Excitement about the Left Party: “This is just the beginning”

taz: Mr. Schmidt, the media sensation of the day is the membership of Berlin's left-wing top candidate Elif Eralp in the Red Aid. Why is this being discussed now?

Anton Schmidt: Since the elections in Berlin we have seen a campaign that tries to portray the left as extremist. It was only a matter of time before something like this was unearthed. I see this as an attempt to put the left on the defensive with the accusation of extremism. And that works too. Since the election there has been hardly any talk of what Elif Eralp could implement as governing mayor. It's just a matter of how dangerous and extremist this party is.

Anton Schmidt is a sociologist and lives in Hamburg. As an associated doctoral student at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, he most recently researched the continuities and current manifestations of anti-communism in Germany. His book “Enemy Communism” will be published by transcript Verlag in January.

taz: Above all, there has been a lot of debate about anti-Semitism on the left since the election. Is it really a campaign when people talk about the concerns of Jewish people in front of a left-wing government?

Schmidt: What we are currently seeing is a strong mixing. There is legitimate criticism of parts of the party that actually have a problem with anti-Semitism. And at the same time, the accusation is exploited to portray the left as inherently anti-Semitic. The CDU has been instrumentalizing real anti-Semitism problems for a long time, for example in order to enforce a restrictive migration policy, keyword “imported anti-Semitism”. Now this accusation is also being turned against the Left Party and is also discursively linked to the fear of a new GDR.

taz: You research the topic of anti-communism. Has the excitement of the last few weeks surprised you?

Schmidt: Not the excitement, no. However, the focus on the topic of anti-Semitism is interesting in that it was historically rather reversed in anti-communist narratives: the political left was brought close to Judaism - keyword "Jewish-Bolshevik world conspiracy". Now that's turning around. I would have expected there to be a stronger focus on the question of socialization. But the cause is probably too popular, at least in Berlin, to create a mood with it.

taz: Do you think that behind these debates is the fear of the socialization of large housing companies?

Schmidt: At least the question of socialization awakens a lot of anti-communist reflexes. Quite a few are afraid that socialization could actually work. Or also that the Left is successful with its politics at the city level. One also looks at Zohran Mamdani in New York, whose popularity continues to rise even after the election. The accusation of communism is an attempt to end the debate. People say: We know where this all leads: to the Stasi and the Gulag.

taz: What traditions does this tie in with?

Schmidt: In Germany, the most recent anti-communist debate cycle began in 2019 when Kevin Kühnert thought out loud about the socialization of BMW. Since then it has been repeated in newspapers and talk shows that if you even start with something like that you will inevitably end up with the GDR and the dictatorship. That's not new. Konrad Adenauer already spoke of an impending “rupture of the dam” in the wake of the KPD ban. The argument then was as it is today: You have to resist communist pressure, you must never let up, otherwise free Europe will fall almost immediately.

taz: In Adenauer's time the difference was that the GDR and the Soviet Union were real states back then. Today communist groups are at best a marginal phenomenon.

Schmidt: A central observation in my research is that communist actors don't need to conjure up these images. In the 19th century this affected the social democrats, and in the 1960s it affected conscientious objectors and pacifists. More recently, the right-wing radical narrative of cultural Marxism has been spilling out of the USA, according to which communists have been trying to culturally undermine the West since the middle of the 20th century: feminism, migration - all of this is suddenly seen as the result of a somehow communist conspiracy.

taz: The referendum to expropriate German housing is actually about the question of ownership.

Schmidt: Exactly. But the defensive reflexes are also of cultural form. The idea of ​​socialization also threatens the self-image of a society that legitimizes itself, among other things, through the performance principle and market structure. The radical right sees this as part of a general decline towards a left-green socialist ideology.

taz: On the other hand, parts of the radical left also repeatedly decorate themselves with Soviet symbolism, including the left-wing youth. What makes young leftists identify with a political legacy that stands for authoritarian rule?

Schmidt: I can only interpret that as a symptom of weakness: Beyond Berlin, the political left has its back to the wall in society. So you simulate organization and militancy, you decorate yourself with the historical figures of communist history. This also has something to do with wanting to act as a bogeyman for the bourgeoisie, i.e. consciously awakening anti-communist fears. At the same time, the shift to the right is not leaving its mark on the political left. Sometimes this leads to an authoritarian longing.

taz: Is anti-communism currently making a comeback?

Schmidt: This is very clear in the USA. The new fear of communism started with Bernie Sanders, and even Kamala Harris and Joe Biden were attacked as communists. An alleged communist conspiracy against the United States is now a central narrative of the Trump administration. So far in Germany, it has been the AfD in particular that has taken up this ideology, while the conservatives have used it more pragmatically for their own purposes. It is still unclear whether this will change.

taz: Can the fear of communism prevent a red-green-red government in Berlin?

Schmidt: The potential is definitely there. Also because Berlin is such a symbolic city, which is why the discourses from the Cold War are so well caught up here. However, during the explorations, the Greens have so far mainly talked about anti-Semitism, as has the SPD, which is actually even more afraid of socialization. It will depend on how these parties resist the smear campaigns that Springer and co will unleash. I'm sure: Elif Eralp's membership in Rote Hilfe is just the beginning.