The upcoming elections in Germany are beginning to attract the attention of the US press. Today, the New York Times has one of the longer articles I’ve seen here that analyzes the rise of the Linkspartei (Left Party). Unfortunately, the journalist (Richard Bernstein) does a very poor job of reporting about the party, repeating talking points of the established parties, and quoting Peter Schneider, who joined a group of ’68er writers recently to denounce Oskar Lafontaine and the Linkspartei.
The Linkspartei is, to say the least, not popular among mainstream politicians and commentators. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called Mr. Lafontaine a "German Haider" in a recent interview with the magazine Der Spiegel, referring to Jörg Haider, leader of the far-right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party in Austria.
Similarly, a group of eight well-known German writers, in a letter to the newspaper Die Welt earlier this month, called the leaders of the new party "populist demagogues." They drew attention in particular to a reference made by Mr. Lafontaine to what he called Fremdarbeiter, which means foreign worker and, to the writers, was an intentional revival of a term out of the Nazi lexicon.
"The message is ‘We are pure and you are aliens, and you are taking away our jobs,’ " the novelist Peter Schneider said of Mr. Lafontaine’s choice of words.
Bernstein failed to interview either Lafontaine or Gregor Gysi for the article, nor did he bother to speak with any supporters of the party either in the west or the east. Instead, he invokes the specter of Weimar extremism.
Now, the Linkspartei seems likely to parlay German insecurity and fear into a bloc of seats in Parliament. A signal characteristic of the Weimar Republic, whose failure led to the rise of Hitler, was a splintered political landscape with the extreme right and left vying for power.
The New York Times should have asked why a number of voters seem to be leaving the established parties and are indicating that they will vote for the Linkspartei. Why aren’t they enthusiastic about the neo-liberal "reforms" like Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV that will supposedly lead to economic growth and job creation? The fact is that the mainstream parties have been losing popular support for a long time, and their "reform" programs – which involve taking away benefits and rights from German workers – show that all connection with a huge segment of the population has been severed. I strongly recommend this piece by the renown political science professor Iring Fetscher in the Frankfurter Rundschau:
Das Aufkommen eines Wählerpotenzials für die "Linkspartei" ist weithin eine Folge politischer Versäumnisse in der Vergangenheit. Zuerst der fehlerhaften wirtschaftlichen Verwirklichung der Vereinigung mit der Ex-DDR, die zu einer Entindustrialisierung im Osten geführt hat, wo die Transferzahlungen in erster Linie in den Konsum flossen, der ohne Mühe von westdeutschen Unternehmungen befriedigt werden konnte. Sodann der unkorrigierte Versuch durch "angebotsorientierte" Wirtschaftspolitik die Arbeitslosigkeit zu überwinden, und die Annahme, man könne durch vermehrten Zwang auf Arbeitslose diese zurück zur Arbeit bringen.
Prof. Fetscher ends his article with the warning: only those politicians that are capable of learning will survive in the long term. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be willingness to learn in the mainstream parties, and their support among the voters will continue to decline.
