this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025
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Can any Germans tell me what the deal is with the Left? It looks like the only seats they're winning are in areas you'd think of as AfD areas. Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised? Or are the German Left kinda tankish?
Germany has proportional distribution of seats. This map doesn't show that.
Die Linke is a continuation of the ruling party of the socialist dictatorship DDR in East Germany. It's a collection of some literal old school o.g. tankies from the Socialist government, actual communists, democratic socialists, left social democrats who left the SPD, and people from social movements. In short it's a mix of people left of social democrats. In East Germany it's also a conservative party in a way for people who want the old DDR back. However it also has a strong support nowadays among the educated urban "woke" left. They reject rearmament for Germany and reject sending arms to Ukraine. Although they blame Russia for the war, they have an anti-western ideology and want to disband NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia. Kuba's foreign policy is mentioned favorably in their election agenda.
Last year prominent tankie-ish leader Sarah Wagenknecht split off the Linke to form their own party BSW. BSW is the anti-woke left, who care about social policies first, but don't put a focus on LGBT, want more strict immigration. They gained 4.9% in the election and thus narrowly missed getting seats in parliament. They blame NATO for the war in Ukraine. Exiting NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia is also on their agenda.
So the answer if they're tankies is not simple. Linke is more the useful idiot of Putin, while BSW are actual Putin bootlickers.
Economic issues play a role as well of course.
Here's an interactive map so you can see the percentages better. They are only winning the eastern cities with 21-25% while in the western cities they're getting 12-15% , so it's not like there killing it in Berlin and doing nothing in hamburg. If you compare it to 2021, they've made just as much gains in the western cities as they did in the east.
I'd say it's more about the poorer areas wanting a change either with the afd or linke/bsw. Most of the tankie elements of der linke have signed onto the bsw, so pining for the good old days of the gdr isn't really their selling point anymore. Unless you were just pining for the higher social security and not the authoritarian state or russian domination, which is a lot of people in the east. This split is also part of the reason for their gains in the West as more left leaning people who are hesitant to be associated with the old school communist now have a party.
Yeah thanks. That was sorta my initial guess, and I think it makes sense.
Ah, that's interesting. Where do the Greens sit in this? Are they not particularly left in Germany?
From what I hear the greens are pretty centrist. Like the democrats in the u.s. but with more of an emphasis on sustainability, but slowly and progressively. They tend to want to preserve the existing social safety net but not expand it like a more left wing party would, or substantially raise taxes on the wealthy. Foreign policy they're pro Israel and pro Ukraine, as opposed to a lot of left parties that are split on Ukraine but more solidly pro palestine.
They cater to the educated middle to upper middle class urban liberals who want to see some progress on climate changes, which is less of a radical stance outside the u.s., but don't want a radical shake up in the economic system.
You can check out there German Wikipedia page, most browsers will translate enough to understand these days.
Ohh wow. Ooof. I had assumed they'd be pretty similar to the Australian Greens. I don't know why exactly I assumed that, given I know for a fact the UK Greens and US Greens are both much less left, but that was the assumption I made. Shame it's not true, especially if they end up being part of the governing coalition after this election.
I don't see what you mean. The Left party's tankie elements split off into the BSW a couple of years back, and the only seats the party picked up are in major urban centres that you'd usually expect to skew left. The reason most of them are in the East is probably historical.
What I mean is that they're in Leipzig and East Berlin, not Hamburg or Frankfurt or Munich, or even West Berlin. So I was wondering why it would be that they only seem to be having success in former East Germany, which is very similar to AfD. I was wondering if any Germans had an understanding of why that might be, and perhaps if there are lessons that leftist parties elsewhere could take from that.
Not a German, but I'll try to answer:
The Left = Die Linke = commies, that have in the past been supportive of authoritarians like Chavez, Maduro, Putin, ... So kinda tankies yes.
Spd = social democratic party of Germany. The actual moderate left party. Many consider them to have moved too much to the right economically, which has opened room for Die Linke to grow. Especially Schröder was a disaster when he was chancellor around 25 years ago (+ afterwards as well when he became a stooge for Putin). The exiting chancellor & leader of exiting coalition government is also from SPD. Apart from their ridiculous levels of support for Israel, I can't think of any stand out bad things that they did. An actual German will have to fill us in on that.
Die Linke are nowhere close to tankies, what are you even talking about. They are a center left party.
Centre left, as in to the right of the Greens?
I'm just trying to figure out why it might be that Linke and AfD seem more or less to share areas, while the Union, SPD, and Greens take the rest. Why Linke and not Green, for example?
The Linke is an Eastern German party.
After reunification, the Eastern German ruling party SED evolved into PDS. In 2005, PDS and the left-wing of the SPD formed Die Linke.
Because of this, Die Linke is more popular in the East. They are seen as anti-establishment and have regularly brought attention to issues Eastern Germany faced, so they are more popular there.
Vice versa, they aren't nearly as established in the West as the other parties.
Ah thanks, that's some really useful context.
Die Linke is the most leftwing party in the current and upcoming governments. Though, because of how right-shifted the overton window is in this country, that doesn't mean they're radicals. Their policies are still basically just social democracy. They're also basically the party of east German cities. The east German countryside votes for the AfD.
And the Greens in Germany are a center-right party, further right thank the SPD. They're very militaristic, extremely pro-Israel, in favor of repressing democratic protests at home... They're not that far from the label of "eco-fascist", except in practice without the "eco" part. Still, they get a lot of votes from well-meaning moderates who don't look to hard (or at all) at what the party stands for or dies and just vote for them because of the vibes.
Die Linke are not even close to tankies. There certainly are some in the mix, just like we have them here, but equating Linke to tankies is quite disingenuous
I specifically remember that Die Linke supported Chavez and Maduro when they were already full on authoritarian. I conflate support for authoritarian regimes with being tankies/fascists.
This was years ago, so it's possible that I'm out of date.