Resistance against red-green-red in Berlin: You are never good enough

Germany has been upside down for days now. A threatening left-wing alliance in Berlin is causing many people great concern. Will it fail because of the question of whether or not a backbencher will sit in the left-wing faction of the Berlin House of Representatives?

Berlin's SPD leader Steffen Krach made this a prerequisite for a coalition with the Left on Wednesday evening with Markus Lanz. Or will this alliance fail because of photos of left-wing politicians with a Palestinian pensioner and political activist who is said to have Hamas sympathies?

Or due to the carelessness of one of Elif Eralp's employees who forwarded a Word document including confidential comments to Spiegel?

The taz is an independent, left-wing and opinionated daily newspaper. We have been arguing in our comments, essays and debate texts since the taz was founded in 1979. We often cannot and do not want to agree on an opinion. That's why you'll find some completely opposing positions here - all part of the very broad left-wing spectrum of opinions.

That could be the case, because such things have been blown up into questions of national fate for weeks. And that says more about the state of German journalism and the priorities of some federal politicians than about the Berlin Left Party, its top candidate Elif Eralp or Berlin state politics as a whole.

It's like a fever that's spreading more and more. It made it clear how little sympathy even Spiegel has for a left-wing alliance by committing a gross breach of trust for the sake of a supposed scoop. But he is not alone in his dislike. The Bild newspaper, “NIUS”, the Berliner Tagesspiegel and various federal politicians from the CDU, CSU and SPD, and even some Greens have been drumming up against red-green-red in Berlin for weeks.

Even before the election, they warned urgently about this and scandalized the appearance of a controversial rapper at a left-wing district association beyond measure.

In vain, it was of no use: the majority of Berlin voters did not listen to these warning voices and helped the Left in Berlin - despite all the shrill accusations of anti-Semitism from the start - to a landslide victory.

Contrary to what the polls had predicted, the Left clearly left the CDU behind in the capital and won every second vote in some districts: This is a People's Party level that the SPD can only dream of in many places. She succeeded not only in this, but also because of her stance on Palestine solidarity.

The narcissistic insult that the Berlin voters simply didn't listen to them is perhaps one reason why some journalists in the capital are now simply turning up the volume even louder.

Even before the election, Robin Alexander had described it as a scandal that a Vanessa Emde was running for the Left “in the city where the Holocaust was planned” - he made the local politician known nationwide.

After the election, Jörg Thadeusz thundered on the ARD “Tagesthemen” that a left-wing alliance in Berlin would amount to a betrayal of the victims of Auschwitz, for whatever reason, and ended his bizarre incendiary speech with the nationalistically intended exclamation “Am Israel Chai” – “Long live Israel”.

And the world columnist Harald Martenstein speculated that the motives of female left-wing politicians to show solidarity with Palestinians could possibly be of a sexual nature. Again, only a few people were outraged by this sexist derailment and the misuse of the Holocaust for political purposes in order to position it against the left. As is well known, different standards apply to top German journalists than to local politicians in Berlin.

It is probably no coincidence that journalists who have been particularly silent about Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip over the past three years are particularly outraged by the Left Party.

Her loudly expressed indignation therefore seems a bit like a substitute act. Instead of being outraged about the fact that over the past three years Israel, with the active support of two German governments, has bombed the Gaza Strip into rubble, attacked several countries in the region, moved its borders into foreign territory in Lebanon and Syria, and escalated settlement construction in the West Bank, displacing and killing thousands of people in the region, people in this country prefer to be outraged at those who protest against it, sometimes using a wrong tone or missing the mark shoot out.

Instead of being outraged by the fact that the current, at least partly right-wing, radical Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the majority of the opposition there, categorically reject a two-state solution that has been called for internationally for decades, one would rather be outraged by a single, completely uninfluential member of a state parliament who, in the face of this reality, is in favor of a one-state solution and does not want to make ritualized professions of faith.

And instead of questioning Germany's Nibelung loyalty to an Israel whose head of government is indicted in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity and which as a state is even accused of genocide, it is better to attack those who dare to raise quiet or loud doubts about the meaning of this reason of state and who do not really believe that this is the correct lesson from German history.

The vehemence with which individual members of the Left Party and their Neukölln district association are being targeted is completely disproportionate. As if security in Berlin would really be served if the party distanced itself from these people (which it has long since done) and it would make all the difference whether a single MP like Vanessa Emde sits in the Berlin Left parliamentary group or not.

It's absurd. But in the “Tagesthemen” Steffen Krach has to justify why his SPD doesn’t prefer to form a coalition with the CDU again. Mind you, with a CDU that was responsible for numerous scandals during its time in power in Berlin because it distributed funds for the fight against anti-Semitism to questionable projects run by party friends. Not to mention a Berlin CDU mayor who preferred to go play tennis instead of taking care of his city, where entire neighborhoods were plunged into darkness due to a power outage.

But many in the media and politics are caught in the outrage trap and can't get out of it. They will continue, in Berlin-Neukölln and elsewhere, to look for every possible cause that could cause offense and will not let up until a Berlin left-wing alliance has been finally brought down, now or later.

If lawyer Elif Eralp's membership in the Red Aid or the hairstyles of her party's top staff are not enough (keyword: "problem pony"), then it will be something else - something will be found. Even if the Left Party excludes a Vanessa Emde, a Ferat Koçak and the entire Neukölln district association from its ranks, swears a sacred oath to the German raison d'état, gives up its dreams of socialization and renames itself “Die Mitte”: It will never be enough.

It would therefore be better to give up efforts to create a left-wing alliance in Berlin. If the Greens, SPD and CDU should get together to form a coalition of election losers - then the dear press would have peace.

That would probably still be too left-wing for many right-wing mainstream media. But then Friedrich Merz and his ministers could travel further to Israel and have photos taken of themselves with Benjamin Netanyahu undisturbed - that causes far less outrage in this country than photos of left-wing politicians with Palestinian activists who verbally flirt with violence instead of actively carrying it out on a large scale.

Then Germany could continue to supply weapons to Israel undisturbed, without any state government raising slight objections, and an Israeli flag could once again flutter undisturbed in front of the Red City Hall in Berlin - as it did almost a year ago - as if nothing had happened.

The many predominantly young, female and migrant voters who cast their votes for the Left in Berlin in September are then simply told: tough luck! But we owe it to German reasons of state.