The German Left on the Burning roof
By Vincenzo Maddaloni
Berlin. The AfD, Alternative für Deutschland, despite preaching an extremism of a clear xenophobic nature, immediately offered a new job to Daniel Zabel. It is the police officer, who lost his job after publishing the text of the arrest warrant for one of the suspects of the murder of Daniel Hillig in Chemnitz in the social media. He did this — he explained — to show that the German mainstream media on the subject of migrants are no longer credible and that they continue to deceive public opinion.
It happened in the city of Saxony, besieged for two days by the infamous neo-Nazi hoodlum, that the former Karl-Marx-Stadt, so it was called until 1990 the city of Cheministz, was put to fire and sword by the screams of âforeigners rausâ and âthe people are usâ.
A real retaliation, rubricable to the terrorist voice, for the death of a German of Cuban origin of 35 years during a quarrel with an Iraqi, now in custody on charges of murder to be tried. Enough to accumulate hatred on immigrants, and increase the ranks of far-right militants Pro-Chemnitz, a nationalist and populist movement with sympathies for a hoped for as much as utopian new national socialism, which is affiliated with the AfD.
In fact, AfD continues to gather support. It won an impressive 12.6% in last yearâs federal elections, making it the opposition party with the most seats in parliament. It has also emerged that a multitude of workers have it with estimates ranging from 16% to 20% in the former German Democratic Republic, with the most economically disadvantaged regions, the most badly paid and the most unemployed.
Rosa Balfour, Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Found, writes well when she warns that, “The old mainstream parties may be tempted to make agreements between themselves to prevent populists from taking power…but this is exactly one reason that pushes citizens to vote against the establishment. The antidote to populism — explains the expert — are rather “new ideas to combat inequality and social insecurity, to create jobs in the green economy … the left, the right and the center must fight the battle of ideas, not that for the posts of power.
On the other hand, the ruling majority still does not take the fears of the voters seriously, at the risk of legitimising, together with the xenophobic positions of the populists, any form of protest against migrants, refugees and Muslims.
Use even more explicit tones Sophia Gaston, visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics, when she hears the mainstream media not investigating the real complaints of the electorate. “Populism should ring the alarm bells for traditional politicians”, to pay more attention to overspent ignored themes such as identity, sense of belonging, culture and tradition. However — warns the scholar — “just as the forces of populism were not formed overnight, there is a long way ahead to regain the confidence of the electorate … the alternative to populism there is, the question is whether political leaders will have the courage and energy to achieve it.
The historical leader of German social democracy, Oskar Lafontaine, tries to climb the burning wall and condemns on his page of Fb the absurd ideology of “no-border-no-nation”, nailed down those who accuse him of being a left-wing nationalist and relaunched himself, together with his wife Sahra Wagenknecht and other important personalities, with a new political grouping capable of overcoming the traditional borders of Linke and the German left.
“The simplest way”, he claims, “is to look inside the “no-border-no-nation” ideology, because whoever asks himself the question of how to build a welfare state will immediately understand how far this ideology is from reality”.
He explains: “In Anglo-Saxon countries, half the doctors and nurses often come from developing countries. In Germany, there’s a shot of pride every time you count the thousands of doctors and health workers who come from Syria, Greece and work here. At least on this point the followers of the ideology of “borders closed to immigrants” should begin to understand that they are supporting something unrealistic and completely antisocial”, concludes the historical leader of the German left.
Lafontaine makes careful not to forget that it was the Russian Revolution that fuelled the anti-colonial struggles throughout the world, and thus they were indebted the historical watershed opened by Lenin, who in turn had built his own cultural formation on the texts of Marx and classical German philosophy. So, remaining within the logic, every immigrant would deserve compensation.
It is with this universalist impetus, albeit in a changed scenario, that the European ruling classes are today forced to come to terms. The new fact is that the Left, Linke, Lafontaine and his wife and secretary of the Sahra party, are not furious about historical injustice, they are not dusting Lenin off, as they would have been a few decades ago. In fact, Lafontaine avoids controversy, slumbering it with a reflection of a tangible thickness, which illuminates the left of a new light.
Exactly the opposite of what happens in Italy through the mouth of Walter Veltroni who re-appears as a possible leader-replay but he tries to sell as new a deteriorated vision, an already seen, a deja vu. Such a ânewâ proposal, which has been given as a loser since its inception, is the same one that has opened the way to todayâs populisms, as well as to a widespread political culture, which is against towards parties and institutions, accused of concealing the truth in order to retain their posts of power.
In his article the day before yesterday about Repubblica, the former secretary did not comment on the fact that the Italian peninsula is occupied by “59 American military bases” (it is the “fifth American outpost in the world in terms of number of military installations, after Germany, with 179 bases, Japan with 103, Afghanistan with 100 and South Korea with 89). Nor did he explain why governments systematically offer âeverything the Pentagon wantsâ, and Italian territory is subject to a gigantic espionage operation by the NSA and the CIA.
He did not dwell for a moment â it is even more serious â on the historic social moorings of the Left. In fact, “it does not speak of privatisations, of labour laws, of the absence of internal democracy, of male chauvinism, of the urban disaster in Rome, of the system of Mafia Capital that wiped out its credibility as administrator”, as the Roman writer Christian Raimo recalls. In short, he only needed to quote his snack mate “Cicciobello” (Francesco Rutelli ed.) and the painting was complete.
Speaking of the “new”, I am reminded of the Minister of Justice Herta Däubler-Gmelin (SPD), when in 2002 she explained to a German newspaper, that the White House had exacerbated with cruel practices, the repression in Iraq because, “Bush wants to distract the population from their difficulties. It’s a popular method, Hitler did the same thing. The pandemonium happened, Herda became the symbol of courage. As he unveiled inhumane treatment a few semesters earlier, European government officials denounced the practice of waterboarding ordered by the Bush administration and the torture perpetrated by the American army in the Abu Ghraib prison. It does not seem to me that there have ever been reports of such similar contexts in Italy.
Of course, despite the memory of those courage tests, Linke isn’t very advanced and the SPD halved the consensus, but it preserves respect for.
Origin: Altrenotizie
