After the election in Saxony-Anhalt | Combine the fight against AfD and social robbery

Ines Schwerdtner and Luigi Pantisano at the demonstration against social cuts in Berlin in June. Photo: Visum/Stefan Boness The outcome of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt is devastating. We have to hold on to this and at the same time be aware that many voters there see things differently. Almost half of them voted for a fascist party, or a party that openly flirts with the idea of ​​perhaps helping the fascists to power. It shouldn't stay that way, and it doesn't have to stay that way. But we have to be honest with ourselves: it will take us years if we want to push back the right-wing sovereignty of interpretation in many regions.

Secondly, the result was also disappointing for us on the left. In view of the polls in the weeks before the election, some voters probably gave the SPD and the Greens borrowed votes in order to prevent a sole AfD government. Campaigns such as “Vote Tactically” and Campact’s large donations have contributed to this. This is an explanatory approach, but it should not prevent us from further analyzing the election campaign. One thing is certain: it was not due to the commitment of the comrades on site, who fought with great determination for every vote.

Our most urgent task now is to be a critical and vigilant opposition, inside and outside Parliament. In the next few years, we will protect our neighbors and friends in Saxony-Anhalt, who are hostile to the AfD and specifically threatened by their politics. We will firmly oppose their racism, their hate speech against queer life, their misogyny every day. We will provide advice and support to everyone who is threatened and excluded, just as we help everyone who suffers from exploitation by their boss or landlord and from anti-social austerity policies. We will fight for every hospital and for every bus route. Our goal in Saxony-Anhalt is and remains to prevent the AfD from forming a government. However, tragically, it is primarily the BSW and a torn CDU that have this in their hands. So let’s focus on what we have in our own hands.

As a party, we will of course take part in protests against the AfD in the next few weeks. Because it is important to bring anger and sadness onto the streets together and not isolate them. For us to withdraw would be exactly what the right wants.

Antifascism is in our DNA. We make no secret of the fact that we are on the other side of the spectrum politically, parliamentarily and socially. One lesson from the protests following the Correctiv research is that the mobilization must not simply fizzle out. Resignation could quickly set in again after a few weeks: there were so many of us, but the circumstances changed very little.

The federal government's policy of social cuts, authoritarianism and militarization is paving the way for the rise of the right. That's why we can't skimp on criticizing the federal government right now. Even when we demonstrate on the streets together with government parties. It is reasonable for bourgeois parties not only to denounce the fascists as the destructive force that they are, but also to clearly state that the decades of neoliberal politics have created fears of decline and loss of solidarity, which form the breeding ground in which their poisonous seeds can first sprout.

The German Federation of Trade Unions is calling for Germany-wide protests against the poverty reforms on September 26th. We as the left have been organizing such protests in various alliances and in dozens of cities since June and are also supporting these upcoming union rallies.

It will be our task as a party to form the bridge between the protests against the AfD and the resistance against the federal government's social robbery. Not to be misunderstood: Each alliance will prioritize its own concerns and appeal to different people, and that's a good thing. But we believe that there is a chance that in the course of the anti-fascist alliance work we will also win more people over to our fundamental criticism of the social power structure.

We will have to prove that we are serious, that we have a different policy.

As necessary as these concrete steps are now, they must not prevent us from further analysis and self-criticism. The right has firmly established its presence, particularly in rural and pre-political areas. The mobilization of non-voters, the support of working people and those in financially weak situations is what concerns us most. The right stands to gain the most after years of frustration with the political system, while we have not been able to exploit this potential.

But that is not a law of nature. We prove this with our daily work, which addresses people's everyday concerns and organizes protests against the federal government and social cuts. Civil society mobilization alone will not be enough. We know that we cannot break a right-wing hegemony that has been established for years in the east of the country in the shortest possible time.

We can find approaches to this in the lighthouses that have been (re)built in recent years. These are of course the direct mandates we won in Halle and Magdeburg, where we knocked on over 60,000 front doors and systematically set up support structures. But these are also smaller lighthouses in rural areas like in the Harz, our mayors, where we are anchored in local politics and accessible. Yes, we are currently stronger among younger people and in larger cities. Let us see this as a starting point for long-term party building that learns from successes and recognizes that not all concepts from the big cities can be directly transferred elsewhere.

Rural areas and medium-sized cities are heavily influenced by industry and manufacturing, especially in eastern Germany. Rent may not be the most pressing problem here, but the fear and uncertainty of losing jobs and therefore security is great and affects all income groups. Employees are currently experiencing an organized attack by politicians and employers that threatens tens of thousands of livelihoods and entire regions.

If we want to regain the authority to interpret this class struggle from above, then it is important to make the real conflicts visible and to show specifically where the line of division lies. This requires a stronger company and union presence in order to achieve short-term improvements in everyday life and, in the long term, to develop convincing transformation plans with colleagues from industry. Where this is already happening, we experience increasing openness towards each other and a hope that we can build social power together and that the future can be shaped again. We will have to prove that we are serious, that we have a different policy. To achieve this, the party itself should become an important place for organizing workers. We want to expand our work as an organizing class party from the front doors to the factory gates. Only a long-term strategy that makes people's lives more affordable, offers them help in everyday life, builds countervailing power, ensures a functioning community and leaves no one behind can beat the right-wing back.

It is this self-image with which we are going into the upcoming state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. In Berlin we even have the chance, with Elif Eralp as mayor, to initiate a fundamental policy change against skyrocketing rents, decaying infrastructure and an increasingly unaffordable everyday life. We know that any improvement for the people will be an uphill battle against powerful economic interests, inside and outside the state.

But that also means consistently opposing the policy of social coldness. Ultimately, it means working on the downfall of Friedrich Merz himself. It would be a cardinal mistake to leave the expression of justified anger about the prevailing conditions to the right. But being anti-establishment is not primarily a question of appearance or rhetoric.

We become credible through our daily work: in social consultation hours, by dealing with concrete everyday problems and bringing them to local and national parliaments. We are credible when we ourselves cap our salaries and show that it is the other parties who are fighting over posts. Doing politics differently is fundamental to our development work. Nevertheless, we also need the political courage to take on the establishment when it matters most.

The right has just won with the promise of radical break and change. They will not be able to keep this promise: the AfD's break with the prevailing conditions will be exhausted in the culture war; the underlying economic and social misery will remain. We must continue to work on a real, material alternative to fascism and neoliberalism, a third pole, a pole of hope.

We can only be credible if we never give up this fight, especially not in premature obedience to the interests that politics is already guided by every day. Building a third pole in the party system is a long-term, difficult task, and definitely not the path of least resistance. If we want to fight for real material improvements, if we really want to beat back the fascists, then this is the only path left to us.

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