hydroptic

Knowing conservatives, I'd be surprised if the majority was not only tolerating but actually supportive of this unhinged shit. The handful of conservatives who aren't shitty people might be turned off by this, but I suspect that even for many of them it might be more a question of optics and how this'll affect their chances to win than any real disagreement with what Trump's saying

ban anyone that thinks differently.

Incredibly disingenuous of you to paint this as being about a simple difference of opinion, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a right-leaning person is completely unable to have a good faith discussion about anything. I've had conservative acquaintances say to my face that the world would be a better place if gender minorities like me didn't exist; this isn't about them fucking "thinking differently" you moron, they don't even want me to fucking exist, and you have the nerve to whine about it

They believe that God wants us to use our free will, which means that proselytizing isn't kosher (har har.) Where Christianity and Islam have spread pretty aggressively (often literally), missionary work or let alone forcing people to convert is anathema to Judaism

What I find absolutely mind-boggling (although very on brand) is that Russia has been working on a nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 Burevestnik. They're claiming it's a nuclear thermal rocket, but gods only know if that's true or not, and your guess is as good as mine as to whether it's open or closed cycle, ie. doest it blast radioactive exhaust everywhere. Russians being Russians, it's probably open cycle.

Russians being Russians, they've also already managed to have a fatal radiological incident while testing the Burevestnik, with a mere 5 deaths.

Guess that depends on how you define "works". Russians do a lot of stuff that's stupid and "works" – see eg. the entire Ukrainian invasion.

I have no idea what that is

I'd be inclined to think that going from 30% to 20% is worse than "not entirely successful" (assuming AfD voters in general are at the very least somewhat sympathetic to fascist views, which really doesn't seem like an unfair assumption)

Did they do it, though? Eg. the BfV (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the domestic intelligence agency) and BKA (Federal Criminal Bureau, the federal investigative police) are somewhat notorious for having a bit of a neo-Nazi problem, and they're not the only German federal or state entities with the same issue (see eg. this article about the BfV and BKA. Edit: PBS report about neo-Nazi infiltration in German security forces).

It's not an uncommon view that denazification wasn't entirely successful. Hell, they even have a word for the sort of rushed "washing clean" of Nazi officials that was done: Persilschein, "Persil ticket" (Persil is a detergent brand).

I'd argue that if denazification had really succeeded, the AfD and others like it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

I don't disagree with that sentiment at all, I'm just not sure how to set this particular broken bone. How do you make ~20% of the population less fascist?

There is a difference between conservatism and being a threat to the democratic order.

I'm not sure I agree. More and more it's started seeming like they're generally just waiting for a moment to drop their masks; eg. here in Finland now that we have a fully right wing government, our "fiscally conservative" party started their term off by limiting the right to strike, and is now echoing extremist right wing talking points about eg. immigration, LGBT+ people, and the environment. They were OK with an extremist right wing minister leaving us out of Ukraine's "Alliance for Gender-Responsive and Inclusive Recovery" because the plan mentioned LGBT+ people, and they stood in the way of banning abusive LGBT+ "conversion therapy" even though they claimed to be against it back when they still had to be in a government with leftist parties (sorry, couldn't find an English source for this but here is one in Finnish. For translation I'd suggest DeepL, it's vastly superior to eg. Google). They are also blaming the opposition for "besmirching" Finland's reputation abroad, meaning they don't want anyone pointing out that we have literal neo-Nazis in the government and parliament.

Note that I'm not saying the AfD shouldn't be banned, just that banning it won't make the people who vote for it and run it any less, well, fascist.

There’s nothing that prevents AfD voters from going to other parties, there’s plenty, or to voice their concerns in a new party that can be a legitimate part of the democratic system. Changing parties isn’t like banning a religion or a creed or a race, a party is hardly more than just a banner, the power of which can change between and during elections, at any time, through a simple act of the mind. Banning the party will absolutely help.

And that's the thing; because the people who support AfD won't change just because their party gets banned, how likely do you think it is that they'll realize they need to be a legitimate part of a democratic system instead of what they've been doing all along?

Banning the party isn't going to help.

Like I say of Trump, the AfD isn't the problem, they're a symptom. Conservatism and conservatives themselves are the problem – the question is how should we deal with them, and I really don't know the answer to that.

Edit: just to clarify, I'm not saying the AfD shouldn't be banned, just that banning the party won't change the people who vote for it and run it.