Since mid-January 2024, there has been an almost unprecedented wave of protests against the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other right-wing extremists in Germany. The trigger was a report published by the Correctiv research team on January 10 about secret plans by members of the AfD, Werte Union (Values Union), and Identitären (Identitarians), which, among other things, provides for the deportation of “undesirable” (missliebigen) citizens.

This was the last straw for many people, who joined demonstrations, sometimes with a few hundred people in a marketplace, sometimes with more than one hundred thousand demonstrators as in Hamburg, Munich, or Berlin. On February 3, an alliance of what is now more than 700 organizations mobilized a human chain around the Berlin Reichstag under the slogan “We are the firewall.”

The Fears Motivating the Demonstrators

The world around us, as the initiators of these movements indicate, is full of crises, wars, catastrophes and is becoming more and more unstable. Much of what we have relied on is uncertain, they say, and they see in a fast-moving world that the political climate in Europe is changing in an ominous direction. Fears of change, loss, and poverty are deliberately stoked and people are played off against each other. The divisions in society are deepening.

In Germany, right-wing and neo-fascist views are gaining increasing public support. Racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of group-based misanthropy are increasing. People are degraded and socially excluded due to poverty, unemployment, or homelessness. At the same time, crucial tasks such as climate protection and social justice are downgraded to annoying impositions. Standing up for human rights is being questioned. Refugees are massively disenfranchised, and they and the people who support them are increasingly criminalized.

The initiators of the recent demonstrations say they are determined to become loud and active: for an open, democratic, pluralistic society based on human solidarity, all together against the shift to the right in Germany and Europe! Silence is not an option! We must become visible and audible.

Critical Questions about the Politics of the Demonstrations

What we really see here is the phenomenon of broad alliances against the shift to the right. The question is: What to do against this shift to the right, and how to do it?

From the Left, criticisms were raised about these broad alliances. They stated that although it is to be commended that in the first few weeks after the “Master Plan Remigration” by the Austrian identitarian Martin Sellner, the New Right, AfD, Values Union, CDU (Christian Democrats), millionaires, and aristocrats were revealed, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets against AfD and fascism, anti-fascists nevertheless cannot be satisfied with this state of affairs. For even if the Marxist and anti-fascist left is currently so weak that it cannot find any significant alternative in districts and companies or on the streets, it is at least necessary to loudly and clearly criticize the building of the current alliances and also in the actions to introduce more far-reaching ideas that are clearly beyond “everyone against the AfD!”

–You cannot uncritically take to the streets against the AfD remigration plans with people who, unlike the AfD, not only talk about them, but announce them and, above all, have the power to implement them in practice: “We finally have to deport people on a large scale!” (Social Democratic Prime Minister Olaf Scholz, October 2023) — this means real and possibly fatal danger for everyone who will be affected in the future by the German-supported European policy of the “Common European Asylum System” (CEAS).

–You cannot uncritically take to the streets together for the “rule of law” with people who declare the Zionist genocide in Gaza to be “under the rule of law,” who cover it politically in the sense of an ominous-sounding “German reason of state,” and arm it and finance it, while Green party leader Analena Baerbock tearfully declares, “Never again is now”.

–You cannot uncritically take to the streets together with people whose politics of the past decades have led to gigantic social inequality, which is now enabling the rise of the AfD and its demagoguery. It is this breeding ground of inequality that makes it possible for the AfD and the CDU to present themselves as “advocates for the common people,” while at the same time agitating against strikes, rejecting an increase in the minimum wage, wanting to cut pensions, and viewing unions as enemies or, at best, a necessary evil. With the neoliberal Agenda 2010 and the subsequent social cuts, the SPD and the Green party were actually the midwives of the situation from which the AfD benefits today.

–You cannot uncritically take to the streets together with people who have done their best to hinder the investigation of a series of fascist murders and massacres like the NSU (National-Socialist Underground) and the firebomb attack at Hanau (home for refugees) and who may even be partly responsible for them. These fascist crimes were solved essentially through the research work of non-state groups and against state resistance that continues to this day. Meanwhile, the former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (domestic intelligence agency, charged among other things with monitoring rightwing extremism), Hans-Georg Maassen, today with his Werte Union (Values Union), was happy to work with the fascist AfD in Thuringia and at the time of the NSU murders laid the foundation for his later career.

–You cannot uncritically take to the streets together with people who say they are against the deniers of the impending climate catastrophe, who in their turn – e.g. in transportation policy — just carry on as before, put the climate protection law against the ruling of the Federal Constitutional Law of 2021 and thus violate the constitutional requirement of sustainability. The social consequences that this policy can have in just a few decades in the worst case will then only be possible to keep under control with the harshest, probably fascist repression, mass exodus of those willing to survive, and military conflicts of all kinds.

Crisis of the German Left

Within the context of the above-indicated move to the right in Germany and above all in the rise of the AfD, we have also to consider the retrogression of Die Linke, the large leftwing party that has held a significant number of parliamentary seats. This retrogression resulted in Wagenknecht’s BSW splitting off. In their statement on the split BSW brings to the fore that, “The conflicts of the last few years have been fought over the political course of the LEFT. We have repeatedly argued that the wrong priorities and lack of focus on social justice and peace are diluting the party’s profile. We have repeatedly warned that the focus on urban, young, activist milieus is driving away our traditional voters.”

In their statement, we read further that “The socially devastating ‘Ampel’ (traffic light) [coalition of] the SPD [red]; the FDP (‘free market’ liberal) [yellow]; the Green party [green] policy is costing large parts of the population income and quality of life. German foreign policy munitions wars [a reference mainly focused on the military support of the Ukraine] instead of seeking peace solutions. Conflicts are escalating internationally; the emerging formation of blocs is a threat to world peace and will bring massive economic upheaval. At the same time, opposition to this political development is increasingly being sanctioned and pilloried in public discussion.”

In my opinion, special attention should be given to their notion, “We have repeatedly warned that the focus on urban, young, activist milieus is driving away our traditional voters.”

BSW is here reflecting a concept Wagenknecht already touched on in her last book, Die Selbst-gerechten. Mein Gegenprogramm für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt [The Self-Righteous. My Counter-Program for Community Spirit and Cohesion, 2021]. There, in speaking of “driving away our traditional voters,” she is actually pointing to the issue of immigration in a way that leans toward the concepts of the AfD: “However, the effect of immigration is not only to prevent bottlenecks in the labor market and thereby weaken the bargaining power of employees. What was always probably even more important was that the foreign workers were initially not organized into trade unions and were hardly associated with and felt themselves barely connected to the rest of the workforce. A larger proportion of immigrants in companies therefore meant less cohesion among employees and thus a weaker position in wage disputes.”

This ignores developments within the German working class due to technological innovations in the production process and consumption patterns within the framework of developments in world capitalism. It lacks a vision based on a Marxist notion of intersectionality as to the working class, racism, gender issues, and the environment. In this sense, the splitting off of BSW will not bring a viable perspective with which to overcome the crisis in the German Left.