Yax, ultimately democracy means we need to respect people's will. If people like Erdogan or AFD we should listen to understand why and maybe try to fix the root cause; not discard them i.e., "deplorables" and definitely not ban them. People should send them home, not judges.
I am not sure why we need to involve Russia in the discussion. The article was about Hungary and Türkiye.
AFD is a good study case. If we start banning political parties (based on what?) we will probably end up as antidemocratic as them.
Russia's attack on European democracy isn't something you can isolate from the discourse. Far from it. Alt-right parties are de-facto tied to those endeavours. You are talking about the classic dilemma of democratic self-defence, but the number one threat to democracy stems from Russia running operations to undermine it. You cannot steer the discourse away from it. The dilemma of democratic self-defence is a substantial dilemma, that has been researched and discussed for a long time. I disagree that it's fundamentally as simple as you put forth, although I do agree that banning of parties that want to turn to fascism and tear down democracy, and movements should not be done lightly, if at all. That's why it's a substantial dilemma; it's not easily resolved and there is no easy answer, if at all.
And what is the will of the people? In fact, many majorities generally explicitly reject the neo-fascist parties, and there is widespead popular support for banning AfD, although I have no idea if it's explicitly in the majority or not (it probably isn't). Should majorities in parliament be forced to negotiate with parliament minorities (a popular narrative driven by alt-right movements. "it's undemocratic that the establishment ignores us"? How is that "the will of the people", to force the majority parties to bend to the will of the minority parties? The "will of the people" isn't a singular, homogeneous position, although quite extensively do authoritarians claim to universally represent it.
It is fundamentally democratic to preserve democracy and to defend democratic, humane values. Same as wars are always horrible act in inhumanity, the strife in a war can be just. All wars are fundamentally undemocratic, yet wars have been waged in part or in whole to preserve it (WWII for instance). Is it democratic to allow propaganda from the enemies of democracy to poison and undermine democracy? Also, if we look at how party culture work, it's not really built from the bottom up. Contrary, Trump has reimaged the GOP from the top down. Is it democratic how him, his cronies and alt-right media deceive and radicalize? Is toxic manipulation democratic, where the few can use their power to oppress the rest? The power to change the way people think and perceive, is by many philosophers defined as the ultimate use of power. Is it democratic for a few undemocratic people running their movement, go turn it into a fist? How is that "the will of the people"? It's the will of a few people that use the rest of the people and pit them against eachother.
