ABSTRACT
In 1952, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany banned the Nazi successor, the Socialist Reich Party (SRP). The Communist Party of Germany was banned in 1956, but the most recent ban cases involved two failed attempts to ban the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) in 2003 and 2017. The chapter examines these party ban decisions using archived government files, minutes of meetings of the federal cabinet and of German authorities and the Allies, parliamentary debates and newspaper articles. The SRP’s neo-Nazi ideology, political style and creation of the quasi-military Reichsfront created ambiguity about the party’s commitment to non-violent political action and facilitated securitization, by all relevant veto players, of the SRP as an existential threat to the democratic order capable of reviving Nazism. Additionally, contacts with Soviet agents in the emerging Cold War facilitated securitization of the party as a threat to the Federal Republic of Germany and the Western allies. The NPD party bans failed because not all vetoplayers supported the ban – ultimately the Federal Constitutional Court rejected the ban. First time around the Court rejected the ban on procedural grounds, but in 2017 because the NPD did not constitute an existential threat to the democratic system.
