{"text":[[{"start":7.656,"text":"Two of Germany’s most senior politicians have called for their country’s top court to consider banning parts of the far-right Alternative for Germany."}],[{"start":17.84,"text":"Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, and Cem Özdemir, leader of the state of Baden-Württemberg, said the constitutional court should be asked to consider outlawing the AfD in four eastern states."}],[{"start":29.12,"text":"The AfD party branches in Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg were dominated by ethnonationalist figures who viewed “true Germans” as people with “the right blood, the right pedigree, and the right convictions”, Pistorius and Özdemir said in a joint article for the Frankfurter Allgemeiner Zeitung."}],[{"start":48.339,"text":"“They don’t want a better democracy; they want to bring democracy to an end,” they added, as they called for the “prompt initiation” of legal proceedings to consider outlawing the AfD in the four states."}],[{"start":59.755,"text":"Their intervention comes ahead of a critical election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt on September 6 that could result in the AfD taking control of a German regional government for the first time."}],[{"start":71.462,"text":"Polls suggest the party will win at least 40 per cent of the vote in the state of 2mn people, which was once part of the communist East Germany. That puts the AfD close to being able to take power in the state, in what would be the most far-right German regional administration since the end of the Third Reich."}],[{"start":88.8,"text":"Experts say that the court process to consider an AfD ban would take at least two years."}],[{"start":94.64,"text":"But the intervention by two of Germany’s most senior and popular politicians reflects growing concern about the continued rise of a party that has called for mass deportations of migrants, wants to quit the euro and has close ties to Russia — a stance that Pistorius and Özdemir described as a security risk."}],[{"start":112.849,"text":"The AfD is ahead in national opinion polls, with support at around 28 per cent, and in recent months has increased its lead over Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s centre-right Christian Democrats."}],[{"start":125.6,"text":"Germany’s postwar constitution was designed to try to ensure that a figure like Adolf Hitler could never rise to power again."}],[{"start":131.594,"text":"It describes the country as a “vigilant democracy” and equips it with the tools to enforce that status, including a mechanism to ban political parties."}],[{"start":141.6,"text":"Last year, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, whose mandate includes monitoring domestic extremism, officially classified the entire AfD as rightwing extremist."}],[{"start":151.736,"text":"That unleashed a national debate about launching legal proceedings for a ban, which can only be triggered by the federal government or one of the two chambers of parliament. The constitutional court then assesses the merits of the case and decides."}],[{"start":165.207,"text":"Merz and many other senior members of his party have voiced deep scepticism about the wisdom of outlawing a party. The chancellor warned last year that it “smacks too much of eliminating a political competitor.”"}],[{"start":179.68,"text":"Pistorius, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, and Özdemir, a Green, are not the first figures from their parties to call for a ban."}],[{"start":186.227,"text":"But their seniority and the forceful nature of their argument — as well as its timing — makes it one of the most significant interventions in favour of prohibition."}],[{"start":194.898,"text":"Pistorius and Özdemir said that they wanted to distinguish between the German nationalist wing of the AfD, which they saw as “extremely dangerous” but still sometimes compatible with the constitution, and the most radical ethnonationalist flank of the party that should be banned."}],[{"start":210.593,"text":"They said that the hurdles for outlawing any party were rightly very high and that the concept was alien to many other countries."}],[{"start":218.597,"text":"But Pistorius and Özdemir added that Germany’s dark history made party bans “a central instrument of our resilient democracy”."}],[{"start":226.82,"text":"“Our predecessors in the late 1920s could not have known what would happen, the catastrophe that the Nazis would create for Germany and the entire world, and how many millions of innocent people would be killed and murdered,” they said. “We do not have that excuse.”"}],[{"start":241.083,"text":"A spokesperson for the AfD leadership did not immediately respond to a request for comment."}],[{"start":247.323,"text":"René Springer, chair of the party in the state of Brandenburg, said: “Anyone who wants to ban the strongest opposition force is not afraid for democracy, but afraid of democracy.”"}],[{"start":259.76,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1788141552_3350.mp3"}