German has always had laws allowing this, for the extremely obvious reason that Germany once fairly elected a fascist government that ended democracy, created a totalitarian dictatorship, started the most destructive war in history*, and committed genocide. Understandably, the designers of (West) Germany's post-war constitution wanted to stop this happening again. These laws have been used to ban neo-Nazi parties at least 4 times since 1945, so even the idea of actually using them is not a new panic response to the AfD's popularity. If the laws make Germany a flawed democracy now, then arguably it always has been. Incidentally hardcore communist elements in Die Linke have also been surveilled by the German security services for suspected opposition to the democratic constitution,  so it's not true that only right-wing extremism is restricted in Germany. (Die Linke were cleared because it was decided the Stalinists were only a small % of the party with little influence.)

In fact of course, it is at the very least not clear the laws are bad even from a purely democracy-centric perspective and ignoring the substantive badness of Nazism. It is true I think that an election where you can vote for anti-democratic fascists is more democratic in itself. But it is of course also true that "fair elections except fascists are banned" is more democratic than "fascists dictatorship". If the risk of the later is high in a completely free election, them a mildly restricted election that bans the fascists can easily be the democracy-maximizing move in the medium term. I think it is fair to say that in early 50s West Germany, a country where a decently-sized % of voters had been enthusiastic Nazis, the risk of fascist takeover at the ballot box was more than theoretical. (Though admittedly the result would probably have been an American military takeover of Germany, not a revived Nazi dictatorship, but that would also have been a very bad outcome.)

Now, maybe what you think is outrageous isn't that banning parties is allowed (or isn't just that), but that the accusation that the AfD are anti-democratic extremists is obviously false and pretextual. Two points about that.

 Firstly, they haven't been banned yet! (And personally I suspect they won't be, and I'm fairly strongly inclined to think they shouldn't be, though I'd change my mind on that if Hocke or his faction captured the leadership.**) German law doesn't allow the government to just decide a party is extremist and ban them. They have to provide evidence in a court of law that they really do count as dangerously extreme by specific standards. Now maybe that process will in fact be a total farce with terrible standards of evidence, but since it hasn't happened yet, I don't see any strong reason to think it will be right now. Of course, it is possible that the legal definitions of anti-democratic extremism are badly drafted and could be used to ban a non-fascist party in a procedurally fair way. Maybe that is true, I am not an expert on the laws. (But frankly I have some doubt that you know whether this true either.)

Now you might say it is anti-democratic for the government to threatening the AfD with a ban if they are clearly not a fascist threat to democracy, even if there is little chance of the ban getting through court. And yeah, I agree with the conditional claim here: that would be a very bad violation of liberal and democratic norms. But I don't think it is clear that the antecedent is true. Bjorn Hocke the AfD's leader in Thuringia seems to have been a neo-Nazi in a very literal sense 10 or 15 years ago, and I've never seen any evidence that his views have changed. In particular, he was filmed chanting at a neo-Nazi rally in Dresden in 2010: https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/29/the-trial-of-bjorn-hocke-the-real-boss-of-germany-far-right I think this sufficient evidence to show that Hocke was very probably a real Nazi in 2010, and that Nazis generally want to abolish democracy. (If you doubt The Guardian's word that it really was a Nazi rally, note that Hocke's supporters don't themselves seem to deny this. The defence of him quoted in the article is that he only went to the rally "to observe", not that it wasn't a Nazi rally.) On the other hand, Hocke doesn't currently lead the AfD, Alice Weidel does, and I think she has tried to kick Hocke out before. I haven't seen any evidence that she is anything more than a very conservative but democratic politcian. So I think it might not currently be correct to class them as Nazis as a whole, and for that reason, I think a ban is probably wrong. But I think the presence of a significant Nazi faction downgrades suggesting they should be banned from outrageous to merely not correct.

*Technically you could argue the Japanese actually started it when they invaded China, I suppose.

**If you care about track records, I am a Good Judgement superforecaster, and I gave Trump a higher chance if winning the popular vote than most of the other supers did.

Seems like we didn't articulate clearly enough why we exclusively focus on Germany at the moment.

I totally agree that it's very unlikely "that Germany is currently the place where money goes furthest towards the goal of defending democracy". Indeed we expect that Power for Democracies will mostly (or exclusively) recommend charities not working in Germany in the future. Unfortunately Power for Democracies is currently still in its initial hiring round and probably won't produce any robust recommendation till 2025. The research that has been done in the last 2 years (and which let to the foundation of Power for Democracies) was mainly based on Germany though. Therefore we currently feel more comfortable recommending giving opportunities in Germany with regards to defending democracy but we try to make it clear that this is temporarily. Also we try to emphasize  that the research our democracy donation fund is based on is not as good as the research other cause areas (that's also the reason we added a "Beta" label to the fund in our donation form).

With regards to your other point we expect to continue to limit ourselves to recommend giving opportunities that are tax exempt in the countries we are working in. E.g. we are also not recommending investment opportunities etc. even if that would potentially be more effective to reach our goals (like investing in AI companies etc.).

 

I think it's important that EA analysis not start with its bottom line already written. In some situations the most effective altruistic interventions (with a given set of resources) will have partisan political valence and we need to remain open to those possibilities; they're usually not particularly neglected or tractable but occasional high-leverage opportunities can arise. I'm very skeptical of Effektiv-Spenden's new fund because it arbitrarily limits its possible conclusions to such a narrow space, but limiting one's conclusions to exclude that space would be the same sort of mistake.

Agreed. Being able to identify effective interventions that support or protect democracy in certain contexts doesn't necessarily seem like a bad idea. 

The challenge with the AfD is that they seem to be the victims of behaviour that could be considered antidemocratic: lawmakers are considering banning the party, and the state has put the party under surveillance. This would be unconstitutional in many countries. I think there could be legitimate arguments that "protecting democracy" could sometimes involve defending groups like the AfD, as well as defending democracy from them.

I'd prefer for a politically neutral pro-democracy organisation to have the courage to defend a party like the AfD when their democratic freedoms are under threat, while also ensuring that they are stopped from damaging the democratic system. But, because this could be very messy, and have significant PR risks, I think EA-aligned groups just shouldn't be taking that risk either way.