On Friday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency officially labeled Alternative for Germany — the country’s most popular conservative party — as a “right-wing extremist” organization. The nationalist party surged to second place in February’s federal election, winning 20.8% of the vote. This new designation grants the ruling government expanded powers to surveil Alternative for Germany leaders and supporters and sets the stage for an outright ban.

Germany has now joined a growing list of Western governments that delay elections, disqualify candidates, and ban opposition parties — all in the name of defending democracy.

To call Germany’s relationship with authoritarianism “complicated” understates the case. The country’s historical memory fixates on Nazism as the ultimate expression of right-wing extremism and mass atrocity. But that singular focus conveniently ignores the fact that the Soviet Union, which helped defeat the Third Reich, imposed its own brutal regime across East Germany until the Berlin Wall fell.

Modern Germany has seen tyranny from both the far right and the far left. Yet its national identity now orbits entirely around a rejection of right-wing politics. Anti-fascism has become something like a state religion. But when a country builds its identity on shame and self-repudiation, it risks cultural collapse. We’ve seen the same pathology infect America, where elite institutions push a national narrative defined entirely by slavery and racial guilt.

Every nation has dark chapters. A mature society learns from them. It doesn’t define itself by them forever.

While German history explains some of its deep aversion to nationalism, the trend of suppressing populist movements in the name of democracy has spread far beyond Berlin.

Brazil’s Supreme Court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030. Romania’s Constitutional Court voided its 2024 election, citing supposed Russian influence in the rise of populist candidate Călin Georgescu. And in the United States, courts came dangerously close to removing Donald Trump from the ballot — while the president now fights legal battles over whether he can exercise executive power at all under Article II of the Constitution.

This isn’t democracy defending itself. It’s ruling elites trying to outlaw their opposition.

Western elites justify their dominance by invoking democracy and individual liberty. That wasn’t always the case. The West once called itself Christendom — a civilizational identity grounded in faith, tradition, and truth. But it abandoned that foundation in favor of secular platitudes.

The United States has waged entire wars in the name of exporting democracy to places like Iraq and Afghanistan — nations that never wanted it and were never going to keep it. These projects were doomed from the start. Yet at least they wrapped American power in the language of benevolence.

Today, even that fig leaf has disappeared.

The modern West treats democracy as a branding exercise, not a principle. Leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, and Keir Starmer love lecturing the world about “liberal norms,” even as they jail political dissidents, censor speech, and turn domestic intelligence services against their own citizens. They condemn Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism while staying silent as NATO allies crush dissent at home.

Democracy has become a marketing slogan — useful for justifying war and globalist expansion, but disposable when it interferes with ruling-class priorities.

Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both slammed the German government for labeling Alternative for Germany as extremist. On social media, Rubio went further, blaming Germany’s open-border policies for the Alternative for Germany rise and calling the state’s surveillance powers tyranny in disguise.

Germany’s Foreign Office issued a formal reply, insisting the decision stemmed from an “independent” and “thorough” investigation.

The claim is absurd on its face.

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No government can “independently” investigate and condemn its most prominent political opposition — especially not when the accusation is “extremism,” a term that now means little more than holding views the ruling class finds inconvenient.

I’ve made no secret of my dislike of modern mass democracy. But the original concept, at least, had merit. Democracy once meant rule by the demos — the people of a particular nation, rooted in shared history, culture, and civic identity. Its legitimacy came not from procedure or process but from the bonds between citizens and their country.

Today’s ruling class has twisted that definition beyond recognition. As I’ve written before, globalist elites now use the word “democracy” to describe a system governed by unaccountable institutions they alone control. Populism, they say, is dangerous. Democracy, they insist, must be preserved. But in practice, they oppose the popular will and protect only the process they’ve captured.

Read the rest at The Blaze.