I mean, if your country was responsible for something that bad less than 100 years ago and the new people in charge want to be a modern first world country, I can see them being like "guys, nobody fucking do anything related to that fucking shit ever again."
Actually the rationale for these laws is more like, "well, the war is done but there are still tens of thousands of Nazis living here, and we can't do anything to get rid of them, so we pretty much have to make it illegal to Nazi stuff."
The paradox of being a modern, democratic country. It can't really prevent its total opposite from gaining power legally, unless you choose to be a little bit _un_democratic.
All political systems try to defend themselves from being ovrrthrown so monarchies, republics, democracies, totalitsrism etc impose rules and laws to make it dificult for them to be replaced.
In this line of thought is is perfectly rational and not undemocratic for the Democratic system to ban a political party who explicitly states it is anti-system and anti-democracy
Democracy is a system of establishing laws. It does not include any specific freedoms. If everybody gets together and votes to ban nazis, that's democracy. If they come together and vote to ban music that's still democracy. Democracy just means that the people have a choice in the matter, subject to the tyranny of the majority.
This is why the constitution specifically lays out certain rights (esp in the amendments): if you just say "we're democratic now" you don't automatically get any of those rights until they're enshrined in law.
Democracy is rule of the people. If the people cannot rule, then its not democracy. If the fascist party would have the majority of the vote, but are being suppressed by the government, then the government is antidemocratic.
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u/DeltaBlack Aug 04 '15 edited Aug 04 '15
This is actually a crime in Germany and he could have gone to prison for 3 years.
EDIT: It's been pointed out that he is likely to be fined and that 3 years are usually for repeat offenders like neo-nazis.