Just recently, in the German state of Thuringia, the Judiciary Committee of the state legislature held a hearing. At that hearing, a proposal from the party The Left - the legal successor of the GDR's socialist uniparty - was discussed, namely to legally prohibit the right-wing populist AfD by the Federal Constitutional Court.
In the over-9-hours long public part of the hearing, several experts and "experts" testified before the committee. Since that day, the German media were entirely dominated by comedian and celebrity Hape Kerkeling's "testimony," claiming that the AfD would reinstate concentration camps if they were in power. And some Republicans have threatened sanctions against Germany, but who cares about that.
The entire hearing is available here, on the farms, transcribed, translated, and annotated by yours truly. There's a table of contents right at the start so you can jump to a particular expert witness if you like + I provided super abridged summaries + there's a poll where you can vote for the expert witnesses you thought were most convincing + as a bonus, I added two full interviews from two of the speakers on the day right after.
In my opinion, this really is a historical milestone in all of "Our Democracy"'s history. It really is nothing less than very desperate people flailing around helplessly, and one of the interviewees gets into detail why that is, most likely. Those politicians essentially conspired, for years, to all huddle around and exclude the AfD from everything, in an attempt to train voters that their AfD votes are wasted, unless the AfD gets 51% and they'll never get that. As of now, the AfD is the single strongest party in Germany.
- For maximum cringe and minimum competence - really, the worst performance I've ever seen in my life - I personally recommend Cremer (German Institute for Human Rights).
- For what has been dominating German news media ever since the day of the hearing, read the Kerkeling part.
- For maximum dread and extreme BTFOing of The Left, read the Maaßen (former president of Germany's federal domestic intelligence agency) part.
- For maximum entertainment and vitriol, to the point that they were just shy of throwing hands, read the Vosgerau part.
And now for the queer ones:
Hi, fellow democrats 
The aforementioned hearing really mattered. Defending our democracy from the far right is not some impossible fantasy. Serious lawyers, constitutional scholars, human rights advocates and voices from civil society explained how democratic institutions can act, if only democrats have the courage to summon the political will.
- I particularly recommend reading Chan-jo Jun, who makes the case to initiate prohibition proceedings with remarkable clarity.
- Dr. Hendrik Cremer and the German Institute for Human Rights deserve enormous credit for centering human dignity, protecting queer and trans people, disabled people, and other marginalized communities.
- Representing the Society for Civil Rights, Valentina Chiofalo explained how their team scientifically evaluated over 3 million data points to come up with an over 1700 pages long legal opinion according to which the AfD is nothing but completely hostile to our constitutional order.
- Hape Kerkeling, of course, is very important. As the descendant of a victim of the far-right Nazis and as a tireless voice for democracy, he reminded everyone why "never again" must really mean "never again". Our Basic Law is and must be anti-fascist.
Civil society is ready, and the only thing we now need more than ever is the courage to defend our democracy with all means necessary.
