Leaders of Die Linke tried to pass a resolution expressing their unconditional support for Israel. When delegates at a Berlin party congress objected, some members stormed out in protest. Now the right-wing press is attacking Palestinians and Trotskyists inside the party.
Nathaniel Flakin
October 18, 2024
LEFT VOICE
dpa/Annette Riedl
Germany’s Die Linke is losing one election after another, and it’s doubtful that the party will exist much longer. Last Friday, the Left Party went through another scandal — one that reveals how the party has destroyed itself by betraying every left-wing principle.
At a congress of the Berlin organization, a number of leading members stormed out of the room in protest. This included Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach, former members of the Berlin Senate, and Petra Pau, a vice president of the Bundestag.
Relativization
They wanted to pass a long resolution supposedly directed against antisemitism: “Against every antisemitism — defend emancipation and universal human rights!” As with any bourgeois politician in Germany talking about antisemitism, however, the text made clear they were demanding unconditional solidarity with Israel’s far-right government. As examples of supposed antisemitism, the text pointed to graffiti at so-called “antideutsch” event locations that support Israel. In contrast, the text makes no mention of a wave of police violence against left-wing Jews at Palestine demonstrations. Petra Pau has publicly denounced Jews for not being sufficiently loyal to Israel.
The draft resolution accused leftists of supporting “eliminatory antisemitism.” This term refers to the Nazis’ genocidal drive to liquidate all people they defined as Jewish. As a majority of the delegates at the congress pointed out, using it to refer to demonstrators — including Jewish demonstrators — expressing solidarity with Palestine, is not just factually wrong and profoundly offensive, but represents a relativization or trivialization of the Holocaust. By putting an equals sign between October 7 and the Nazi genocide, German politicians are effectively downplaying the unprecedented barbarity of the Nazis’ crimes.
After the resolution was amended several times, Lederer withdrew it entirely, and stormed out of the room with some 40 supporters.
During more than a year of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, with more than 40,000 confirmed dead and tens, if not hundreds of thousands more likely to die, Die Linke has acted nothing like a left-wing party. Lederer and others from the Right of the reformist Left have energetically defended German Staatsräson: the country’s “reason of state” demands unconditional support for Israel, even when this is rejected by big majorities of the population. Lederer went so far as to explicitly support Berlin’s right-wing government in banning a Palestine Congress half a year ago.
Other, more left-wing members of Die Linke have stayed silent — including former radicals like the party co-chair Janine Wissler. The only German politician who has even slightly broken ranks with the unanimous support for Israel is the social chauvinist Sahra Wagenknecht. On most topics, she is far to the right of Die Linke, but as a lone voice among Germany’s political caste, she has denounced the slaughter of civilians in Gaza and called for an arms embargo against Israel.
Denunciation
After the Eklat (scandal) last weekend, right-wing media in Berlin have launched a vicious campaign of denunciation against “antisemites” in Die Linke — referring basically to anyone who is critical of Netanyahu. The party’s left wing is concentrated in the immigrant neighborhood of Neukölln, and the newspaper Tagesspiegel attacked the Kurdish activist Ferat Kocak, a member of the Berlin parliament whose family was almost killed in a Nazi arson attack.
The campaign is directed particularly at Ramsis Kilani, a German-Palestinian activist in Berlin who is also a member of die Linke. In 2014, his father and five siblings were murdered in an Israeli attack in Gaza. Tagesspiegel reported that Kilani’s family was killed “according to his version of events,” but there is actually lots of reporting about the massacre, including a moving documentary.
Tagesspiegel has also crudely falsified quotes, claiming that Kliani said: “We will need more than a murder of Israelis.” Kilani has provided screenshots of an exchange with a stranger on Instagram, however, in which he was asked if he wanted to “sacrifice the Palestinian population for a murder of Israelis.” To this he replied that “We will need more than a ‘murder of Israelis'” — a quote that is not just robbed of context but actively distorted by leaving out the quote marks. The Tagesspiegel has already lost court cases for spreading fake news about pro-Palestinian activists — we’ll see if this lie will have legal consequences.
Exodus
This most recent crisis is a reminder that Die Linke is and has always been a party committed to the German capitalist state. Figures like Lederer and Pau not only support genocide — they have also been part of governments that carried out privatizations, deportations, and evictions. In the context of a rightward shift by German elites, Die Linke’s leaders are emphasizing that they can go with the racist flow.
On Twitter, Pau accused Kilani of wanting to “destroy our Left” — but Kilani responded that the leadership has been destroying the party pretty well themselves, currently polling well below the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. This is because a party calling itself “The Left” is — entirely correctly — perceived as part of the capitalist establishment.
Kilani is a member of the Trotskyist group Sozialismus von Unten (Socialism from Below, SvU) that emerged last year after a three-way split in the network Marx21. For 15 years, they worked as part of Die Linke, but they recently took a step back, and now have one leg inside and one leg outside the party.
As Klasse Gegen Klasse, the sister publication of Left Voice in Germany, we have never made any secret of our disagreement with revolutionary socialists working inside a reformist party like Die Linke. All comrades in Die Linke being denounced for their anti-war activism have our solidarity.
But we are also happy that the comrades of SvU are on their way out of the reformist swamp. We think that revolutionary socialists should work to build a clear alternative to Die Linke. The time is right to form a front based on anticapitalism, international solidarity, and class independence. We would like to discuss more with SvU about the possibilities for joint work.
This current crisis will help divide honest socialists who are still within Die Linke from their odious leadership — and it might help create a serious revolutionary alternative that is sorely needed in Germany.
Nathaniel Flakin
Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.
Germany’s Die Linke is losing one election after another, and it’s doubtful that the party will exist much longer. Last Friday, the Left Party went through another scandal — one that reveals how the party has destroyed itself by betraying every left-wing principle.
At a congress of the Berlin organization, a number of leading members stormed out of the room in protest. This included Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach, former members of the Berlin Senate, and Petra Pau, a vice president of the Bundestag.
Relativization
They wanted to pass a long resolution supposedly directed against antisemitism: “Against every antisemitism — defend emancipation and universal human rights!” As with any bourgeois politician in Germany talking about antisemitism, however, the text made clear they were demanding unconditional solidarity with Israel’s far-right government. As examples of supposed antisemitism, the text pointed to graffiti at so-called “antideutsch” event locations that support Israel. In contrast, the text makes no mention of a wave of police violence against left-wing Jews at Palestine demonstrations. Petra Pau has publicly denounced Jews for not being sufficiently loyal to Israel.
The draft resolution accused leftists of supporting “eliminatory antisemitism.” This term refers to the Nazis’ genocidal drive to liquidate all people they defined as Jewish. As a majority of the delegates at the congress pointed out, using it to refer to demonstrators — including Jewish demonstrators — expressing solidarity with Palestine, is not just factually wrong and profoundly offensive, but represents a relativization or trivialization of the Holocaust. By putting an equals sign between October 7 and the Nazi genocide, German politicians are effectively downplaying the unprecedented barbarity of the Nazis’ crimes.
After the resolution was amended several times, Lederer withdrew it entirely, and stormed out of the room with some 40 supporters.
During more than a year of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, with more than 40,000 confirmed dead and tens, if not hundreds of thousands more likely to die, Die Linke has acted nothing like a left-wing party. Lederer and others from the Right of the reformist Left have energetically defended German Staatsräson: the country’s “reason of state” demands unconditional support for Israel, even when this is rejected by big majorities of the population. Lederer went so far as to explicitly support Berlin’s right-wing government in banning a Palestine Congress half a year ago.
Other, more left-wing members of Die Linke have stayed silent — including former radicals like the party co-chair Janine Wissler. The only German politician who has even slightly broken ranks with the unanimous support for Israel is the social chauvinist Sahra Wagenknecht. On most topics, she is far to the right of Die Linke, but as a lone voice among Germany’s political caste, she has denounced the slaughter of civilians in Gaza and called for an arms embargo against Israel.
Denunciation
After the Eklat (scandal) last weekend, right-wing media in Berlin have launched a vicious campaign of denunciation against “antisemites” in Die Linke — referring basically to anyone who is critical of Netanyahu. The party’s left wing is concentrated in the immigrant neighborhood of Neukölln, and the newspaper Tagesspiegel attacked the Kurdish activist Ferat Kocak, a member of the Berlin parliament whose family was almost killed in a Nazi arson attack.
The campaign is directed particularly at Ramsis Kilani, a German-Palestinian activist in Berlin who is also a member of die Linke. In 2014, his father and five siblings were murdered in an Israeli attack in Gaza. Tagesspiegel reported that Kilani’s family was killed “according to his version of events,” but there is actually lots of reporting about the massacre, including a moving documentary.
Tagesspiegel has also crudely falsified quotes, claiming that Kliani said: “We will need more than a murder of Israelis.” Kilani has provided screenshots of an exchange with a stranger on Instagram, however, in which he was asked if he wanted to “sacrifice the Palestinian population for a murder of Israelis.” To this he replied that “We will need more than a ‘murder of Israelis'” — a quote that is not just robbed of context but actively distorted by leaving out the quote marks. The Tagesspiegel has already lost court cases for spreading fake news about pro-Palestinian activists — we’ll see if this lie will have legal consequences.
Exodus
This most recent crisis is a reminder that Die Linke is and has always been a party committed to the German capitalist state. Figures like Lederer and Pau not only support genocide — they have also been part of governments that carried out privatizations, deportations, and evictions. In the context of a rightward shift by German elites, Die Linke’s leaders are emphasizing that they can go with the racist flow.
On Twitter, Pau accused Kilani of wanting to “destroy our Left” — but Kilani responded that the leadership has been destroying the party pretty well themselves, currently polling well below the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament. This is because a party calling itself “The Left” is — entirely correctly — perceived as part of the capitalist establishment.
Kilani is a member of the Trotskyist group Sozialismus von Unten (Socialism from Below, SvU) that emerged last year after a three-way split in the network Marx21. For 15 years, they worked as part of Die Linke, but they recently took a step back, and now have one leg inside and one leg outside the party.
As Klasse Gegen Klasse, the sister publication of Left Voice in Germany, we have never made any secret of our disagreement with revolutionary socialists working inside a reformist party like Die Linke. All comrades in Die Linke being denounced for their anti-war activism have our solidarity.
But we are also happy that the comrades of SvU are on their way out of the reformist swamp. We think that revolutionary socialists should work to build a clear alternative to Die Linke. The time is right to form a front based on anticapitalism, international solidarity, and class independence. We would like to discuss more with SvU about the possibilities for joint work.
This current crisis will help divide honest socialists who are still within Die Linke from their odious leadership — and it might help create a serious revolutionary alternative that is sorely needed in Germany.
Nathaniel Flakin
Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.
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