On Saturday, an arbitration panel of Die Linke voted unanimously to expel Ramsis Kilani. The Palestinian-German Trotskyist had been accused of “bringing the party into disrepute” by Martin Schirdewan (co-chair of the national party at the time, though he has since resigned) and Katina Schubert (former vice-chair). As I reported back in October, Die Linke’s leadership has been working together with right-wing media like Der Tagesspiegel to attack Palestine solidarity activists and leftists inside the party.
Kilani, a leading member of the group Sozialismus von Unten (Socialism from Below, SvU) and a prominent activist in Berlin’s Palestine solidarity movement, was expelled with immediate effect. The charges were based on snippets from social media distorted by right-wing journalists, too absurd to rehash here. Kilani constantly speaks at demonstrations and posts on social media — were there any evidence he was an antisemite or a Hamas supporter, it surely wouldn’t be hard to find. Instead, he publicly defends a secular, left-wing program of combining “unconditional support for all Palestinian resistance” with building “the working class’s self-organisation and power.” This would be pretty standard within almost any left-wing party internationally, but it is grounds for expulsion from Die Linke.
The next day, the party’s top leadership discussed the case. As reported by Thies Gleiss, a majority declared they can’t get involved in arbitration cases — despite the fact that the whole process was started by then-members of the leadership. They refused any expression of solidarity with Kilani, which Gleiss called “a political scandal.”
Family Background
At the beginning of the hearing on Saturday, Schubert made reference to her own family’s Nazi background. She clarified by email that she had one grandfather who sympathized with the Nazis and one who was in opposition. She did not respond to a follow-up question about what this could possibly have to do with Kilani’s expulsion.
While this will sound strange to anyone outside Germany, this is what the German bourgeoisie tells working-class immigrants: “Because our grandparents committed genocide, you are now legally required to support the state of Israel.” After World War II, ruling-class ideology said that the entire nation was to blame for the capitalists’ crimes — a guilt that would be absolved via support for Israel. This leads to the descendants of Nazis demanding that everyone in the country support “Israel’s right to exist.”
Kilani’s family background could well be more relevant: his father, stepmother, and five half-sisters were murdered by Israeli bombs in Gaza in 2014. Even though five German citizens were killed, prosecutors refused to lift a finger to investigate.
In any case, politics are more than genealogy. Our family trees do not, by themselves, define our political programs. This is why Palestinians, Jews of different nationalities, immigrants from around the world, and even a few Germans can be found at Berlin’s Palestine solidarity demonstrations.
Staunchly Pro-Zionist
From far away, it might seem like Die Linke has a range of positions on the Middle East: one recent article describes a party with “anti-imperialists, pacifists, [and more than] a few supporters of Israel.” In reality, though, the leadership is steadfastly pro-Zionist. As party co-chair, Schirdewan spoke at a pro-Israel rally on October 22, 2023, after thousands of Palestinians had already been killed.
It’s noteworthy that the German bourgeoisie has tried again and again to show “solidarity with Israel” in the middle of Berlin, but even when hundreds of politicians, NGOs, and corporations have signed the calls, they have never been able to mobilize even 10,000 people — and sometimes just a few dozen. This is because the German government’s support for Israel is extremely unpopular. Polls show consistently that 60 to 70 percent of people oppose weapons shipments to Tel Aviv. In other words, Schirdewan was demonstrating his loyalty to the regime — and his disloyalty to his own members.
Meanwhile, in the state of Brandenburg, a politician from Die Linke serves as the official Antisemitism Czar. Andreas Büttner is a former member of the conservative CDU and then of the neoliberal FDP, as well as a former cop and a former businessman. It’s not clear how he ended up in a “left” party. On Twitter he claims there is “no genocide” in Gaza, contradicting Amnesty International as well as the UN, and that the Golan Heights “belong to Israel,” putting him to the right of the German government. Such far-right views are allowed in Die Linke, but left-wing ideas are not.
It is true that a few members of Die Linke express solidarity with Palestine, such as the local branch in the Berlin neighborhood of Neukölln. Yet these genuinely left-wing voices remain isolated in the party. While Kilani received lots of solidarity, including from Die Linke’s student organization, prominent party members have all ignored the case.
Independent Socialist Candidacies
Jacobin would have you think Die Linke has been taking a step back to the left, with new party co-chair Ines Schwerdtner (the founding editor of Jacobin Germany) addressing “specifically working-class interests.” Yet the expulsion of Kilani shows that Die Linke continues to defend bourgeois interests. The new leadership is largely trying to ignore the Middle East (“Don’t mention the war!”). For the upcoming elections on February 23, the party is instead betting everything on three older reformist politicians: Gregor Gysi, Dietmar Bartsch, and Bodo Ramelow, all three of whom support Israel. Bartsch, for example, voted in favor of banning left-wing Palestinian groups.
While Die Linke has won praise from right-wing media for the expulsion, it has been losing support from genuines socialists. The last year has seen an exodus by groups like SvU and Revolutionäre Linke (Revolutionary Left, RevoLi), both connected to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Great Britain. SvU just announced their definitive break from the Left Party. As Klasse Gegen Klasse, the sister site of Left Voice in Germany, we were always critical of revolutionaries working in this reformist party — for more than 15 years now. It is a positive step that they are leaving.
But it’s not enough to simply hand back their membership cards. Revolutionaries need to build a political alternative to Die Linke, based on class struggle and internationalism, with a strong focus on opposing the German government’s support for genocide. The upcoming elections offer an opportunity to present such a program to a wide audience. Revolutionary socialists are running so that anyone disappointed by Die Linke can support working-class, socialist candidates who stand steadfastly with Palestine. To SvU, RevoLI, and anyone else leaving Die Linke: let’s discuss how we can build such a campaign together.
