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  • Can any Germans tell me what the deal is with the Left? It looks like the only seats they're winning are in areas you'd think of as AfD areas. Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised? Or are the German Left kinda tankish?

    • Here's an interactive map so you can see the percentages better. They are only winning the eastern cities with 21-25% while in the western cities they're getting 12-15% , so it's not like there killing it in Berlin and doing nothing in hamburg. If you compare it to 2021, they've made just as much gains in the western cities as they did in the east.

      I'd say it's more about the poorer areas wanting a change either with the afd or linke/bsw. Most of the tankie elements of der linke have signed onto the bsw, so pining for the good old days of the gdr isn't really their selling point anymore. Unless you were just pining for the higher social security and not the authoritarian state or russian domination, which is a lot of people in the east. This split is also part of the reason for their gains in the West as more left leaning people who are hesitant to be associated with the old school communist now have a party.

      • I’d say it’s more about the poorer areas wanting a change either with the afd or linke/bsw

        Yeah thanks. That was sorta my initial guess, and I think it makes sense.

        This split is also part of the reason for their gains in the West as more left leaning people who are hesitant to be associated with the old school communist now have a party.

        Ah, that's interesting. Where do the Greens sit in this? Are they not particularly left in Germany?

    • like the only seats they’re winning

      Germany has proportional distribution of seats. This map doesn't show that.

      Die Linke is a continuation of the ruling party of the socialist dictatorship DDR in East Germany. It's a collection of some literal old school o.g. tankies from the Socialist government, actual communists, democratic socialists, left social democrats who left the SPD, and people from social movements. In short it's a mix of people left of social democrats. In East Germany it's also a conservative party in a way for people who want the old DDR back. However it also has a strong support nowadays among the educated urban "woke" left. They reject rearmament for Germany and reject sending arms to Ukraine. Although they blame Russia for the war, they have an anti-western ideology and want to disband NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia. Kuba's foreign policy is mentioned favorably in their election agenda.

      Last year prominent tankie-ish leader Sarah Wagenknecht split off the Linke to form their own party BSW. BSW is the anti-woke left, who care about social policies first, but don't put a focus on LGBT, want more strict immigration. They gained 4.9% in the election and thus narrowly missed getting seats in parliament. They blame NATO for the war in Ukraine. Exiting NATO in favor of an alliance with Russia is also on their agenda.

      So the answer if they're tankies is not simple. Linke is more the useful idiot of Putin, while BSW are actual Putin bootlickers.

      Is it just a matter of the poorer more overlooked areas becoming polarised?

      Economic issues play a role as well of course.

    • I don't see what you mean. The Left party's tankie elements split off into the BSW a couple of years back, and the only seats the party picked up are in major urban centres that you'd usually expect to skew left. The reason most of them are in the East is probably historical.

      • I don’t see what you mean

        What I mean is that they're in Leipzig and East Berlin, not Hamburg or Frankfurt or Munich, or even West Berlin. So I was wondering why it would be that they only seem to be having success in former East Germany, which is very similar to AfD. I was wondering if any Germans had an understanding of why that might be, and perhaps if there are lessons that leftist parties elsewhere could take from that.

    • Not a German, but I'll try to answer:
      The Left = Die Linke = commies, that have in the past been supportive of authoritarians like Chavez, Maduro, Putin, ... So kinda tankies yes.
      Spd = social democratic party of Germany. The actual moderate left party. Many consider them to have moved too much to the right economically, which has opened room for Die Linke to grow. Especially Schröder was a disaster when he was chancellor around 25 years ago (+ afterwards as well when he became a stooge for Putin). The exiting chancellor & leader of exiting coalition government is also from SPD. Apart from their ridiculous levels of support for Israel, I can't think of any stand out bad things that they did. An actual German will have to fill us in on that.

      • Die Linke are nowhere close to tankies, what are you even talking about. They are a center left party.

      • Die Linke are not even close to tankies. There certainly are some in the mix, just like we have them here, but equating Linke to tankies is quite disingenuous

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