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Heidi Reichinnek, a leader of Germany’s far-left Die Linke party, is 37, has tattoos, swears, and posts prolifically on TikTok. She wears friendship bracelets her supporters make for her, in reference to her love of Taylor Swift, and says she has some 300 or 400 by now. (“Tax the rich means Taylor Swift too, so don’t worry,” she said.) She speaks in rapid-fire sentences, and she became famous after a fiery speech in which she denounced the head of her country’s dominant center-right party for working with the far right, a maneuver that broke a long-standing taboo in a nation that was home to history’s most horrifying fascist movement.

Reichinnek, whose party name translates to “the Left,” is also a political success: Die Linke made a shocking breakthrough in February’s election. It had been expected to get less than 5 percent of the vote but instead won 8.8 percent, thanks largely to the youth vote. This was enough to surpass the threshold to sit in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament.

Die Linke’s success defied a dark trend in German politics. The centrist parties have swung to the right on immigration, and the nation has seen a huge surge in popularity for the nationalist far-right Alternative for Germany party. The AfD openly despises Islam and downplays the Holocaust, and it’s now the country’s second-largest party.

During that period, the far right in Germany and America have become intertwined, with high-profile MAGA figures defending or promoting the AfD. Just before the election, Vice President J.D. Vance blasted Germany’s mainstream parties for stonewalling the AfD. Rep. Paulina Luna has met with AfD members, and the party’s deputy leader met with officials from the National Security Council and the State Department. This friendship has emerged as Germany’s own intelligence agency has classified it as an extremist group—a move Secretary of State Marco Rubio has condemned as tyrannical—and as it emerged that the intelligence community suspected that AfD members were passing on sensitive military secrets to Russia.

But Reichinnek insists that her country’s far-right lurch is not irreversible, and she thinks the lessons her party has learned are applicable to the United States’ own fight against authoritarianism.

In the aftermath of Die Linke’s achievement, many have credited Reichinnek’s social media fluency for the breakthrough, particularly among young people. Reichinnek, however, thinks that misses the bigger picture: There is, she says, an opening for a party that draws a sharp contrast to the right and to the center, particularly if it listens closely to what its citizenry is unhappy about and offers real solutions to those problems. If that sounds familiar, it’s because earlier this month, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani became the mayor of America’s center of commerce by hitting similar themes: knocking on massive numbers of doors and focusing on making the city more affordable.

Reichinnek was in town this month for a German American conference, and she took advantage of her time in the U.S. to speak with members of the Democratic Socialists of America and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio about Mamdani’s success. Slate met up with Reichinnek in Manhattan to discuss the U.S. burgeoning leftist movements, the MAGA movement’s newfound friendship with the AfD, and lessons for resisting fascism—both in Germany and in the United States. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Molly Olmstead: You were a huge political success story in the latest German elections. During your visit here, have people been asking you for advice about how Mamdani can make that transition from an outsider campaign to working in government? 

Heidi Reichinnek: That was one of the main topics, because we know what it’s like to not be able to meet all the expectations. He had these ideas that he always talked about—the rent freeze, free child care, free and fast buses. And I think the most important thing is that you have to try as fast as possible to do one of those things. But it’s also important that you keep talking to people, that your supporters are still on the ground, explaining what is easy to do and what is not as easy, and where you need pressure from the people on other politicians. So this is, I guess, the most important part: still being close to the people.

From your experience, are there any pitfalls you think he should avoid?

I know the left tends to fight among themselves because—we know how we are. I told the DSA, “You have to keep on supporting him. Not everything he will do will be met with your approval, but try to understand why some things take time. There are enough people that want him to fail. Don’t help them.”

Is the German left any better at avoiding the infighting than the American left, then?

No. No leftist party is immune to this. We were left for dead last year, completely done for, mainly because of internal strife. Partly from different views, but mainly because of personal problems. We had this separation from one of our most famous figures, [Sahra Wagenknecht]. She and some of our members of parliament left the party. Everyone in the media was like, OK, that’s the end of the left, they don’t stand a chance. And we said, Yeah, well, we are fucked. It can’t get any worse. Let’s fight. So, out of pure desperation, we all said, OK, we will not allow anyone from the outside or from the inside to destroy this party we all worked so hard for. I mean, it’s an amazing feat that there’s a Democratic Socialist Party in the German parliament. We cannot let it go to waste.

So everyone sat down together and said, OK, what can we do now? We voted for a new board and new heads of the party. It’s much better. People are communicating. People are fighting, but it’s mostly—not always, I have to admit—constructive.

If you were considered a lost cause, how were you able to make such a surprising comeback? Why do you think so many young people were excited by the left?

We said, OK, we have to focus on the people’s main problems. So we went door to door. We knocked on 100,000 doors, just like Mamdani did, and asked the people: How can we help you? What are your main problems? What do you need us for? And they mostly said it’s the rent, or the cost of living, or food, and so on. And this is where we chose our main topics in this campaign—plus, of course, inequality and the distribution of wealth, because it’s always a topic the left talks about, which is right. And we just kept talking about these things. I couldn’t even hear myself anymore because I always said the same things.

Of course, another reason we succeeded was because of our strong stance against the far right. The AfD is a right-wing party, and they managed to dominate the debate around the topic of immigration. And our conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union, they just followed. And Sahra’s new party and, sadly enough, even the Social Democratic Party and the Greens. All the other parties were talking about how to lessen the numbers and how dangerous [immigration] is. And we were just like, No, we are not going to do that. We want to talk about rent and food. We are not going to throw immigrants or queer people in front of the bus. We will focus on topics that are important for everyone. And it worked. We got more members. They were saying, Hey, we really need this party in the parliament because they are putting our topics up front. And we got the 8.8 percent. I still can’t believe it. It’s crazy. It was, like, a year ago that we started it all, and suddenly I’m here.

You’ve been described as Germany’s “TikTok queen.” How much do you credit social media with reaching people and getting that message out?

Everyone is concentrating on social media, and I think it’s overrated. I think it’s just one of the pillars to reach people. It’s still important to talk with people at their doors. But it was, of course, important. [Getting on TikTok] was the best decision ever. I was just talking about topics that were important to me, and people were happy that somebody leftist was actually on TikTok. And this helped us gain support among young people, especially young women. We were so fucking proud because there were so many young women and young queer people coming up to me, saying, “Thanks to you, I’m supporting the party” or “I became politically active.”

The other big story was the AfD’s 20 percent. Do you have any thoughts as to why young people are attracted to this right-wing movement?

Yeah, because they are not satisfied with how things are. They cannot pay rent, the wages aren’t high enough, the food is getting more expensive. They realize that the promises of the [centrist] parties are not working. And the problem, of course, is that our far-right party is extremely smart when it comes to using social media. They lie constantly. They say, “OK, you are angry—we are also angry. [The parties in power] are the problem. So just vote for us, because they hate us. And we will fight for you.” It’s completely ridiculous, but it works, sadly enough, especially among young males. You have the same problem, I guess.

You’ve said that your party is the bulwark against the right-wing movement. How so? How have you been fighting it? 

So what we tried was always to show an alternative. Our goal is to say to them, “Hey, you are angry, and rightfully so. I’m also angry. But I want to use my anger and make something positive with you. If you punish [welfare recipients], if they lose their housing, does it help you? Do you have 1 euro more? I don’t think so. So why are you not fighting for higher wages?” This is how we try to pull young people back.

Another part is, you have to fund organizations that fight for democracy and against right-wing extremism, groups that actually work closely with these people.

It’s mixed, getting people back from the AfD. In east Germany, 40 percent voted for them. In Germany in general, it’s about 25 percent. It’s crazy. I mean, a quarter of the people decided to vote for a far-right party. So apparently something’s really wrong, and I think you have among their voters quite a few that you will not reach anymore. But I still think there are enough people left that are angry and just think, OK, I’ll vote for them just to show them that we can fight back somehow. I don’t know. It’s difficult. We see this gender gap in the votes, so this concerns me quite a lot: how to reach young men. We need to talk to them and explain to them that everything the AfD is doing is against their own interests. It’s really tough to explain this to people. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s so easy to find scapegoats—refugees, in our case.

But we are also trying to ban this party. Our supreme court could [hear arguments] whether they are against democracy and against human rights—which they are, in my opinion—and then they could ban them. But to start this whole process, we need a majority in the parliament, and we don’t have that majority. It’s really frustrating because, OK, we have this democracy that is able to defend itself. We have the option to ban such a party, but we are not using it. And we, as Germans, should know what can happen if such a party ever takes power.

I do think Americans might be surprised to hear you can ban a major party. What would you say to Americans who would argue that that’s anti-democratic?

Just because it’s a party that was voted for by people, it’s not a democratic party. This party is a right-wing extremist party. They are against democracy. They are trying to undermine democracy from the inside. They are against human rights. They are working against our constitution. And as Germans, because of our history, we have a democracy that fights back, that can defend itself. And one of the elements of this is that we can ban parties that try to take down our democracy and our constitution. And in my opinion, this is exactly the point where we are. To me, they are like the follow-up from the Nazi parties we used to have in Germany.

German intelligence has labeled the AfD an extremist organization. Meanwhile, the Trump administration believes that the AfD is a legitimate political party and has argued that the long-standing norm against forming coalitions with the party or otherwise working with it is anti-democratic. Is that something that is weighing on you at all in any of these discussions—the fact that you have the president of the United States trying to interfere in domestic German politics?

It’s actually quite problematic that some perversely rich guys meddle in our affairs in their own way. Of course the AfD is trying to legitimize itself by pointing to Trump. But on the other hand, they are also very close to Russia and to Putin. So it’s difficult for them. Who is actually the person you want to follow?

But it’s not only right-wing extremists. It’s also our conservative party—some of them have strong ties to the MAGA movement. If they become more and more like this MAGA movement, then we’ve really got a problem, because they have 60 percent [of the votes in parliament], together with the AfD. Some in the conservative party are saying we have to treat them like other opposition parties and maybe let them take power so people realize nothing is changing for them for the better. Maybe we can show them that they cannot govern. I think it’s just the biggest mistake you could make. If the conservative party decides to work with the AfD because they think they can keep them down, then we are lost. This is what really, really scares me.

Politico Europe reported on an internal document from the AfD where they were talking about wanting to emulate American politics and make German politics more of a left-right binary, with left-right culture wars. Do you think that has any chance of success?

It is already successful. To me, it’s ridiculous. But it works, especially because they are using social media to spread this propaganda. They made video after video. They used Telegram, they used Signal groups, they used WhatsApp and TikTok and Facebook—everything you can think of.

They start with queer people, with trans people, because they can easily wind people up about it. They start by trying to portray these people as pure evil and a danger to family values and so on. It’s the same play that you are using here.

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They had this discussion, during a parliamentary debate, when they wanted to forbid gender-inclusive language, at least in official documents. In German, you have different kinds of nouns, female and male, and there are ways to be gender inclusive. I said, “Nobody is forced to do it. Language changes itself. Do it or don’t do it: It’s your choice.” But they are acting as if we, the leftist party, are trying to force this on them. [In the debate], I read how often they actually put this topic on the agenda in the Bundestag. I said, “In the last two years, you brought up this topic five or six times. And guess how often the rest of us did it? Zero.” But they do it because people get riled up about this kind of stuff, and that helps them gain support.

You’ve long been facing a version of far-right politics that descends directly from the Nazi movement. The far-right anti-democratic movement here in the U.S. is drifting increasingly toward fascism. What do you think we can learn from Germany about avoiding the rise of extremism?

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It’s not like in Germany, it’s that much better. So I think the question is: How can you manage to not give up hope? I mean, you have these [electoral] successes. That’s the beginning. I think something is starting to change. So this is what I actually hope for, that during the next elections, democratic socialists will gain even more strength. Because I think we need exactly that kind of politics to combat our extremism.

In Germany, we don’t have these kinds of huge rallies where there are hundreds of thousands of people. All these events during the election campaign, we had, like, 10 or 20. And then I had 50. And suddenly there were 500 for us. It was crazy. No other party managed to reach this many people—700, 800. This is something completely new in German politics.

[Mamdani’s victory] was, for us, really empowering, to be honest. I mean, I never expected anything less. But it showed that there can be successful democratic socialists all over the world. Next year, we have elections in Berlin, and we hope we’ll be able to repeat that success.