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Left Party lead candidate Elif Eralp [Photo by Die Linke Berlin]<\/p>\nAnyone hoping Die Linke (Left Party) will pursue a more left-wing policy in Berlin than the Christian Democrats (CDU) need not wait for the election to be proven wrong.<\/p>\n
When a right-wing media frenzy was unleashed against the party\u2019s Neuk\u00f6lln district branch at the weekend after rapper Dahabflex performed a song opposing the genocide in Gaza at an election rally, lead candidate Elif Eralp and Berlin Left Party state chair Kerstin Wolter did not come to the defence of their own party, but joined in the baying. They are doing everything they can to assure the ruling class of their reliability.<\/p>\n
Left Party lead candidate Elif Eralp [Photo by Die Linke Berlin]<\/p>\n
The Left Party Neuk\u00f6lln district branch had organised an election campaign rally on Herrfurthplatz on Saturday evening under the slogan \u201cAngry at Capitalism,\u201d which drew around a thousand people. Alongside appearances by candidates for the Berlin State Assembly and district council (BVV), musicians also performed, among them the rapper Dahabflex.<\/p>\n
Towards the end of the event, Dahabflex performed his song \u201cStop the Genocide.\u201d The lyrics include the lines \u201cYallah, yallah, intifada\u201d and \u201cDeath to the IDF.\u201d Another part of the song states, \u201cWe are not antisemites. Millions of people displaced. That is why we demand peace,\u201d but this did not stop politicians and the media from whipping up a furious storm of outrage.<\/p>\n
One of Berlin\u2019s main dailies,\u00a0Tagesspiegel, wrote of \u201copen Jew-hatred,\u201d while the tabloid\u00a0Bild\u00a0termed it \u201ca call to violence against Israel.\u201d CDU lead candidate Stefan Evers declared antisemitism within Berlin\u2019s Left Party was \u201cno longer an aberration, but part of its political system.\u201d Green Party politician Werner Graf likewise accused the Left Party of \u201cincitement to violence,\u201d while Stefan Krach, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) lead candidate, accused Die Linke of having \u201cgiven a platform to hatred of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three years after the start of the genocide in Gaza, such manufactured invective is nothing new. It erupts whenever anyone dares to question the war policy of the imperialist powers\u2014even if it amounts to no more than two lines of criticism of a genocide.<\/p>\n
A genuinely left-wing party would stand up to this right-wing campaign and refute the mendacious accusations of \u201cantisemitism\u201d and \u201cviolence.\u201d The Left Party does the opposite: instead of standing behind its own election rally, it falls into line with the right-wing campaign being waged by establishment politicians and the media.<\/p>\n
Left Party lead candidate in the election, Elif Eralp, condemned the rapper\u2019s performance \u201cin the strongest possible terms,\u201d declaring, \u201cCalls for violence and the killing of people are absolutely unacceptable.\u201d She said she expected the Neuk\u00f6lln district branch \u201cto establish how such a transgression could occur, and that there be consequences.\u201d State chair Kerstin Wolter likewise said she was \u201chopping mad about the lyrics\u201d and demanded consequences.<\/p>\n
Hermann Nehls, spokesman for the Left Party Neuk\u00f6lln district executive, defended Dahabflex\u2019s performance. The rapper had been invited because he took \u201ca clear stand against war and genocide, and for peace and against antisemitism,\u201d he told the\u00a0Berliner Zeitung. The song was \u201cnot part of the original programme\u201d and had been \u201cperformed spontaneously.\u201d \u201cTo insinuate, on the basis of song lyrics, that we are calling for violence is a transparent election campaign manoeuvre,\u201d Nehls said. He nonetheless promised an \u201cinternal review of the evening.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dahabflex himself rejected the accusations, writing that he was lost for words. The event was being torn out of context and reduced to two lines, he said, and he denied ever having called for the killing of civilians.<\/p>\n
The episode is characteristic of the Left Party. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Elif Eralp has named as her role model, also took care during his election campaign to set himself apart through occasionally sharp criticism of the Israeli government. That did not stop him from travelling to the White House after his election to meet Trump, with whom he got on famously. His pledge to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York was dropped as quickly as it had been made.<\/p>\n
The Left Party is not even waiting for the election to make its right-wing politics clear. It has supported the genocide from the outset and has continued that policy in the current election campaign. As early as October 2023, it unanimously\u00a0backed a resolution<\/a>\u00a0in the Bundestag (federal parliament) expressing solidarity with Israel. In 2025, it\u00a0cheered Trump\u2019s murderous colonial plan for Gaza<\/a>. That same year, it\u00a0voted in the Bundesrat<\/a>\u00a0(upper house of parliament) for war credits worth \u20ac1 trillion.<\/p>\n What it now brands and condemns as \u201cincitement to violence\u201d, slogans referring to the intifada\u2014a Palestinian mass uprising against the illegal Israeli occupation\u2014makes clear which kind of violence it rejects. It has no problem with German imperialism\u2019s multi-billion-euro rearmament programme. It has no problem with the violence of the Israeli army, which has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians and destroyed the livelihoods of 2 million people. But it draws the line when Palestinian workers and young people fight back against this.<\/p>\n Questions about this article? Ask Socialism AI<\/p>\n The Left Party could not demonstrate its class character more clearly. It does not stand in opposition to the policies of the ruling class; it supports German imperialism on all essential questions. Its occasionally left-sounding phrases about \u201caffordable housing\u201d serve only to mislead inexperienced voters who are becoming radicalised. Once it enters government, it drops its social and pacifist phrases.<\/p>\n In this, the Neuk\u00f6lln district branch plays the role of a left-wing fig leaf. It puts up posters \u201cagainst genocide\u201d and gives its opponents a platform. In doing so, it tries to foster the illusion that there is a \u201cleft-wing\u201d within Die Linke that could gain the upper hand given enough pressure within the party.<\/p>\n In fact, it is campaigning for a party and a lead candidate that have repeatedly proven their reliability to the ruling class. Having joined\u00a0Bild\u00a0and the CDU in attacking her own district branch, one can imagine what Eralp would be capable of were she to move into Berlin City Hall as mayor.<\/p>\n Right-wing politics is in the Left Party\u2019s DNA. It is the successor to the Stalinist party of state in the former East Germany, which suppressed the working class there and ultimately reintroduced capitalism. Since then, it has played a central role in stabilising capitalism.<\/p>\n The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) is standing in the Berlin state election to oppose the right-wing politics of Die Linke and all other capitalist parties. We are building a movement in the working class whose aim is not to save capitalism with a few reforms, but to overthrow it in order to build a socialist society.<\/p>\n We call on all who support this perspective: support our election campaign and join the SGP!<\/p>\n Join the fight against the Gaza genocide and imperialist war!<\/p>\n Fill out this form and we\u2019ll contact you soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone hoping Die Linke (Left Party) will pursue a more left-wing policy in Berlin than the Christian Democrats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,71014,11656,190,1671,3126,4175,546],"class_list":["post-157492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-berlin","tag-berlin","tag-die-linke","tag-genocide","tag-germany","tag-imperialism","tag-israel","tag-palestine","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117199437168258142","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}