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GoetheInstitute

01/07/2005

Writers warn about Linkspartei

German writers say the new leftist alliance of Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi hides dangerously populist sentiments.

The writers Hans Christoph Buch, Wolf Biermann, Klaus Harpprecht, Uwe Kolbe, Günter Kunert, Gert Loschütz, Monika Maron and Peter Schneider have all signed the following condemnation of the new "Linkspartei", the leftist alliance spearheaded by Gregor Gysi (former chairman of the PDS) and Oskar Lafontaine (former SPD finance minister and rival of Chancellor Schröder).

"The 'Linkspartei', the new party of the Left, is neither new nor Left. Just as the PDS, whatever name it might go by, does not stand for democratic socialism. On the contrary: the successor to the SED (or East German Communist Party) has distanced itself just as half-heartedly from the East German police state as its figurehead, Gregor Gysi, from his Stasi contacts. And there is something unintentionally funny about the PDS preaching for a return to the West German welfare state it fought so bitterly in the past. The coalition with Oskar Lafontaine lends little credibility to their politics because there is no turning away from a globalised world and the European Union to a closed national state which believes in creating social security by closing its borders.

Seen in this light, Oskar Lafontaine's word on the "fremdarbeiter" (a populist word meaning foreign workers, with strong racist associations for German ears as it was the euphemism for "Zwangsarbeiter", the workers in the Nazi labour camps; ed.) who supposedly steal the bread and butter from German workers, was not a slip of the tongue but an oath of disclosure. Lafontaine follows in the footsteps of Jürgen P. Möllemann (Chairman of the FDP liberal party who published what many saw as anti-Semitic leaflets criticising Ariel Sharon's actions against the Palestinians; ed.) and other populists on the edges of society. It is telling that the PDS in East Germany did nothing against the rampant xenophobia, but rubbed its hands gleefully behind closed doors - side by side with the neo-Nazis of the NPD (German Nationalist Party).

The convergence of Left and far Right ideology is more than just an election manoeuvre. The no of the PDS to the European constitution indicates this just as clearly as Lafontaine's objection to reunification. If our insecure citizens were to be taken in by populist demagogues and anti-Europeans such as Gysi and Lafontaine, the democracy of the Federal Republic would be under threat just as it was during the Weimar Republic."

*

The article originally appeared in German in the Die Welt on June 30, 2005.

Translation: lp.

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