I recall a circle game from my childhood; after each round another chair was removed, leaving one more child out. We called it “Going to Jerusalem.” Last week Israeli boss Netanyahu arrived FROM Jerusalem. After two days he was out of the Berlin circle – one day too early.
Since its founding the Federal Republic has supported even the worst Israeli leaders, aiming, by voicing loud regret for Nazi horror and displaying reform efforts, to win an admission ticket back into western society. Under a media blanket, however, all but the worst Nazi big shots crept back into every sphere, above all government and the economy. Age, death and rebellious young anti-fascists gradually removed most of them, but not their influence – or the total official support for every Israeli leader, even former terrorists like Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.
Such types now have total power, yet Chancellor Scholz upheld the formula and gave “Bibi” an honored welcome. Then the state visit was suddenly cut short! Was it because hundreds of thousands in Israel kept up mass protests against the demolition of democracy, even for Jewish Israelis? Or because of world-wide revulsion at the bloodshed against Palestinians, from well-aimed bullets killing Shireen Abu Akleh, a beloved woman journalist, or the torching of hundreds of Palestinian homes in the refugee camp of Huwwara by illegal Israeli settlers, while Israeli soldiers refused to intervene and then joined in, with ministerial approval?
Or because of demonstrations in Berlin, by Germans and Palestinians at the Bundestag and, at Brandenburg Gate, by angry Israeli ex-pats living in Berlin (a historic turn-around), waving Israeli flags while denouncing the new government? It is getting tougher for Bibi and his hate-driven ministers to find comfortably secure chairs anywhere. Perhaps, before long, even in Jerusalem?
But the featured game in Berlin these days was rather “Who’s King of the Mountain” or, slightly altered, “King of City Hall” (or its queen). In an unprecedented decision, the courts canceled the totally-mismanaged September 2021 elections to the Berlin parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus) and ordered new elections, which were held on February 12th.
Since 2016, the city was run by a coalition: Social Democrats (SPD), with their Franziska Giffey as mayor, the Greens and die LINKE (The Left). Most of the media now expected only minor changes.
Then came Surprise No. 1. Those three parties, added together, again won a majority, but a far slimmer one, with the SPD suffering its worst loss in Berlin history, a measly 18.4%, far behind the CDU (“Christian” Democratic Union) at 28.2%. Too many Berliners were fed up, for both good reasons and bad ones. New Year’s Eve fireworks, with angry attacks on the police and some firemen, were immediately blamed by the “Bild” and other rags (think “Fox” or “NY Post”) on “lazy, unruly and violent immigrants.” The coalition parties were accused of “spoiling” them instead of locking them away or deporting them. And the CDU, heavily racist-tainted, joined in.
Other heartstrings – in the tender breasts of car-drivers – were struck by the Greens‘ efforts to slow auto velocity and limit car traffic, even barring four-wheelers from a downtown shopping street, to increase the number and width of bicycle lanes and stop the extension of a big highway further into the city. Blood pressures behind steering-wheels rose.
Thirdly, Berlin’s less prosperous majority was angry at the ruling trio’s failure, despite its promises, to keep rental costs from soaring, prevent evictions, and build anything near the necessary number of affordable apartments. A referendum demanding the confiscation of all apartment buildings owned by big housing giants (with adequate repayment) had been dramatically approved by over a million voters, 59%, but was sabotaged by SPD-mayor Giffey, given only lukewarm support by the Greens and really backed only by die LINKE – but even then pushed into “mañana“ status by that party’s accommodating, status-quo wing which is dominant in Berlin. So people asked: Where is the promised genuine rent control? Who has really fought for affordable housing! Many, dismayed or disgusted, decided to sit out this repeat election!
But many did vote. And to complicate the messy situation, both SPD and Greens got 18.4% – about 280,000 each! The SPD was ahead – by only 105 votes! Then almost 500 uncounted mail-in votes were found; would they give the Greens first place and a “Green woman mayor”? Suspense was huge, but in the end the SPD was ahead by a just 53 votes, enough to save the status quo.
But the top vote-getter gets first shot at forming a government. The CDU led the field with 28.2%, giving them 52 seats (out of 159), far from a majority. With neither die LINKE (22 seats) nor the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD – 17 seats) as possible allies, their right to a first chance seemed a useless formality. But the CDU kept up its usual loud-mouth bragging.
Surprise No. 2, it paid off! In an amazing switch, Franziska Giffey, whose unpopularity as Social Democratic mayor helped cause their losses, announced her decision to dismantle the leftish-sounding trio alliance, abdicate her position and take her party into a junior partnership, giving Berlin its first CDU boss since 2001. The probable new mayor, Kai Wegner, like his party, works hand in glove with the real estate lobby, and it’s a wide-open hand. He once assured these behemoths:
“The exchange with you, our cooperation, has always offered me a great deal. As you know, I was often closer to your side than to the other side.“
Giffey had never angered that side either; Berlin seemed in for five years of right-wing government. The SPD was trading any remaining left-over principles for a second prize, half the well-rewarded cabinet chairs. The Greens and die LINKE were suddenly relegated to cold opposition seats!
But halt! In Berlin’s SPD, majority approval by the party’s 53,000 members is needed for such major decisions; there is a call for rejection in some boroughs and in the SPD’s Young Socialist organization (Jusos). Will party discipline and pressure prevail in the end? The curtain has not yet descended on this topsy-turvy puppet theater stage.
Similar confusion and controversy abound on the national level, where Social Democrats and Greens share coalition rule not with die LINKE but with the small, pushy pro-big-biz Free Democratic Party. This FDP, now threatened with political bankruptcy, is trying to win back hearts and votes by moving closer to the CDU, now in opposition but drooling at a chance to overturn apple-carts as in Berlin.
So the FDP is bucking its Green coalition partner by preserving Germany’s “no speed limit” stretches on its Autobahns, which it tries to extend more than climate-friendlier rail traffic, and further hindering, as much as possible, postponed plans to cut down on carbon-spewing coal and gas heating and close down atomic energy plants. It alienates its SPD partners, now trying to regain lost working-class support, by resisting aid to the financially deprived while resisting taxes on the obscenely wealthy; the well- worn label is again “deficit-cutting”. Chancellor Scholz is trying to please everyone but the cracks widen while the CDU aims at becoming King of the Mountain. Like in Berlin.
One theme unites German coalitions; total support for continuing the Ukraine war. Many citizens base their support on an abhorrence of killing and destruction, on sympathy for Ukrainian refugees, over a million mostly women and children who have arrived in Germany. And for those left behind.
But men like Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, Germany’s main producer of tanks and other big weapons, have hardly been affected by human sympathy alone. His annual pay last year stood at €4,4 million while his company, happy since 1889 at all weapons orders, raked in $28.22 billion last year. “The war in Europe has ushered in a new era for Rheinmetall,” Papperger said.
Nor would a long war require more hankies for executives at Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing and the like, or US coal and gas producers who, after years of pressure, finally succeeded in forcing western Europe to cancel imports from Russia and build new ports for far more expensive liquefied gas from fracking sites in the USA. In the second and third quarter of 2022 alone, American oil producers made $200 billion in profits; explosively capping off such successes, according to master journalist Seymour Hersh, was the blasting of the Russia-to-Germany pipelines on the Baltic sea bottom.
German politicians and media could hardly blame this convincingly on Russia, which constructed the pipelines. And they feared the political consequences of blaming either the obvious culprit or Zelensky, Washington’s man in Kyiv, now the most-feted star in Europe, well ahead of King Charles (not to mention Macron). So they tried to just keep quiet and hope people would forget about it.
Not enough did, so a Washington-CIA-Berlin legend was hatched about “non-governmental Ukrainians” in a boat so small it could never have carried the weight of explosives and devices. So they became mum again. Or are they now trying to hatch up some more credible alibi?
But not only the city-state Berlin, teetering coalitions or exploded pipes are making news, but their effects. Low-paid working-people, single parents, pensioners, have been hit hard by soaring prices for foodstuffs, higher rent, fears about increasing prices for heating, cooking, commuting to jobs.
Many are now fighting back. On Monday, March 27th, a giant one-day warning strike is shutting down rail service, key airports, much of urban public transportation. Kindergarten teachers, garbage collectors, civil servants, university staff; some well-paid pundits are weeping over this “rehearsal for a general strike!” while Britain and France seem closer – as models for action!
Some companies (and public institutions) are hoping for public animosity because of the resulting inconveniences but, often surprisingly, there is widespread public support for the strikers by all those who feel the same pains.
Such disputes, difficulties and struggles should be of advantage to a party dedicated to better lives for all the people, with no lobby pressures or dependence on corporate donors. Sadly, however, die LINKE is also split, now mostly on questions involving the Ukraine. Its stronger group, called by some the “reformers,” stands largely in line with the main parties and media, unconditionally condemning Putin and Russia, approving weapons shipments to Zelensky, calling for victory against the aggressor and condemning all doubters. Angrily opposed to them are those who voice (or demand) unconditional support for Russia.
But many – or most (?) “doubters” condemn the Russian invasion but point to the map and the constant, aggressive push by NATO, led by Washington, to surround Russia, strangle its approaches to the world’s oceans by blocking the Baltic and the Black Sea while stepping up dangerous military and naval maneuvers along its borders, coupled with open political interference in Ukraine and thinly-veiled calls to defeat “authoritarian governments”, meaning Russia (and Cuba, N. Korea, etc.), while snuggling up to or installing some of the world‘s worst tyrants.
These “doubters” ask what the USA would do if a hostile alliance conducted atomic-armed maneuvers near San Diego, Houston and Detroit, and as an answer they recall the Cuban crisis of 1962– almost atomic war! They also recall the bombing of Belgrade “to defend the rights of oppressed Albanian-speakers in Kosovo” and ask if there was no parallel to the very bloody repression of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.
The split on these questions threatens the existence of die LINKE. When its most prominent member and best orator (or Germany’s), Sahra Wagenknecht, spoke in the Bundestag against a break in trade relations with Russia and called for peace negotiations, some prominent ”reformers” called for her expulsion. But In TV talk-shows, usually attacked four against one, she always ends up a calm, polite, smiling victor. She was the main organizer of the great peace rally of 50,000 in Berlin on Feb. 25th, which outraged the media – and opponents in her own party. But in their total rejection of a peace rally they isolated themselves.
Then, in early March, Wagenknecht stated that she would not again run as a candidate for the Bundestag but “retire from politics and work as publicist and author – unless something new turns up politically.” This hint at a possible new party, further to the left, possibly polling at 14% (and leaving die LINKE with 2%), was seen even by some of her enthusiasts as unfortunately vague, further splitting the party yet without offering any definite plan, thus with her strong voice muffled as if by a covid face mask. Her message is not uncomplicated: she charges a neglect of working class rights – and of German workers – with endless attention and bickering about divisive and academic identity and gender questions.
Most recently the two national chairpersons of die LINKE, both opposed to Wagenknecht, though not as angrily as other leaders, formulated a new policy statement for debate which, at first reading, seems to be a move toward bringing together all but the most uncompromisingly opposed party members and leaders. It is perhaps a chance to rescue the party.
