Campaign after the Berlin election: hatred of the left and relativization of the Holocaust

T he post that really frightened was the comment by Jörg Thadeusz from RBB in the Tagesthemen. He asked rhetorically whether the party leaders of the SPD and Greens really wanted to appear at the next commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz, “if representatives of their parties in Berlin allied themselves with this left-wing party.” And then Thadeusz, who described himself as part of the “sensible middle”, casually used the slogan “Defend the beginnings” to warn against a Berlin state government under Elif Eralp.

For Thadeusz and other parts of the “sensible” middle class, the left are apparently the new Nazis. This is a turning point. And not just because it was precisely this middle class that once made National Socialism possible by looking the other way, tolerating it and taking part. Or, because tens of thousands of communists, socialists, anarchists and social democrats were also murdered in the Holocaust. But because it attacks the basic consensus of the Federal Republic of dealing responsibly with the lessons from Auschwitz.

But now Friedrich Merz is also accusing the left of hatred of Jews. Berlin has been experiencing “increasing, radical, open anti-Semitism for several months,” said the Chancellor, calling this “the most serious problem in recent years.” According to Merz, he “very much hopes” that the SPD and the Greens will give a “very clear answer, especially here in Berlin.” What was clearly meant was a rejection of a red-green-red coalition.

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But instead of looking for the reasons for these derailments, the first question that German journalists are asking themselves is a different one: Isn't there something to it? Is there no truth behind the accusation that the left are ardent Jew-haters with whom to form a coalition would mean disrespecting the legacy of Auschwitz?

So let’s talk about anti-Semitism on the left. The example that Jörg Thadeusz gives is the following: Neukölln mayoral candidate Ahmed Abed is said to have insulted the Israeli politician Tzvika Brot, who belongs to Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, as a “genocider”.

Abed is a Palestinian German, the Israeli army killed members of his family, and as a lawyer he also represents the BDS campaign in court, among others. Thadeusz indirectly makes him a Nazi who doesn't want any Jews in Germany. People no longer want to explain where the problem lies.

And no, no problems should be denied here and nothing should be relativized. But let's call a spade a spade: There are small parts of the left that overemphasize their solidarity with Palestine in such a way that their distinction from terrorist and anti-Semitic organizations like the PFLP is becoming blurred. This should be discussed critically.

But anyone who simply declares leftists to be new Nazis leaves no room for this. Instead, the lessons of the Holocaust are being exploited - obviously in order to prevent a left-wing, migrant-influenced political project that also aims to socialize housing companies.

What is accepted is an unprecedented emptying of the concept of anti-Semitism. What's more: What's happening here is a defense of guilt by outsourcing the problem of anti-Semitism to leftists, foreigners or both at the same time.

Friedrich Merz recently described the Israeli flag as a “Jewish flag”. He called anti-Semitism in Germany “xenophobia,” and the CDU in Berlin gave millions in money to combat anti-Semitism to party members.

And what about the leaflets that the Bavarian Free Voters Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger carried around as a teenager, which, among other things, talked about a “free flight through the chimney in Auschwitz”?

At that time, Aiwanger received support from Markus Söder (CSU). Today Söder wants to cancel the state financial equalization if Elif Eralp becomes mayor of Berlin. Söder recently described it as “absurd” to do exactly that when a fascist, right-wing extremist party comes to power in Germany for the first time since 1945 in a few weeks in Saxony-Anhalt. This country has much bigger problems than the Left Party.