As the freedoms offered by a liberal democratic society are weaponized against us by our adversaries, Germany’s concept of ‘militant democracy’ is worth considering.
Few nations have a better understanding of how democracy can be subverted by its enemies than Germany. Following its defeat in the First World War, Germany became a democracy under the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic was beset by constant infighting, economic crisis, and was ultimately destroyed when the fascists took over.
However, it was the manner of the fascist takeover – and the subsequent horrific war that resulted – that taught Germany some important lessons.
The fascists were openly anti-democratic and clearly intended to silence and ultimately destroy their opponents. Yet, the system allowed the fascists to run for office, allowed them to speak, and allowed them to take power. By showing ‘tolerance’ to intolerance, the Weimar Republic was destroyed, and Germany was taken over by genocidal lunatics who killed tens of millions of people and left Germany in near-total ruin.
After its defeat in the Second World War, Western Germany became a democracy once again, this time determined to prevent the series of events that led to the fall of the Weimar Republic.
Thus, the concept of ‘militant democracy’ was born.
The idea is that democracies should not have to sit back passively and let anti-democratic forces come to power. Instead, democracies should possess the ability to fight back against internal enemies of the democratic system, and set clear boundaries on what is – and isn’t – acceptable when it comes to opposition to that system.
Grundgesetz
Germany’s Grundgesetz – Basic Law in English – was created in 1949, and contains many constitutional protections that are unamendable:
“In its content, the Basic Law is a living testimony to Germany’s desire to prevent a return to National Socialism. In articles 1-19, it enshrines a comprehensive catalogue of fundamental rights, which cannot be removed from the constitution. These include the right to dignity, freedom, privacy, free assembly, freedom of the press and to political asylum.”
Here’s a summary of how this system functions, courtesy of The Conversation:
“The Basic Law also established one of the most powerful independent constitutional courts in the world. The court even has the right to ban political parties, or to limit the fundamental rights of individuals who are found to be undermining the constitutional order, as had been in the case in Weimar Germany. For this reason, Germany is considered to be a militant democracy. While the outright banning of parties is fraught with political difficulties (and hence rare historically), there is a live debate over whether the AfD’s policies and rhetoric are ultimately compatible with Germany’s constitution.
More subtly, Germany’s governance structures are designed to make it practically impossible for a hostile grouping to seize power democratically. The German chancellor has much less power than, say, the British prime minister. In particular, the structures of federalism and coalition government further constrain the room for manoeuvre of any individual politician or indeed any single political party.
Major functions of policy implementation are delegated to powerful societal actors, such as professional bodies. These are geographically distributed around the country, along with the media, key corporate headquarters and the unions. The ability of Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, to set monetary policy independent of political control, itself a response to the hyperinflation of the early 1920s, has made it a model for both the European Central Bank and the Bank of England today.
In short, and in the words of the German-American political scientist Peter Katzenstein, the German state is only “semisovereign”.
Not leaving things to chance
Because of the centralized nature of certain aspects of state power in many democratic countries, such as Canada and the United States, and the submissiveness of political party structures to the party leader, we often leave our rights and freedoms to chance.
Consider what’s happening in the United States, where the President now sets tariff policy for the world’s largest economy based on random whims, all because the Republican Party has completely submitted to him.
Germany has learned the hard way not just to leave things to chance. When looking back at history, it would have been far better for Germany and the world if the fascists had been suppressed by the state and prevented from running for office. Though this would have potentially led to massive internal conflict within Germany, that would have been far preferable to what ended up happening.
Lessons for Canada
Canadian democracy is relatively stable at the moment, with a centrist government tamping down tensions and prioritizing a focus on expertise.
However, that does not mean our democracy is safe from subversion.
Currently, social media is the main threat vector, as hostile states exploit a loophole in our societal evolution.
During the Second World War or the Cold War, it would have been laughable to consider allowing fascist and then communist propaganda to be spread to the public through mass-produced newspapers, radio shows, and later on television programs. Why would you let your enemy spread propaganda within your society?
However, the ubiquity of social media means that it functions like mass-produced newspapers, radio shows, and television shows all at once.
This means we are effectively wide open to foreign propaganda narratives that turn a portion of our citizenry against our values and our democratic system.
Do you think it’s a coincidence that a growing portion of young people agree with Iranian regime narratives on Israel and Hamas?
Do you think it’s a coincidence that a growing portion of the populist right sides with Russia against Ukraine and opposes NATO?
Do you think it’s a coincidence that China always manages to find people in free societies who push CCP propaganda narratives?
Do you think it’s a coincidence that divisive racial narratives spread like wildfire while nuanced and reasonable voices get far less reach?
Of course not.
This is happening because the free world is losing a propaganda war it doesn’t even know it’s fighting.
Any Citizen can log on to social media, get bombarded with propaganda from foreign regimes, and then, having been turned against their society, become an unwitting agent of those who mean to harm Canada and our allies.
Right now, our ‘response’ is no response at all. We are simply sitting back and doing nothing, hoping that we won’t reach a tipping point in which extremists outnumber reasonable people.
What do you think will happen when a critical mass of the Canadian left has been indoctrinated into anti-semitism and hate for the ‘colonial’ democratic process?
What do you think will happen when a critical mass of the Canadian right has been indoctrinated into following racist narratives and siding with Russia against the supposedly ‘decadent’ Western world?
What do you think will happen when one of those two factions takes power, or combines to take power, out of a shared goal of destroying the current system?
Make no mistake, that is the trend we are on if we continue to sit back and do nothing.
A Militant Canadian Democracy
Embracing aspects of ‘militant democracy’ would be controversial. Some would undoubtedly see it as anti-democratic and ‘anti-freedom,’ and would view it as too much of an ‘ends justify the means’ approach.
However, some steps can be taken that would strengthen the protection of Canadian democracy.
First, funding for CSIS should be doubled, and the organization should have a greater focus on countering foreign propaganda narratives from hostile governments. The Canadian Government should invest in building a large information campaign to counter anti-democratic, anti-Western, and anti-NATO narratives spread by hostile countries online.
Second, TikTok should be banned. Such a move would shut down a large portion of the subversive CCP propaganda apparatus.
Third, social media platforms should be encouraged to remove all propaganda accounts, particularly those that can be linked to Russia, China, and Iran. CSIS should work with our allied intelligence agencies to identify those accounts and propaganda campaigns and push for those campaigns to be quashed. If social media accounts fail to take such action, Canada should work with our allies to levy immense fines and consider further measures.
Fourth, the Canadian Government should launch educational campaigns for the public. Campaigns should focus on Canada’s history of fighting against fascism and communism, our defence of human rights and democracy, and how our way of life contrasts with anti-democratic places like Russia and Iran.
Fifth, hate speech laws should be more aggressively enforced to quash anti-semitic narratives. We should emulate Germany’s aggressive crackdown against anti-semitism, where the phrase “from the river to the sea” – a call for the destruction of Israel – has been restricted.
Sixth, Canada’s political parties should jointly agree to place a strict ban on meeting with extremist figures. MPs should not be meeting with anti-semitic groups who have intimidated Canada’s Jewish community, nor should they be meeting with members of Germany’s far-right AfD.
Seventh, all foreign officials in Canada who spread hostile anti-democratic narratives should be expelled, making it clear we have zero tolerance for the undermining of our democratic system.
In addition to these measures, the government should launch a Royal Commission on the Protection of Democracy to study further ways in which Canada can take legislative steps to safeguard our rights and freedoms and stop those rights and freedoms from being weaponized against us by our adversaries.
Ultimately, we must remember that we have agency. Democratic nations do not have to just sit back and let our system be destroyed from within. We can push back. We can stand up for ourselves. And as we seek to do so, Germany’s militant democracy model – and the mindset of actively resisting threats to democracy rather than passively watching the erosion – has much we can learn from.
Spencer Fernando
Image – 19 Grundgesetz-Artikel by Dani Karavan
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