German youth are moving to the left, because the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens are hated as the parties of the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. The combined vote of Die Linke (the Left Party) and the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) was almost 15%, – only 1% less than the SPD and almost twice as much as the Greens. The mass demonstrations that began in defence of Palestine, banned by the pro-Zionist government in Berlin, were then continued in the current mass anti-Nazi demonstrations against the AfD.
In the elections for the German Federal Assembly, the Bundestag, the right-wing coalition composed of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU) parties emerged victorious, electing 208 parliamentarians, obtaining 14,158,432 votes (28.52%). The CDU is the oldest party of the traditional German conservative right, it was led by Angela Merkel and is now led by Friedrich Merz.
The neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany (AfD) returned 152 parliamentary seats, obtaining 10,327,148 votes (20.8%). It was the largest vote for a Nazi party since the Second World War. The AfD became the second political force in Parliament.
It was also one of the biggest defeats for a governing party ever— the SPD Social Democrats of the current Chancellor (head of government) Olaf Scholz, returned 120 seats, obtaining a mere 8,148,284 votes (16.41%).
Die Linke is not a consistent alternative to the SPD
It was not only the neo-Nazis who grew, also a party to the left of the SPD, Die Linke , also known as Linkspartei, or the Left, a coalition of communists and left-wing social democrats, led by Heidi Reichinnek and Jan van Aken, obtained 64 seats in the Bundestag, winning 4,355,382 votes (8.77%). It was one of the largest votes for this party. Founded in 2007, from the merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) — successor to the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which governed the former East Germany , for the forty years in which it existed — and the Electoral Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG), a breakaway from the SPD of 2005, led by Oskar Lafontaine . The Linke also has as its internal tendencies the Anti-Capitalist Left (Antikapitalistische Linke), the Communist Platform (Kommunistische Plattform, KPF), the Forum for Democratic Socialism (Forum demokratischer Sozialismus) , the Socialist Left ( Sozialistische Linke ), and the Linksruck (now known as Marx21 ). Other groups, such as the Communist Party and the Marxist–Leninist Party of Germany, have occasionally formed local alliances with Die Linke. The strong German political repression, carried out by the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz) monitors the left-wing groups of the Linke.
The CDU won in Berlin, but Die Linke also had an extraordinary vote in the capital.
The Linkspartei and its tendencies have driven the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and now the anti-AfD demonstrations, but they have probably failed to capitalize on the German proletariat’s discontent with the SPD’s subservient policies because they capitulate to imperialism in the war in Ukraine, openly supporting the Ukronazi government in Kiev and NATO diplomacy in the name of “a just peace.”
“We support the people of Ukraine, who have the right to self-defence. Russia must withdraw its troops from Ukraine. We are committed to further humanitarian aid, as well as diplomatic initiatives for a ceasefire and a just peace. Die Linke condemns Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The attack clearly violates international law and means endless suffering for the people of the region. Our solidarity goes to the people in Ukraine whose lives are threatened.” (Ukraine’s War: For a Just Peace in Ukraine, https://www.die-linke.de/themen/frieden/ukraine-krieg/).
The deep German economic and political crisis
A few months ago, this we anticipated that the economic crisis triggered the insoluble political crisis that has now resulted in the historic defeat of the SPD:
“The main cause of the political and economic crisis in the largest economy in the Eurozone is the German government’s vassalage to the US, which forced the country to buy gas at a much higher price than that supplied by Russia and increase its military spending to 2.5% of GDP, due to the war in Ukraine provoked by NATO.
“Germany has been militarily occupied by the US since the end of World War II (approximately 50,000 military personnel and 17,000 civilian personnel from the US Department of Defence). This makes the country an imperialist power in the economic field, under foreign military occupation. In a way, Germany’s policy is determined by US interests, especially after the unification of Germany. The current Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz is even more obedient than Angela Merkel (from the CDU party) was. Russia used to supply cheap gas to Germany. Families and production depended on Russian gas. Now they depend on much more expensive gas, no longer sent by pipelines, but by ships, supplied by several countries in the imperialist system. To keep the cost of living from becoming too high, the state subsidizes gas for homes and businesses and nationalized the subsidiaries of the Russian state-owned company Gazprom and the Finnish Uniper. By subsidizing gas, the German state has become deeply indebted. Since 2009, there has been a constitutional limit on this debt, and now there is practically a consensus among German parties to end this limit. This new situation arising from the war provoked by NATO against Russia is beginning to compromise Germany’s status as an economic power.
“By an irony of history, Germany, which through the troika imposed iron monetary and economic austerity on all the oppressed countries of Europe, now announces the end of the debt limit policy for itself and abandons fiscal discipline, until now a fundamental clause of its neoliberal doctrine…
“The debt rule was one of the main reasons Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed earlier this month. Scholz, the Social Democrat, asked his finance minister, Christian Lindner, leader of the fiscally hawkish FDP party, to lift the debt brake to allow for more aid to Ukraine. The latter refused and was sent packing. The FDP then left the government. (Emancipation of Labor: Crisis-hit Germany government abandons ‘fiscal discipline’ and frees up debt, https://emancipacaodotrabalho.org/Publicacao.aspx?id=551964)
The Afd neo-Nazis, pro-Zionist and supported by the Trump administration
These neo-Nazis, the AfD won in what was once East Germany, as an opposition party to the pro-US policies of the social democracy, to the soaring inflation caused mainly by the increase in fuel prices, the neoliberal policies, and the war in Ukraine. It was a reactionary protest vote that displaced social anger against immigrants. Incidentally, the neo-Nazis of the AfD have a Turkish immigrant as their leader.
Unlike the original Nazism, which was established before Israel was imposed on Palestine and became an imperialist state, today’s neo-Nazis of the Western imperialist system, from Trump to Bolsonaro, from the British EDL to the German AfD , are pro-Israel, Islamophobic and, in general, xenophobic against immigrants from oppressed countries. Fascist parties are bourgeois parties of a special type, charged with certain conjunctural tasks for big international capital (Musk!) and imperialism against the working class, serving to divide it by using the most oppressed sectors and the communists as scapegoats for the social crisis created by capital itself.
It is not enough for them to be politically right-wing or far-right; fascist parties need to have mass influence over their victims in order to be functional to big capital in certain crisis situations, such as the current one. Therefore, it should not be surprising that some distinct parts of the proletariat are recruited and mobilised against the great mass of the proletariat. It should not be surprising, for example, that immigrant workers who have obtained fragile citizenship in the USA or Germany vote for fascist parties against younger immigrants, fearing losing their jobs or resentful of the social programs that the most vulnerable sectors receive. In the German case, there is an additional ingredient of confusion, the war in Ukraine and the bankruptcy of Germany as it has ruined itself by letting fuel and general prices soar under the vassal policy of Olaf Scholz’s social-democratic government:
Born in Turkey, 55-year-old Ismet Var has lived in the country since childhood and acquired German citizenship in 1994. He has supported the AfD since its founding in 2013. The Berlin delivery driver has seen his job directly affected by the rise in fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Var cannot understand why so much money is being “thrown away” on economic and military aid to Ukraine. He wants tax cuts and the deportation of “criminal immigrants” (Who are the immigrants who vote for the German far right?, 17 Feb: https://www.dw.com/pt-br/quem-s%C3%A3o-os-imigrantes-que-votam-na-ultradireita-alem%C3%A3/a-71634539) The article also notes: “AfD makes no secret of its desire for mass deportations, but nevertheless wins over voters among naturalized Germans and children of immigrants”.
But with 20% of the vote, the German neo-Nazis still fall short of the influence of their US and Brazilian counterparts. To some extent, they have been inflated by the mainstream media, social media, big tech in the US government, and AI tricks to create the image that they are bigger than they really are.
Limits and perspectives of the results
The Russophobic and anti-worker Green Party lost voters to the Left Party, Die Linke. The combined vote of the Linke and the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) was almost 15%, just 1% less than the SPD and almost double the Greens’ vote.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is a split from Die Linke that sought to capitalize on the right and left turn of German society against the policies of the SPD/Green coalition. On the right, with policies more xenophobic than those of the German federal government. On the left, opposing German financial and military aid against Russia:
“The BSW is the only party represented in the Bundestag that clearly rejects the deployment of German soldiers to Ukraine. Ukraine needs security guarantees, but NATO soldiers would not be peacekeepers in the event of a fragile ceasefire, but could instead drag Germany into a devastating war with nuclear power Russia if fighting were to resume.” (Wagenknecht: Ukraine needs security guarantees, but not NATO soldiers, press releases: 18 February, https://bsw-bt.de/wagenknecht-ukraine-braucht-sicherheitsgarantien-aber-keine-nato-soldaten/).
The big loser, and deservedly so, was the SPD. The AfD and left-wing parties won at the expense of the SPD/Green coalition in power. A portion of the immigrants with political rights voted for the left. The youth are moving to the left, because the SPD and the Greens are hated as the parties of the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza. The massive demonstrations that began in defence of Palestine, banned by the pro-Zionist government in Berlin, were then continued in the current massive anti-Nazi demonstrations, against the AfD and its sponsor, whose fortune was built in apartheid, Elon Musk, and which is now boosted by his power in the Trump administration.
The future CDU/CSU government has nothing good to offer to alleviate the deep political and economic crisis of the country, which has been destroyed by US imperialism. If it allies itself with Trump, it will continue to be subjugated and vampirized; if it continues the war in Ukraine, it will continue to ruin the country’s economy in a losing war, buying expensive fuel. The political crisis of the Western imperialist system, which has Germany as one of the fundamental points of the tripod on the European continent, generates contradictions that set communist workers and youth in motion, which must be exploited to build a new revolutionary movement in Marx’s homeland.
