“There is hope.” This was one of the most repeated sentences when talking to delegates at Die Linke’s national congress last weekend, as the left-wing party convened in Halle, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. This hope clearly isn’t inspired by polling data, which has turned from bad to worse over the last year. Right now, Die Linke is languishing between 3 and 4 percent in national polling, well below the 5 percent threshold required to reenter parliament in the 2025 elections to the Bundestag. The last nationwide contest, the elections to the European Parliament this past June, pointed in the same direction, as Die Linke received only 2.7 percent of votes — half of its 2019 score.
And yet, there was a feeling of re-energization in Halle. This may have to do with the relatively harmonious course of the party congress itself. Die Linke’s positions regarding the ongoing wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the conflict in Ukraine, and the appropriateness of a universal basic income in Germany, were hotly contested. The debate on Israel-Palestine is especially fraught, as shown when five of Die Linke’s twenty-one representatives in the Berlin regional parliament quit the party three days after the national congress. They justified their exit with, among other reasons, what they allege to be the Berlin section’s insufficient commitment to countering antisemitism. Although their departure has somewhat shifted the conversation in recent days, external observers and party delegates alike agreed that the congress in Halle had been less convulsive than in the past.
The contrast was starker when compared to the annual meetings before Sahra Wagenknecht, formerly among Die Linke’s most prominent national leaders, left the party in October…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Marc Martorell Junyent
