LB

This is obviously the million-euro question for the German left these days, and I don’t think I can really give you a proper answer. Most of my practical antiracist organizing experience took place as a college student in the United States, so when I look at the German situation I always see it through that specific lens. But it seems to me like there are a few problems to work through:

Firstly, the German left is divided over what exactly the problem is. For some parts of the radical left, Germany is a uniquely racist society that ostracizes and threatens all “Others” by its very nature. This sentiment leads to pretty stupid slogans at antiracist demonstrations like “The problem is called Germany,” which, similar to American anarcho-liberals blaming Trump’s hollow presidential victory exclusively on racist whites, might make sense as a gut reaction, but is simply not true and thus not very helpful for developing effective strategy. We need to understand that racism doesn’t grow in a vacuum, but rather within a complicated and dynamic socio-economic context that must be addressed equally as vigorously as racism itself if we want to drain the social swamp on which it thrives.

In addition, we need to develop a realistic idea of who our enemies are, who our friends are, and who is on the fence, and craft our messaging and strategy accordingly. We can’t excuse or ignore oppression in any instance, but we also shouldn’t pathologize it as an inherent trait of certain social groups or an entire country more generally. A left that doesn’t try to win over a majority of the population to an antiracist platform doesn’t really want to win, and probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about people outside of educated, urban milieus.

Thankfully, my impression is that these ultra-left positions are growing increasingly unpopular and have little currency within Die Linke itself. There is certainly a real awareness in the party that right-populism is a growing danger that capitalizes on economic suffering and social exclusion to establish a foothold in the Left’s traditional bases. Still, where to go with that insight is less clear. There have been some great instances of antiracist organizing as well as initial, exploratory attempts at low-level community organizing in working-class neighborhoods.

At the same time, more unfortunate figures in Die Linke’s leadership have written some cringe-worthy think pieces that can only be described as workerist and reductionist, not to mention Wagenknecht’s well-known opinions on the matter. For what it’s worth, a Linke-led government in Thuringia is currently participating in federal deportations, citing political inevitability and the constraints of parliamentary democracy.

It is easy for me to sit here and say that Die Linke should combine antiracism with social struggles, I think anyone could tell you that. It’s obviously true, but equally hollow without some kind of concrete proposal – especially since I have already criticized the existing campaigns elsewhere. But when looking at antiracist organizing in the United States or United Kingdom, it seems to me that the distance between migrant and nonwhite communities and the Left more generally is comparatively wider in Germany. This has to do with various historical, cultural, and other issues that are beyond the scope of this interview (and I probably can’t answer anyway), but addressing this gap strikes me as an important hurdle. There have been some great instances of community cooperation in Berlin and other cities around rent struggles and other questions, and I think that these sorts of initiatives show a lot of promise for building a culturally and socially integrated left, but they are greenshoots at best.

Although there are individual immigrant personalities in the party and the Left, as a whole the movements remain painfully white for a country with so many millions of immigrants, large and established Turkish and Arab communities, etc. The same can be said of German society more generally, whose public image remains overwhelmingly white despite four decades of mass migration. I think a left that figured out how to overcome this — not overnight but through a long process, of course — would be better able to address the rise of the far right by combining real, organic antiracist organizing with an economically populist program to improve living standards for the broad majority, black and white alike.

The best moments of the socialist left’s history have been when it was a mass movement that attracted the most oppressed in society through its political program and reputation, but also actively integrated them (and taught its own members to treat them as equals) into a vibrant and organized fight for a vision of a better world. Of course, that’s little more than a phrase in 2017, but it’s still a worthy goal.