For context:
The politicians are from BSW, which would be charitable described as tankies. The BSW splintered from the left-party some time ago and has always been VERY pro russia and reactionary.
So no, no actual leftists going to Russia, otherwise they would fall out of a window…
But it’s also worth mentioning this split was made by party members leaving and not Die Linke throwing them out or anything. Wagenknecht would still be a prominent member and likely face of the party today if she did not decide to leave on her own accord. I say this because some people think they’re far right extremists or something which is not the case at all. They’re authoritarian left because yes, that exists. Extremism is bad in any shape or form. Even when it comes from the left.
You can‘t simply throw out people in parties in Germany. There are examples where parties tried to get rid of politicians that did not fit the partie‘s views without success.
They didn‘t try despite the awful stuff she propagated and that‘s what they should be measured by. „But it probably would have failed“ is such a lazy excuse to not even try something so necessary.
I never said they should not have tried but according to your statement kicking out party members is a easy thing to do. In the case of the German left party, at the time the Sahra Wagenknecht was still a member of the party, it was even less simple as a significant portion (and that does not have to be the majority) of the members of the party supported her. In the end this is how parties work. They are not an entity with a streamlined set of values but rather consist of groups of people with „similar“ views. At some point those groups diverge to much and form new parties. So in this case there is no well-defined „they“ when you refer to the party its internal conflicts.
no actual leftists going to Russia
But far-left and populist left are still left? Them being extreme doesn’t make them non-left
Being authoritarian doesn’t make you “far left” it makes you “authoritarian”.
The BSW has very few positions that you could describe as “left” at all.
There are actually many debates about whether the party is really left-wing or not.
representing the German left-wing party Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW)
False flag… these have become right-wing, extremist even, without admitting it.
Calling the BSW right-wing … lemmy moment.
Though, have a look at what they want and say on television. They’re left on socio-economic things and right-wing on socio-cultural issues.
The left/right scale is a bit stupid IMO. You’d be right calling them left or right, it’s both correct.
If it looks like a nazi, walks like a nazi, and quacks xenophobic and racist shit like a nazi, what else would they be?
Sure if by nazi you mean everyone you disagree with.
We have an actually confirmed neo-nazi party to deal with, so these kind of ridiculous hyperboles aren’t helpful in the least.
BSW is politically 99% aligned with the “confirmed” Nazi party AfD, the only difference is that Wagenknecht hasn’t publicly defended Hitler yet (AFAIK).
Leftism is “workers of the world unite” not “blue eyed blond german workers über alles”.
BTW where does the blue-eyed blond stereotype come from, it doesn’t seem to be the dominating type for most of Germany, and especially not south where reactionary and nazi stuff is most usual (not talking about former GDR now).
Also, eh, about that and Russian communists of today - there’s a book by Ivan Yefremov, “Andromeda nebula”, sort of a future communist utopia. Its characters are described as being, due to all kinds of medical and sports good arrangements, generally beautiful and healthy by our measure. So every time you see an illustration or a indie game art or a small cartoon made by Russian commies after that book, you see plenty of blue-eyed blond people. Except the author himself specifically described them all being racially mixed to the extent of impossibility of guessing one’s ancestors’ parts of the planet from looks. Of the main characters only one is described as having blue eyes, and that’s his only “Russian-looking” trait. Generally they look no more Russian than Bengali or Han Chinese.
That’s in the book. In illustrations it’s always the same shit as if from Nazi propaganda posters. I’m just hinting that this is very common for traditional communist groups, because they are in some sense conservative, looking into past where communism was a relevant young growing ideology, with that spring flavor like blooming lilac fragrance, and also due to the nature of that ideology putting some specific ideas of beauty as commonly normal, and if the majority of such a group is German, they’ll discard the minority opinions.
BTW where does the blue-eyed blond stereotype come from, it doesn’t seem to be the dominating type for most of Germany, and especially not south where reactionary and nazi stuff is most usual (not talking about former GDR now).
Nazis had a bit of boner for Nordic sagas, runes, black suns and such. The blonde blue-eyed ideal comes from that. But because they compulsively mixed shit up, they called those people “Aryans” which originally stood for people from … Iran.
I mean, yes, Iran is Aryanshahr in Old Persian or something like that.
Nazis formed their ideology in a bit of a barbaric time in linguistics, where grouping Germanic and Indo-Iranic languages and attaching Armenian to the latter was kinda normal. And when such action allows you to attach your axe-swinging barbaric ancestors who conquered Latin-speaking and Celtic-speaking peoples (incidentally your current chosen enemies are mostly Latin-speaking) to something similarly ancient, and also raise from the same civilization level with Slavic peoples to being a level above them (and your another chosen enemies are Slavic-speaking), and you live in the middle of XIX century when everybody did crap like that, and not having mythologized new nationalism for your monarchy is not an option, because you are being bitten by angry revolutionary students and the vague possibility of Austria becoming center, so you have to disqualify most of its empire as inferior, you just do.
Then Nazis did a few smaller steps at treating that by then obsolete neo-Pagan heap of bullshit like something serious.
“We also want to send a signal that we want the weapons in Ukraine to fall silent permanently”
There is really hardly a worse signal they could send than to visit a huge military parade by the aggressor country.
where they will attend the Parade with other communists like Viktor Orban
this article, probably
I mean, - about real leftism, - Yaroslav Hashek’s book that need not be named in Eastern and Central Europe has such a wonderful quote - “the human wants to be a giant, but in fact he’s shit”.
I’ve actually found a German translation in project Gutenberg:
Der Mensch möchte ein Gigant sein und ist ein Dreck, Kamerad.
This also relates to any pretentious ideologies with their pretentious symbolic.
Interesting, and concerning, that this is an article by the dominant German news agency DPA. The clarification that it’s about members from the BSW, rather than Die Linke, first appears in the third paragraph of the text.
Non-germans wouldn’t automatically think of Die Linke when they read ‘leftist party’, so i guess DPA might choose for a different headline for their English language publication.
there really should be more distinctions than just “left and right”. Things being like this serve only the ones in power who want to keep us at eachother’s throats by having this stupid divide. It also doesnt really describe anything to someone who is hearing about the terms for the first time and is based on age old things (which side of the hall your party sat).
This is one of the things that keep us all chained up and it needs to change.
