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The
writers Hans
Christoph Buch, Wolf Biermann, Klaus Harpprecht, Uwe Kolbe, Günter
Kunert, Gert Loschütz, Monika Maron and Peter Schneider have all signed the following condemnation of the new "Linkspartei", the leftist alliance spearheaded by Gregor Gysi (former
chairman of the PDS) and Oskar Lafontaine (former SPD finance minister
and rival of Chancellor Schröder).
"The 'Linkspartei', the new
party of the Left, is neither new nor Left. Just as the PDS, whatever
name it might go by, does not stand for democratic socialism. On the
contrary: the successor to the SED (or East German Communist Party) has
distanced itself just as half-heartedly from the East German police
state as its figurehead, Gregor Gysi, from his Stasi contacts. And
there is something unintentionally funny about the PDS preaching for a
return to the West German welfare state it fought so bitterly in the
past. The coalition with Oskar Lafontaine lends little credibility to
their politics because there is no turning away from a globalised world
and the European Union to a closed national state which believes in
creating social security by closing its borders.
Seen in this light,
Oskar Lafontaine's word on the "fremdarbeiter" (a populist word meaning foreign workers, with strong
racist associations for German ears as it was the euphemism for
"Zwangsarbeiter", the workers in the Nazi labour camps; ed.) who supposedly steal the
bread and butter from German workers, was not a slip of the tongue but
an oath of disclosure. Lafontaine follows in the footsteps of Jürgen P.
Möllemann (Chairman of the FDP liberal party who published what many saw as
anti-Semitic leaflets criticising Ariel Sharon's actions against the
Palestinians; ed.) and other populists on the edges of society. It is
telling that the PDS in East Germany did nothing against the rampant
xenophobia, but rubbed its hands gleefully behind closed doors - side by
side with the neo-Nazis of the NPD (German Nationalist Party).
The
convergence of Left and far Right ideology is more than just an
election manoeuvre. The no of the PDS to the European constitution
indicates this just as clearly as Lafontaine's objection to
reunification. If our insecure citizens were to be taken in by populist
demagogues and anti-Europeans such as Gysi and Lafontaine, the
democracy of the Federal Republic would be under threat just as it was
during the Weimar Republic."
*
The article originally appeared in German in the Die Welt on June 30, 2005.
Translation: lp.
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