulfilled on a best-effort basis. Otherwise, how would coalitions between parties work, if they can't deviate from their program?

Even if it were legally binding, that doesn't preclude making decisions on topics that weren't even covered. In those cases, you can only trust that the party has a consistent ideology they will follow. The AfD seems to be judged more for their ideological tendencies than for any demands they have formally elevated to the party line.

I'm sure the voters of 1998 would love to have seen the Greens be sued for their support of militarism, or the SPD for their neoliberal labour reforms. But alas there were merely a few protests.

If the Wahlprogramm were legally binding, there would have been plenty of opportunities to sue.

For the record: the reason the Verfassungsschutz might tear into a party is usually because the party harbors anti-constitutional ideas or associates itself with criminal organisations, e.g. the NPD with its neo-nazis or the Left with antifa.