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Repealing Roe vs Wade is part of a far more sinister plan

The attack on abortion rights in the US is about more than just reproductive rights. It is an attack on democracy itself


07/05/2022

The recent leak of a Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark Roe vs Wade decision, opening the door to legalising abortion in the USA, has sparked outrage among women globally. Naturally, The Democratic Party leadership’s eyes lit up with dollar signs in anticipation of the fundraising potential the leak presents. No single issue is more animating for Democrat and Democrat-aligned voters than abortion. Much like how sales of firearms experience an uptick in the aftermath of a major mass shooting, Democratic Party leaders have used abortion rights as a totem to rally around in spite of their consistent failure to secure them.

The leak itself is a major headache for Republicans, since it has occurred before a set of mid-term elections that they hope will secure them control of the House of Representatives and even the Senate. This outcome would absolutely sabotage whatever slivers of reform Biden intended to deliver. Taking a longer view, it is not immediately apparent what the benefit of repealing Roe vs Wade would be.

After all, Republicans have not explicitly made overturning Roe vs Wade a pillar of their strategy. They are fully aware that abortion can be made de facto illegal if not de jure. Several Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed draconian laws to severely limit or outright prohibit abortion. Furthermore, explicitly attacking Roe vs Wade burnishes their opposition with political ammunition. We on the left need to think a little deeper about the intentions behind this attack on not just the rights of women, but on democracy.

 

US state legislatures by party control. Blue = Democrat control of legislature, red = Republican control of legislature, purple = states split control of legislature (By Sbowman123 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64708268)

The map above should be the single most terrifying map of US politics, yet its significance is understated. To explain, of the 50 states in the union, only 17 state legislatures are under Democrat control, with 30 under Republican control. To provide some context, these states account for 307 electoral college votes, whereas Biden won 306 in the 2020 election. The contrast between Republican domination at the state level and at the presidential level tells us something about their ability to win electoral majorities, despite being in a clear popular minority. The latest US census predicts that the country will become a majority-minority country within the next 25 years. This phenomenal demographic inversion poses, potentially, an existential threat to Republican political hegemony.

In this context, overturning Roe vs Wade should be seen not as a pillar of Republican electoral strategy, but as part of a multi-pronged attack on the barely functional democracy that is claimed to exist in the USA. For multiple election cycles, Republicans have entrenched minority rule through egregious gerrymandering of congressional districts, legal impediments to suppress voting among the poor and minorities, and outright disenfranchisement through criminalising those same groups. It is not accidental that people with criminal records are being stripped of the right to vote, nor is the criminalisation of the poor and minorities through vicious policing tactics. Soon poor, minority women seeking an abortion will be criminalised, too.

The manoeuvre by Republicans to attack abortion is driven in equal parts by fear and brazen confidence. On one hand, their domination of politics at the state level, their generation-long seizure of the Supreme Court, and their prophesised victory within Congress makes them feel that the time is right to deliver on their promises to their Evangelical fundamentalist wing. Yet, a fear of demographic shifts that can erode their minoritarian stronghold compels them to seek new avenues to disenfranchise as many voters as possible, while they still can.

All this is synergistic with their response to calls to defund the police: to repeat mantras on “law & order”, boosting funding for police departments and prisons, passing laws to prevent “voter fraud”, or enhancing the power of the police, while criminalising a growing list of “crimes”. To call these machinations anything other than a modern version of Jim Crow is to deny the reality of the millions of ethnic minority citizens of the USA. The scale of the problems requires something akin to a new civil rights movement that is not specific to a single issue, but to an entire apparatus of control and subjugation.

Far too many people are falling into the trap of responding to the attack on Roe vs Wade by focusing solely on arguments around the “right to choose”. Liberals have succeeded in conditioning people into self-defeating myopia. In actuality, the attack on Roe vs Wade is an attack on black people organising against police violence, on the poor, on the right to vote.

People understand that abortions cannot be magicked out of existence, and that overturning Roe vs Wade will impact poor women and anyone who tries to help them. People know that poverty is concentrated among black people in particular and minorities in general. And yet political leaders seem unable to join the dots. Instead they offer pithy slogans, fundraising emails, calls to just vote in greater numbers no matter how many hours you have to wait in line or how many forms of ID you need to show at the polling booth. As animating as abortion rights are, it is simply delusional to expect to build an overwhelming electoral coalition to merely defend an emaciated status quo around abortion.

Joe Biden has refused to countenance decriminalising marijuana; he has vocally supported police departments and treated the demands of Black Lives Matter activists with contempt. Neither he nor his coterie of sycophants has passed any legislation to secure voting rights. The PRO Act is dead in the water and neither is there any prospect of the most milquetoast economically redistributive policies on the horizon. The Democrats can scream themselves hoarse about a woman’s right to choose but until they mobilise popular forces around a full suite of interlocking issues, they will fail once again.

Of course, we on the left know exactly why the Democrats love to feign helplessness. It is the left that must join the dots between poverty, voting rights, police violence and criminalisation, and the attack on Roe vs Wade. I write these words frantically as a means to start this process. Every crisis is either an opportunity to despair in nihilism or to organise with optimism. We must craft a narrative that goes beyond issues of bodily autonomy. Just as attacking abortion is a conduit for Republicans seeking to entrench minority rule and ruling class interests, the left has to mount a defense of the working class and democracy through the defense of the right to safe, legal, and unencumbered abortion.

Berlin Demonstration Bans are Linked

Three apparently unrelated cases tell us a lot about anti-racism, the Palestine discussion in Germany and the politics of Franziska Giffey


05/05/2022

On 28th April, Berlin police banned all demonstrations for Palestine until the 1st May. Police press spokesman Thilo Cablitz said “we have deployed emergency forces, particularly in North Neukölln and Kreuzberg [both districts with a large Muslim population] which will ensure that people do not come together. If necessary, people will be ordered to disperse.”

On the same day, police rerouted the Revolutionary 1st May Demo, which for years has been the largest demonstration on International Workers’ Day in Berlin. Neukölln mayor Martin Hikel (SPD) and the conservative evangelical Deutsch-Arabisches Zentrum had organised a series of last minute Iftar (fast-breaking) events which blocked the planned demo route.

Following the 1st May demonstrations, Palästina Spricht, an activist organisation of left wing Palestinians, was accused by the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism of being anti-Jewish. The Forum objected to the slogan “Intifada is our class struggle”, which it claims equates Jewishness with capitalism.

You may or may not have heard about these incidents. If you have, it was almost certainly as separate news reports which implied that they have nothing to do with each other. And yet, taken together they show at least two worrying trends in Germany, and particularly in Berlin politics.

The original ban

The pretext for banning all Palestinian demonstrations was that if they took place, this could lead to antisemitic incidents. Berlin’s interior minister Iris Spanger (SPD) said “If the administrative authorities make a comprehensive overview and decide that in Berlin there are the preconditions for a ban according to freedom of assembly, I would greet and support it.”

This followed a previous demonstration, when a couple of kids shouted offensive slogans. This is a danger at all demonstrations which bring together people from different backgrounds and political beliefs. The main organisers of the demonstration were Palästina Spricht, whose spokesperson Nizar Haddad said in an interview with 99 zu Eins “I found these chants shit. They made me sick. Is it racist? Of course. But a single slogan by a young unorganised person does not make a demo of more than 2,000 people a racist or antisemitic procession, as was presented in all media”.

Palästina Spricht itself offered the following statement: “Our common consensus is international, intersectional and therefore consistently anti-racist. We have made this clear in our speeches and slogans. Of course it was clear to us in advance that this is a thorn in the side of the right-wing, racist media world. That’s why Springer & Co. [the owners of the main German tabloids] were on the look out for individuals among hundreds who they could show in order to drag the whole demo through the mud.”

Bans were not just threatened in Berlin. There was also a call to ban a demonstration in Frankfurt-Main on 30th April. SPD mayor Peter Feldmann justified the ban by saying that the demo had clearly gone past the borders allowed for legitimate protest, and that it would foment hatred and agitation.

I was on the Berlin demonstration. There was a significant Jewish contingent and a lot of anger about the incident that provoked the demo. But the subsequent press reports did not mention the Israeli forces who had brutally and repeatedly attacked Palestinians praying in the Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan. Once more, a protest against Israeli aggression ended up in a discussion which was entirely focussed on alleged Arab antisemitism.

The Revolutionary 1 May demonstrations

If you were to believe the official statements, the change of route for the 1 May demo was an accident. After all, no serious anti-racist could oppose an Iftar festival during Ramadan could they? And yet, as Aicha Jamal, speaker for the Revolutionary 1 May demo noted, the Iftar events were scheduled for 7pm, not 20.33 (sundown) when they should take place. Jamal argued that this showed an “actual ignorance of the Muslim communities on Sonnenallee”.

On the demonstration itself, police broke the demonstration into half on Karl-Marx Straße. The Rote Hilfe criticised the police behaviour, saying “the only reason that mass panic did not break out in this narrow space was the calm reaction of the demonstrators.” Later on, protestors were kettled by police, who attacked them with pepper spray.

Anyone looking for the real reason for the police attacks would do better by looking at the statement by the speaker of the police trade union. Benjamin Jendro justified the ban on Palestine demonstrations by saying “we already saw last year that pro-Palestinian organisations took part in the so-called revolutionary 1 May demo”.

The fact is that Berlin has recently experienced a new and welcome development. When Gaza was bombed in 2014, we struggled to mobilize 1,500 people. Last year, 15,000 took part in a lively demonstration through Berlin. For reasons that some of us are too aware of, the number of white Germans was small, but there was a significant number of non-Germans and Germans of colour who had been activated by the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of the more lasting effects of this has been a willingness by the organisers of the Revolutionary 1 May demo to take Palestinian rights seriously. This was by no means automatic – much of the German Left has traditionally taken an awful position on Palestine. But, partly because of the number of migrants involved in organising the revolutionary demo, significant progress has been made.

This means that the Revolutionary 1 May has become a crystallisation point for anti-racist activists who also want to overtake the German Left in their solidarity with Palestine. The attempt to neutralise this development has led to specific attacks on a demonstration that was once confined to a small section of the radical Left but has started to make political generalisations.

Accusations against Palästina Spricht

I already mentioned the Jewish Forum’s attack on Palästina Spricht. In an uncritical report by the Berliner Zeitung, the Forum also claimed that the banners “Apartheid exists, Palestine resists” is antisemitic. The reason? The banner had a subtitle: 27.027 km². This is the combined area of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. This, the Forum claimed, “was aimed at a one-state solution, without the existence of Israel”.

If you want to check the bona fides of the Jewish Forum, you may also look at the Tweet that they made “proving” that the Revolutionary 1 May demo was full of “antisemitic events”. This tweet, was of a photo of placards saying things like “This Jewish voice is anti-Zionist” and “Apartheid states are not democracies”. The placards were produced by the entirely Jewish Jüdische Stimme (German chapter of the Jewish Voice for Peace).

In the topsy-turvy reporting to which we have become accustomed, calling for a state where everyone has equal rights, is somehow dangerous and undemocratic. Meanwhile demonstrations by Corona conspiracy theorists are allowed to continue unimpeded, despite the prevalence of actual antisemitic slogans, blaming “Rockerfeller, Rothschild & Co” and accepting the presence of organised Nazis.

The role of Franziska Giffey

The recent attacks on Palestine demos are part of a general trend which includes the secret dossier compiled on Anna-Esther Younes, the refusal of Amnesty International Germany to accept its mother organisation’s definition of Israel as an apartheid state, the Bundestag resolution outlawing BDS, the sacking of 7 Palestinian journalists at Deutsche Welle, the cancelling on German-Palestinian journalist Nemi El-Hassan,  and many more incidents too numerous to list. So yes, this is at least in part about the peculiar refusal by large parts of German society to accept the possibility of Palestinian rights.

But it is also about something else. I would now like to spend a few words talking about Berlin’s new mayor Franziska Giffey. Giffey is currently best known for actively ignoring Berlin’s 60% vote to expropriate the big landlords. But she is not just an opponent of democracy. She also has a track record of authoritarianism and racism.

As Giffey was poised to become the SPD’s candidate for mayor, die Welt lauded her as “definitely a law and order politician.” It quoted Giffey as saying “the subjects of security and order are important to me – they are ur-social democratic subjects.” The election campaign with which she became mayor tried to focus less on stopping expropriation and more on law and order.

Before becoming Berlin mayor, Giffey was mayor of the racially mixed area of Neukölln. Her predecessor Heinz Buschkowsky (also SPD) was notorious for his racist policies, warning about parallel societies in which Arab magistrates supersede state justice. Giffey was the natural successor to Buschkowsky. She followed his tendency to parrot racist clichés in interviews by talking about criminal Arabs who were involved in drug dealing, prositution and money laundering. Her solution included a call for more video surveillance in working class areas.

In 2017, Giffey attacked clan criminality, one of the favourite code words used by German racists. She approved and encouraged raids on restaurants and arcades owned by non-white Germans. Regarding the 30,000 Neuköllners from Arab families, Giffey talked of those “who foul the whole reputation and do not abide by any rules and values.” Although she also spoke of “respectable Arabs”, she called for the confiscation of high-horsepower cars from criminals. The implication was that the criminals who would lose their cars would not be blond, blue-eyed Germans.

In the same year, when Eastern European migrants were forced to live in tents, Giffey issued a statement that “we can’t accept that new camps of tents appear with 30 or 40 people in a park. The answer can’t be ‘let the poor people have somewhere to sleep’”, adding “if you can’t afford it in Germany you must go back to Romania”.

Many of Giffey’s statements appear at first glance to be reasonable, but behind them an indifference to – or possibly hatred of – young migrants is never far behind the surface. This is the woman who is now in charge of Berlin’s policing. She is also already the focus of growing opposition – a video of a demonstrator throwing an egg at her on 1 May was widely shared on social media.

Conclusion

I don’t think that it is a coincidence that most people mentioned in this article as cracking down on the right to assembly are representatives of the SPD. Just as SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz has increased Germany’s military budget without much visible opposition, social democrats are both eager to prove themselves willing partners of the establishment and able to convince their own constituency that a strong state is necessary.

This is the choice faced by social democrats who try to run the state. Some, like Giffey, eagerly take over all apparatuses of repression. Others are more circumspect, but still end up criminalising migrants and particularly Palestinians. Many good Leftists, who have tried to control the worst excesses of the police and army, have ended up endorsing more repression.

I do not know whether Giffey personally ordered the bans on demonstrations, or that the police feel empowered by her election after a campaign which focussed on law and order. In a sense it does not matter. Despite it’s liberal reputation, Berlin is becoming a city which denies the freedom of assembly to many of it’s non-white citizens.

What I do know is that every socialist, and hopefully everyone who reads this article, should be on the next demonstrations against police repression, against the attacks on free speech on Palestine, and against the horrors which are being inflicted on the Palestinian people on a daily basis. Thanks to the inspirational work of groups like Palästina Spricht, we finally have a serious movement against repression, racism and Israeli apartheid – even in Germany. This movement 100% deserves our full support.

IU Berlin calls for an end to the criminalization of the pro-Palestinian movement

The assembly denounces the pressure on the movement in defense of the Palestinian people, the banning of its demonstrations, as well as media manipulation.


04/05/2022

Declaration by Izquierda Unida Berlin

From the assembly of Izquierda Unida (“United Left”) in Berlin we denounce the intensification of the criminalization of the movement in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people. The banning of the traditional Al-Quds demonstration is yet another step in the restriction of freedom of expression on the Palestinian question. The accusations of “anti-Semitism” to any defense of the existence of the Palestinian State, to claim its right to self-determination or to designate Israel as a colonialist state and where apartheid is practiced are more and more common every day to silence what is obvious: the constant and persistent violation of human rights in Gaza and the West Bank by the State of Israel, which has at its head in the government Naftali Bennett, an ultranationalist who has declared more than once that he will never allow the creation of a Palestinian state or the return of the Palestinian diaspora to their land.

IU Berlin also supports and stands in solidarity with the organizations such as Jüdische Stimme (“Jewish Voices”, which was labeled as anti-Semitic for denouncing Israel’s actions) or Palästina spricht (“Palestine speaks”), that raise their voices in the German capital to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and suffer constant persecution by politicians, the media and the administration. We also send our support to the youth of Die LINKE (the party of The Left) in Berlin, Linksjugend [‘solid]. Their resolution on Palestine defending the unconditional right of return of the Palestinian diaspora and the designation of Israel as an apartheid state is a turning point for the Left in Germany, so much so that it has led to the threat by members of Die LINKE’s Berlin headquarters to cut off funding to their youth organization for promoting anti-Semitism.

Linksjugend [‘solid] Berlin’s resolution aligns itself with the international left and human rights. The Left MEP in the European Parliament, Manuel Pineda, chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with Palestine, advocates recognition of the Palestinian state and denounces Israel’s non-compliance with the Oslo Accords. Even the United Nations has denounced Israel’s colonialist policy as “a flagrant violation of international law” and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Michael Lynk, has used the term apartheid for Israel’s policy towards the Palestinian people. Amnesty International Spain has also compared the current situation in Palestine to the state racism and apartheid policies of South Africa in an extensive report and has called for sanctions against Israel for violating the Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court and the Convention against Apartheid. The German left should no longer hesitate to talk about Israel and Palestine.

In the face of all this evidence, claiming the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, to have their own state recognized by the entire international community, as well as denouncing Israel’s abuses, is not “anti-Semitism”. Germany has been using the card of “anti-Semitism” from a historical guilt for years, with which they force the Palestinian people to paying with their blood for Nazi crimes. From IU Berlin we condemn any anti-Semitic behavior, whatever the context, but we denounce its use as a political gag. The fight against “anti-Semitism” is to be found in the anti-fascist struggle, against the growth of AfD, Reichsbürger or Der III Weg, extreme right-wing or neo-Nazi organizations.

The assembly of Izquierda Unida Berlin will continue to stand by the Palestinian organizations that defend their rights as a people and we stand in solidarity against the growing pressure that they are facing. No pasarán.

This article originally appeared in Spanish on the mundo obrero Websire. Translation: Jaime Martinez Porro

 

The German parliament discusses arming Ukraine

Victor Grossmann argues we need an anti-fascist, anti-militarist voice for people’s rights


03/05/2022

While shadowy back-room profiteers count up newly-acquired millions and billions from armament purchases or sales of frocking gas, I think the rest of us should oppose both Putin’s criminal war as well as all attempts, on the other side, to prolong, extend and gain from it.

That is where Germany comes in, with both feet. On February 3rd 2015 George Friedman, founder of Stratfor, the so-called world’s top geopolitical intelligence platform, said that one of the main goals of US foreign policy had long been to make sure there was no cooperation between Russia and Germany.

This goal now seems to have been achieved – once again. The current media-incited atmosphere of hatred against anything remotely connected with Russia recalls the iciest phase of the Cold War.

The uneasy coalition now governing the country, after finally achieving a three-party truce and dropping plans for compulsory anti-Covid vaccination, soon faced a far more fundamental issue; what assistance should Germany send Ukraine. Should it consist of money and light weapons or extend to “heavy weapons” like tanks and artillery?

The Greens, once seen as a left-leaning party, are now led by the sharpest of Russia-haters, who spouted incendiary statements long before Putin sent in the troops. Most prominent are young, virulent Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Vice-Chancellor/Economics-Environment Minister Robert Habeck, both Atlanticists with what might better be called “Potomac” positions.

As for the Free Democrats, whose allegiance, quite overtly, is to big business, the heavier the weapons the better; yes, tanks, missiles, artillery, anything. In this – and despite coalition-soothing words from their leader, Finance Minister Christian Lindner – the FDP leans suspiciously towards the Christian Democrats, now trying to regain strength in opposition, well to the right of its retired leader Angela Merkel.

Olaf Scholz changes his mind

The Social Democrats, strongest party in the Bundestag and led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, seemed to support a surprisingly different position. Germany, fifth place in armaments exports globally, has long kept to an older West German rule not to send weapons into conflict areas – or partially kept to it, since somehow there was frequent leakage. Scholz warned almost movingly that heavy weapons sent to Kyiv would expand the conflict, involve more countries and increase chances for a major war, possibly atomic. He seemed to be reflecting the position of those industrial sectors which depended heavily on exports to Russia and, more important, Germany’s considerable dependency on Russian oil, coal and gas to power its economy. In February Germany was importing 55% of its gas from Moscow; despite all its haste, developing substitute sources like oil from the Persian Gulf or the Atlantic and gas from American fracking would take time and cause great unemployment, shortages and general misery. The need for Russian energy imports and sales to Russia and China had long been a balancing factor against belligerent Atlanticists and their allies the armament groupies.

But it was these forces who won the day. An immense campaign was intensified against Scholz, with the opposition Christian Democrats loud and angry and his two coalition partners offering no real support. The media offered endless accounts of war damage and atrocities, true or alleged, with constant repetition of the worst pictures. The USA and eastern Europe, above all Poland and the Baltic countries, traditional foes of Russia, tightened the screws against Scholz’ “hesitancy”. Most unrelenting was the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andriy Melnyk, whose attacks against Chancellor Scholz, ex-Chancellor Merkel and President Steinmeier were anything but diplomatic.

“The Germans are going to regret that they are once again the last ones to agree,” Melnyk declared. “We (Ukraine) have become the biggest victim of this perverted relationship. Ukrainians are paying for this failed German policy with their lives.” He elaborated further that “this kind of hypocrisy with Russia dates back to Nord Stream 1 (gas pipeline)… Germany’s huge dependence on Russia, at a time of the worst aggression since the Second World War, is shameful,” Melnyk proclaimed before stating that “Germany is as far away from giving us the support we need today as it was at the start of the war… More than 40 days later, the German political elite apparently still does not believe that Ukraine can win the war.”

For many his blatant imperatives went much, much too far for an ambassador. But he was supported by President Zelenskyy who, when Steinmeier planned a joint trip to Kyiv with the presidents of Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania “to send a strong signal of joint European solidarity” he was told that he was not welcome there because of his year-long détente policy towards Moscow. This, based on his years as foreign minister with Angela Merkel, was an almost unprecedented snub. But while she – no longer in office – stood by her 2008 stance against admitting Kyiv to NATO, Steinmeier abjectly acknowledged that his policy of détente “had been mistaken”.

In the end Scholz, too, could not withstand the pressure and backed down, announcing  “…yesterday we decided that Germany should hand over weapons to Ukraine to defend itself. Putin’s aggression meant we could give no other answer.” That means tanks to Kyiv – perhaps older Soviet-made tanks which the Ukrainians were acquainted with, to be sent by Slovenia, which would then receive a similar number of modern tanks from Germany in a face-saving swap.

Increased military budget

In the changing atmosphere, Scholz made doubly clear that he was free of any pacifist impulses he may possibly have entertained. Bowing to the usual querulous complaints of Defense Ministers (the new one, Christine Lambrecht, third woman in a row in that job, but this time a Social Democrat), that the Bundeswehr was far from its necessary military fitness, Scholz proposed a rise of 100 billion euros ($112 billion USD) in the amount spent on the military. Though threatened by no-one, Germany had already seen the largest defence budget increases of all major 15 countries. And now this enormous new increase!

A part of the sum would be for travel; its contingent on manoeuvres in Lithuania was to be increased. Minister Lambrecht said that Germany was strengthening its “troop contribution on NATO’s eastern flank and sending a clear sign of our resolve to our allies.” Very old German veterans might recall place names from attacks launched there against Leningrad eight decades ago. Somewhat younger men, with many-starred shoulders, clearly enjoyed the idea of being military alpha wolf in Europe.

All major parties supported the giant new spending decision. Opposed were the AfD delegates, who generally supported Putin in the past but may now being split on the issue. One single Christian Democratic maverick (from East Germany) also voted Nay. And so did the entire caucus of DIE LINKE – The Left, this time united. The party’s caucus co-chairperson, Amira Mohamed Ali (but no relation!), stated: “We from The Left cannot and will not join in such rearmament, such militarization. History teaches us that competition in arms production does not bring security. What is necessary is disarmament and diplomacy.” She also stressed that the caucus agrees that Russia is responsible for an offensive war, breaking all rules of international law.”

The West’s Imperial ambitions

The obvious plans in Washington and Berlin are to continue or expand the fighting, regardless of human losses until Russia is defeated or taken over. They embody an extreme danger, along with the xenophobic hysteria against Russia, with all its echoes from an evil past. The only possible policy in this situation must certainly include the demand for a quick end of hostilities and negotiations for a peaceful solution, despite all plans of the crusading militarists.

This was the predominant message at countless Easter weekend peace demonstrations all over Germany, east, west, north and south – still small, but larger than for years. Then, on May Day, working people, especially those in unions, surprised the nation by proclaiming just this message, loud and clear, hissing Olaf Scholz for sending weapons to Ukraine and for increasing the military budget while so many are hit hard – and the monopolies flourish. He shouted, enraged, at the unexpected chorus of whistles, while Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey, also a Social Democrat, was rewarded with thrown eggs (but not hit) for a similar message. The anger seems clearer and stronger than for many years.

In this situation, and with these dangers, a voice of The Left in the Bundestag and state legislatures is extremely important; an anti-fascist, anti-militarist voice for people’s rights – and with a vision. But, tragically, the Left now faces not only exclusion from most of these bodies for failure to reach the required 5% level, but also a worse  internal crisis than ever before. With its poll rates dropping, the resignation of one of its chairwomen, accusations against the other plus, most importantly, a deep split on major political issues, especially military and foreign policy, worsened by the Ukraine war  – the party’s existence is endangered. Pro or anti in regard to NATO, pro or anti on hopes for government seats; these and other basic questions will be fought over at the June congress in Erfurt, at which the entire executive body and two chairpersons will be newly elected. The end result is anything but certain.

This is an extract from Victor Grossman’s latest Berlin bulletin. The full bulletin can be read on Victor’s website.