Against a backdrop of an ascendant AfD whose public support has remained largely unaffected by a slew of coordinated, state-backed media smears and government attacks on the party, Germany’s left-globalist activist interior minister is calling for the ‘Democracy Promotion’ Act to be passed in the Bundestag.
Now it is more important than ever before to strengthen associations and individuals who “make our democracy strong and vibrant,” Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) told the Rheinische Post. It is “high time” to financially support the “countless civil society initiatives,” she added.
The calls from Faeser, who has written for a far-left Antifa magazine with links to extremism, come as politicians from the old parties along with their allies in the mainstream press work to propagate the baseless theory that Germany’s democracy is under threat due to the rise of alternative parties like AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).
And while they promulgate this theory, they themselves, the self-styled ‘defenders of democracy,’ assert that not only is it ‘democratic’ to ban the AfD but that the only way to preserve Germany’s liberal-democratic order is to ban the country’s second-most popular political party.
But what is the ‘Democracy Promotion’ Act? The Federal Ministry for Family Affairs claims the law—presented to the Bundestag by Interior Minister Faeser and Family Minister Lisa Puas (Greens) in 2022—seeks to provide more funding to associations that affirm their dedication to democracy, diversity, and the fight against extremism.
Critics, however, contend that the legislation, under the guise of ‘fighting extremism,’ would actually pave the way for the left-liberal ‘traffic light’ coalition to further increase the financial support it allocates to organizations, associations, and projects that share their worldview.
The CDU/CSU and AfD have both raised concerns over the absence of an extremism clause in the proposed legislation, which would assess the projects for their adherence to constitutional principles. They fear that funding intended for democracy promotion could well end up supporting left-wing lobby groups.
This fear isn’t unfounded. Financing from the Family Ministry’s fund to combat ‘right-wing extremism,’ is already being used to support left-globalist initiatives. In a recent interview with The European Conservative, AfD MEP Joachim Kuhs said that “a significant amount” of the funds provided to the left-wing propaganda network Correctiv, which ran a deeply misleading hit piece on the AfD last month, came from the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. Kuhs also says that other ministries, like Faeser’s Interior Ministry, also fund the outlet, which describes itself as a politically neutral, independent investigative outfit.
The outlet has also received hundreds of thousands of euros from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the past.
Recent reports, however, have revealed that Correctiv is anything but politically neutral or independent. The Berlin-based publication Junge Freiheit, for example, reported that the managing director of Correctiv was employed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the past.
Junge Freiheit also revealed that Jean Peters, one of the ‘journalists’ responsible for the misleading AfD hit-piece, has engaged in physical violence against a prominent female member of the party, Bundestag lawmaker Beatrix von Storch. In 2016, Peters threw a cake into the face of von Storch at an internal party event in Kassel.