Portside

“Shock!” was a most common reaction. Yet the two elections in eastern Germany were not all that surprising, just somewhat better or worse than expected, depending on which side you were on.

In Thuringia there was a clear victory, with 32.8 percent, for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), its first such victory in all of Germany! This gives it first choice in forming a state government to replace the ten-year rule of a LINKE Bodo Ramelow. But since every other party has rejected all ties to AfD – thus far – it will hardly succeed, and the Christian Democrats (CDU) with 23.6 percent, will then get their turn at squaring the circle. For years the CDU ruled out any coalitions “with far right or left” but except for a thin Social Democrat remnant (7.3 percent), the AfD, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the LINKE are all that is left to deal with. Some resolutions will have to crumble. But which?

Is the AfD a fascist party? Björn Höcke, his boss in Thuringia, one of his three best-known national leaders and his main rabble-rouser, has never concealed his admiration for Germany's days of swastika glory. He was recently found for shouting the forbidden Nazi storm trooper slogan “Everything for Germany” to a mob of tough-looking supporters. So at his next rally he shouted only “Everything for…” and let them add the missing word. Openly racist and viciously anti-immigrant, his party pushed most other parties in a similar direction – to keep their voters. But it kept on growing, despite countless organized anti-AfD rallies and marches.

Historians recall that one hundred years ago, in 1924, Germany's first basically fascist party gained government seats in Thuringia (under another name, since Hitler's party had been briefly forbidden). In January 1930, three years before it's all-German take-over, two Nazi Party men joined in a Thuringian coalition cabinet. Several Jewish leaders were forced to resign, the famous Bauhaus art school had to leave Weimar, Communist teachers and mayors were expelled, books banned, and Nazification of the police force was begun. Can history repeat itself?

In neighboring Saxony the AfD came in second on Sunday, only narrowly beaten – 31.9 to 30.6 -by the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), rather like pre-Trump Republicans in the USA. It was no great new victory; they have held first place in Saxony ever since 1990 when – with all the other lucky East Germans – they got “reunited” with West Germany. Yet somehow there are many ungrateful folk these days who do not fully appreciate their luck, and while the CDU just managed to end up with its nose ahead, its initially partners all took dives. The Greens barely squeezed past the 5 percent dividing line in Saxony and can thus remain, feebly, in the state parliament. They failed to reach that line in Thuringia, with only 3.2 percent. The Social Democrats lost feathers like any molting pigeons, getting measly single digit results in both votes. And the big-biz-buddy Free Democrats (FDP), never ever properly appreciated in East German regions, failed to reach even two percent in both states and can now be written off. completely. It is exactly those three loser parties which now rule the roost nationally in a so-called “traffic-light” coalition (the red-green-yellow party colors). It is currently judged to be the least popular in recent history. People everywhere are dissatisfied or disgusted.

But now both states face the staggering task of forming a majority government; trying to fit the remaining pieces together like a badly-kept jigsaw puzzle. Minority governments involving less than half the deputies and “tolerated” by other parties are permissible. But they risk constant blackmailing by the tolerators and are shaky as a last leaf in autumn, threatening to fall with every stronger breeze. In both states, therefore, CDU conservatives, lacking votes from the “moderate” partners they often despise on a national level but now dearly miss, may be forced to rely on far worse partners, the kind they loved to hate. Think George W. Bush teaming up with Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders!

Thus, aside from the far-far right AfD, which – at least thus far and despite many shared genes – only a few already dare to openly embrace, they find almost only the LINKE party and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which broke away from it last January. The CDU – despite almost intestinal pain and anger – may now feel itself compelled to age or ignore troublesome taboos and offer cabinet seats to those horrible LEFT “extremists” or even local Sahra adherents.

But there are questions and problems among them too. First of all, the LINKE is in miserable shape. From a national highpoint of 11.9 percent in 2009 its popularity has sagged lower and lower ever since, with a sad 4.9 percent in 2021, and now less than 3 percent, close to an electoral vanishing point. Its main strength always used to come from the former GDR areas. Now even this advantage is in tatters, only partly because old GDR enthusiasts are dying out. In its stronghold Thuringia, where it once won 28 percent of the voters, somehow even having its Bodo Ramelow as the state's prime minister for the past ten years didn't prevent it on Sunday from dropping to fourth place with 13.2 percent.  

It was far worse in Saxony, where the LINKE dropped from 10.4 to a pitiful 4.5. That number, less than 5, would have kept it from getting even a single seat in the state legislature in Dresden. But thanks to a lucky state rule, if a party elects two or more delegates directly in their own districts then it gets the number of seats based on its total percentage. Since just exactly two did win out, the party stays in with six seats. Both are from less reactionary Leipzig. The very controversial Julia Nagel, 45, has long been a popular leader in her large, very leftist young people's neighborhood. The other, Nam Duy Nguyen, 38, is the son of two Vietnamese contract workers who chose to stay in eastern Germany after their jobs were lost during unification and now run a food kiosk. He won thanks to his team campaign knocking on over 40,000 doors, speaking to people about their problems and wishes, also his playing in the local soccer team, and his pledge to take only € 2500 of his income as deputy, contributing the rest to worthy causes. He received an amazing 40 percent of the vote, well ahead of all opponents! Just those two lone victories changed the line-up in the legislature and makes them possible choices for a new coalition!

Far more decisive in electoral terms was the rise of Sahra Wagenknecht's young alliance, which celebrated an even more jubilant victory than the AfD. Many, many people on the left rejoiced! In less than eight months the Alliance (or Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, hence BSW) had achieved two-digit results, almost twelve percent in Thuringia, over thirteen percent in Saxony, putting them in a remarkable third place in both, making it impossible to ignore them and leading perhaps to invitations to join one or both new state governments. The media is obsessively occupied with analyzing this sudden new force in German politics, no easy job for anyone, with many sparks.

Last year the LINKE, heading towards oblivion, was torn by internal debate about NATO's and Putin's role in the Ukraine war, about sending armaments to Zelensky, even about taking a clear position on the war in Gaza. Many members were dismayed at seeing LINKE leaders bow to media and government pressures on these issues and, aside from expectable demands for social improvements, failing to really oppose the frightening rush towards a wartime military, economy and psychology. The Left's proud reputation as Germany's only “party of peace” was being diluted and compromised, they felt, and this was a major cause of its decline. Nor, it was said, had the leaders abandoned their hopes of getting accepted as respectable participants in reform measures instead of challenging the status quo social system. The criticism of these clearly suicidal tendencies led some of the best LINKE leaders and many members to applaud Wagenknecht's move to start a militant new party.

Now she and her dozen or so co-founders could stress opposition to sending arms shipments to warring nations, especially Zelensky-Ukraine and Netanyahu-Israel. While carefully condemning Putin's military invasion they also condemned NATO's decade-long policy of increasingly dangerous expansion and provocation and demanded pressure for a negotiated end to the Ukraine war, followed by a search for a new peaceful Europe, including Russia, and renewing trade and détente .  

Such positions have been viewed as almost high treason for the past two years, and are still squelched in many ways, especially because, in a seeming paradox, the AfD also demands similar pressure for peace in Ukraine. This made it easier to demonize the BSW and AfW as allied “Putin-lovers.” Wagenknecht's statement that the BSW would only join coalitions with parties which, like hers, demanded the weapon-sales stop and withdrawal of American long-range missiles and atomic weapons from Germany, which made it the likely first (or second) victim of a war started by an attack or a human error, with only six-minutes for clarification or correction. These BSW conditions, basically correct but politically very difficult, are not making the formation of new governments any easier, while simple arithmetic still pressures the CDU to combine either with the AfD or one or both leftist parties.

The AfD is not a “peace party.” Its leaders support NATO growth, a bigger arms build-up in Germany, a renewal of military conscription as well as presenting the monopolies, with those making armaments in the lead, with magnanimous tax advantages worth many millions. But its call for negotiations and peace in the Ukraine, for whatever reasons, possibly purely pragmatic ones in the hunt for votes, may explain, at least in part, why it and the BSW were the only two winners in these East German states – where friendship with the USSR and demands for peace were once so intrinsic in all forms and levels of GDR education, culture and media attention It is possible that this still retains some effect, even though GDR generations are dying out. And while officials, politicians and pundits fear and hate just such unwanted feelings, Wagenknecht fans admire their peace demands above all else, crucial as they are in a world balancing on the edge of total atomic annihilation.

Nevertheless, some questions about the BSW arise on other matters. Most frequently, they regard her views on immigration, currently a subject of huge angry attention, with almost hysterical rabble-rousing, spread most extensively by Das Bild, the daily rag published by the Axel Springer company. The matter was greatly worsened by the killing of three people during annual festivities in the Rhineland town of Solingen by a young Syrian asylum-seeker long marked for expulsion. The follow-up: increased calls to keep “unwanted foreigners out of our Germany,” for tighter, tougher border controls, purposely unfriendly red tape, fenced-in camps for those in waiting, less pocket money or even medical assistance for asylum-seekers or “economic immigrants.” The tougher the better, with the AfD in the lead, the two “Christian” parties close behind, and the government parties forced to keep more or less in step to plug up further voter leakage. The frightening atmosphere was at times almost reminiscent of Hitlerian scape-goat anti-Semitism.

Unlike the solitary resistant LINKE, Sahra Wagenknecht joined in. Though in cooler, more civilized tones, she too echoed basically similar “The boat is full” reasoning and supported cooperation with the police against “foreign felons.” Her policy was originally justified as an attempt to win uncertain voters away from the fascistic AfD. It may indeed have won some voters – but not many from AfD ranks, who rarely switched leftwards. (More, however, from previously non-voter ranks.) But some critics felt that a stress less on stricter regulations than on internationalism and solidarity with workers of all ethnic backgrounds might be a better leftist response, even if it won fewer votes.       

Also worrisome for some is their lack of stress on the active working-class struggles they expected with the party split. Not only varied reforms and improvements, necessary as they are, but real fights directed not against a few monopolists, especially American ones, but against a monopoly system. Indeed, Sahra has seemed to want a return to the “good old days” in West Germany of the 1960s, with the generally “fair treatment” of smaller enterprises and the middle-class-before some monopolists took over. But weren't they really dominant all along – and remain largely dominant? Daimler and Siemens were pulling in millions then. Now, above all firms like Rheinmetall, which makes Panther tanks, they are counting in billions! But should or can they really be controlled? Must they not be taken over and turned upside down? Completely? What are Sahra's goals?

And finally there are questions about naming a party for its one leader, for failing as yet to recruit – or accept – new members, or to hold a first congress and adopt a program until after the Bundestag elections in September 2024. Sahra seems to enjoy leadership, and is popular nationally for about 9 percent in the polls, more in the East as the elections demonstrated (and commonly at the cost of the LINKE). More than half the BSW election posters showed her attractive face – although she was not a candidate in Thuringia or Saxony. How much will other voices in the BSW be heard? What real actions will her party take, especially if it joins coalitions, possibly in the state of Brandenburg as well, which votes on September 22nd? There are many questions.

Some questions were indeed asked by those members of the LINKE, including a number of conscious Marxists, who opposed Sahra's split. Despite their defeat at recent party congresses by those they often viewed as opportunists, pragmatists, “reformers” – or worse – they urged sticking it out and staying in the LINKE. There are signs that the catastrophic downhill slide of the party, leading straight to oblivion (with all that means, not only politically but also for the entire party structure, with its offices, jobs, financial support), has finally forced a change in thinking . With the catastrophe so close, few in the party leadership could deny any longer the need for a profound change. What a last chance in sight?

The two co-chairpersons, Wissler and Schirdewan, despite doubtless good intentions, proved fully unsuccessful in the role of rescuing cavalry officers. They surprised nearly everyone, shortly before the elections, by announcing they would not run for re-election at the party congress in Halle on October 18-20. Three candidates have thrown their hats into the ring. If their words can be materialized and their expressed hopes realized there may really be a genuine, sharp change in course. Is a rescue possible? Will the two leftist parties damage or complement one another? Is it possible, singly or doubly, to revive a struggle against the millionaires and billionaires in Germany and beyond, against war-hungry generals, manufacturers and corrupted politicians, and to promote new thinking and above all new action in the direction of a social system without greedy profiteering, without further exploitation of the poor and hungry – and, above all, without further war or threat of war. A big peace demonstration is planned for October 3rd. Its hopeful effect, a new start at the LINKE congress, positive developments in a good-sized BSW, may help bring first, limited successes against powerful, increasingly dangerous German expansion and provocation. One way or another, positive or negative, Germany will certainly exert great influence– on Europe and the world.

But first let us see what voters in the pleasant towns, lakes, pine woods (and some shut-down pit mines and factories) of Brandenburg may decide at their election on September 22nd.   

[Victor Grossman (born in New York City, 1928) is an American journalist who deserted the US Army in 1952 under McCarthy-era pressure by swimming across the Danube River to the Soviet Zone of Austria. He has lived in East Berlin ever since. A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee was published by Monthly Review Press.  His other books include a history in German of the Spanish Civil War, Madrid du Wunderbare, and his English-language autobiography, Crossing the River (University of Massachusetts Press).]