The Quiet Rise of the German Far Left

T he right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has enjoyed a surge of attention from international media after celebrating recent triumphs in the Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state elections. But in their shadow, another party that’s just as extreme — on the other end — is quietly gaining ground. That party is Die Linke.

Last weekend, Die Linke (literally “The Left”) became the biggest party in the Berlin state election, winning 25.7 percent of the vote. This is notable, as Die Linke is mostly known for once having built a wall that divided the city in two. Yes, Die Linke is the successor to the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, or Socialist Unity Party (SED), set up by the Soviet occupiers in 1946 to govern their occupation zone, otherwise known as East Germany.

By successor, I do not just mean a spiritual successor. After the wall came down, the SED, rather than dissolving, voted to change the party’s name to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), expel a few of the higher-ups (including Erich Honecker) most associated with East Germany’s repression, and then compete in the new, unified Germany’s democratic elections. To expand its appeal in the West, in 2007 they merged with a group of dissatisfied West German social democrats to form Die Linke. This party has now won an election in Berlin.

There are many reasons why. Ostalgie, a German term meaning nostalgia for East Germany, is a real thing. The Communist Party, while never enjoying majority support, did have its “true believers” who to this day yearn for the past. For the most part, though, ostalgie is about a longing for the simplicity and predictability of life under communism — with guaranteed employment and housing.

Many also miss the sense of purpose communism gave them — the feeling that their sacrifices would one day usher in a workers’ paradise. As much as Germans recognize the falseness of that promise, the sense of purpose it offered was real — and hard to replace in a secular society.

Even so, the growth in support for Die Linke in Berlin isn’t just, or even mostly, about ostalgie. Berlin is a city of renters. Around 84 percent of households rent, rather than own their homes. (For comparison, the number is 58 percent in Germany as a whole.) Without homeownership, ordinary households lack an easy way to build up assets. One result of this is that Germany ranked dead last in terms of net median wealth in the latest UBS Global Wealth Report comparison of 30 Western countries — beneath even countries such as Greece, which German taxpayers were forced to bail out just over a decade ago.

This makes Germany, and Berlin in particular, a fertile ground for left-wing populism. Die Linke ran on a platform of outright socializing the housing portfolios of private landlords with more than 3,000 units in Berlin, intending to pay below-market compensation to their owners. This was the party’s flagship reform, and on election night, local lead candidate Elif Eralp reiterated that “if Die Linke governs, there will be socialization.”

Die Linke also seeks to implement a one-year rent freeze on all state-owned apartments (around 400,000 units) and raise rents by a maximum of 1 percent every year after that. The shortfall would, as always, have to come out of taxpayers’ pockets. Converting rentals into condos would also be banned, and anonymous applications for flats would become mandatory to prevent discrimination against immigrants.

Furthermore, landlords with more than 50 units would have to allocate 30 to 50 percent of apartments open for rental to applicants eligible for social housing. Though the proposal is color-blind on paper, these units would disproportionately benefit the city’s large and growing migrant population, which is overrepresented among those eligible for social housing.

Die Linke also seeks to shrink the role of the police, restrict stop-and-frisk, decriminalize fare-dodging, and lift remaining hijab bans in public service. All of these are policies popular with Berlin’s immigrants, particularly its Muslim minority. In the Berlin state election, Die Linke captured 51 percent of the Muslim vote, according to an exit poll, compared with 25.7 percent of the overall vote.

The party’s popularity among Muslim voters is a rather recent development: In the 2023 Berlin state election, which took place before the October 7 attacks, the party won just 15 percent of the Muslim vote. Since then, however, while other parties have mostly held the line against antisemitism and ensured that Germany remains Israel’s strongest ally in Western Europe, Die Linke has been happy to cater to those with antisemitic views. At a rally arranged by the party, a rapper called for an intifada and had the crowd sing along to chants of “Death to the IDF.”

Despite often being accused of far-right extremism, the AfD is (at least publicly) pro-Israel and rejects the Gaza-genocide narrative. By contrast, Die Linke passed a resolution in June officially adopting the genocide line as party policy. At its Election Night victory party in Berlin, attendees included a well-known “pro-Palestine” activist who had described slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar as a “martyr hero.” Since pandering to antisemitic elements in Berlin appears to have worked a charm, we should expect Die Linke to lean into this even more in the future.

While Die Linke is substantially smaller than the AfD on a national level, its rise still poses a dilemma for the mainstream parties: At present, the government coalition is a big tent, made up of both the main right-wing and left-wing parties. After the next election, this coalition — even if it were to add the Green Party to its members — may not be enough. The mainstream parties may end up having to choose between doing business with the AfD or Die Linke, especially because the latter seems to have grown at least partially in response to the former.

The AfD has a myriad of issues, chief among them the party’s pro-Russian leanings that seem to be growing stronger by the day, making them wholly unsuitable to have any influence on foreign policy. At the end of the day, though, the AfD did not build the wall that came to symbolize the Iron Curtain. That was the work of Die Linke, and that is reason enough that they should never get another chance to run Germany.