Die Linke (The Left), Germany’s democratic socialist party, staged a huge upset in the capital, Berlin, winning 21.8% of the city’s vote in the February 23 elections. Marcel Cartier looks behind the party's revival and the challenge in winning working class support away from the far right.
Die Linke (The Left, Germany)
Mary Merkenich looks at the good, bad and ugly aspects of the German federal election results.
Two controversial German figures, Sarah Wagenknecht and Alice Schwarzer, released a Peace Manifesto on February 10, which gathered close to half a million of signatures in less than a week, reports Sibylle Kaczorek.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, European left parties have been debating their anti-war positions. Die Linke, Germany’s left party, is about to launch a new round of discussion ahead of its 2023 national congress, reports Sibylle Kaczorek.
The Social Democratic Party's platform to raise the minimum wage and for single-tier health insurance resonated with voters and contrasted with the left's failure. Sibylle Kaczorek reports.
In the aftermath of the recent racist attacks in Hanau, Green Left spoke with Sibylle Kaczorek, an anti-racist activist based in Berlin, about its impacts on recent election results in Hamburg and the campaign against the far right.
The fear of collaboration by the so-called mainstream democratic parties with the far-right in Germany has been realised in the first such incident in post-war times, writes Sibylle Kaczorek.
One of two unnamed individuals who have been arrested in Germany for possession of weapons and a “kill list” of prominent left-wingers was a police officer, the Morning Star reported on August 29.
The pair had been discussing “refugee and migration policy”, which they claimed would lead to the “collapse of public order,” via online chat groups, the article said.
Just after midnight on July 27, a bomb exploded in the car of left-wing politician and refugee activist Michael Richter in the town of Freital on the outskirts of Dresden in eastern Germany.
Richter, a 39-year old town councillor for the socialist party Die Linke (The Left) was not in the car. No one was harmed by the blast, which also damaged a nearby car.
Police are yet to assign blame, but Richter is certain the attack came from right-wing groups in the area, who have threatened him repeatedly in recent months over his campaigning work for refugees.
Protests took place in 14 cities in Germany on July 16 against the German government’s aggressive treatment of the Greek crisis and in solidarity with their European Mediterranean neighbours.
The largest anti-nuclear protests in German history were held on March 26. About 250,000 people marched in Germany’s four largest cities.
Under the slogan “Fukushima Warns: Pull the Plug on all Nuclear Power Plants”, more than 120,000 took to the streets of Berlin, 50,000 in Hamburg, 40,000 in Koeln and upward of 40,000 marched in Muenchen.
In state elections held the next day, the German Greens won a historic victory in Baden-Wuerttemberg. They will form Germany’s first-ever Green-led government.
They also tripled their vote in elections in Rheinland-Pfalz.
The German parliament met on June 30 to elect the country’s largely symbolic president. What should have been a fairly straightforward affair, however, turned into a political embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The new election was made necessary by the resignation of Horst Koehler on May 31, after a public outcry over his comments suggesting German military involvement in Afghanistan was commercially motivated.
Koehler’s resignation came as Merkel’s governing right-wing coalition was struggling in opinion polls.
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