Die Linke, or the Left Party, achieved a sensational 25.7% of the vote in Berlin on Sunday. It’s only the second time this descendant of the East German Socialist Unity Party has ever won a German state election, and it’s their fourth-best result anywhere since reunification. Commentators have decried a second communist takeover of the German capital, this time by electoral means rather than the Russian army. The antisemitism and clan scandals of their Neukölln district branch are all over the press.
This raises some interesting questions:
Who are the Die Linke anyway?
What do they want?
Are they as crazy as everyone claims?
Are they communists, cultural Marxists, democratic socialists, terminally woke?
Or are they just the latest stupid-Uni-girl-cum-pro-migrant party?
Is Berlin doomed?
There is circulating on social media an amusing list of highlights from the Berlin Linke’s 336-page election programme. The items lend some sense of what this party is about, while also casting into perspective the complaints about alleged AfD extremism that flow constantly from parties like the Social Democrats and the Greens:
The Berlin Linke call for replacing or supplementing policing with “social work” wherever possible. They want fewer police with no tasers and they want to abolish so-called “gun free zones.”
They want to repeal the prohibition on face-coverings and defensive weapons at protests.
They call for the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution to be abolished as an intelligence agency. The successor agency should still monitor political extremism, but purely from publicly available sources.
The believe squatters should acquire ownership of their dwellings after occupying them for a single year.
They demand an end to fines and punishments for fare evaders and also the elimination of the criminal statute that prohibits fare evasion in the first place.
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