German left provokes row on Berlin Wall anniversary

[KurtFF8]

Source (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/14/german-left-berlin-wall-anniversary)


Three Die Linke politicians snub minute's silence and far-left newspaper lists reasons to be grateful for Berlin Wall

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/8/14/1313335152385/Angela-Merkel-attends-a-w-007.jpg Angela Merkel attends a wreath-laying ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Berlin Wall. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

A group of leftwing politicians in Germany (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/germany) have been criticised for refusing to observe a minute's silence on Saturday to commemorate the 136-plus people who died trying to breach the Berlin Wall.
A far-left newspaper added to the controversy by printing a front page saying "thank you" to the wall for "28 years of keeping the peace in Europe (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/europe-news)" and "28 years of plentiful crèche and kindergarten places".
The timing of both stunts was provocative: Saturday marked 50 years since the East German government built what it euphemistically described as "an anti-fascist protection measure". To mark the date, a minute's silence was held across Germany at noon, with Angela Merkel attending an event on the former death strip in east Berlin.
But at a political conference in Rostock, in the former East Germany, three delegates from Die Linke party refused to join in when 100 colleagues stood up to observe the silence.
One was Marianne Linke, a regional politician from Die Linke, which has links to the old East German ruling socialist party. According to the tabloid Bild am Sonntag she tried to justify her actions by saying: "The border closure in 1961 would not have happened without fascist Germany." The implication being that the wall was either a rational reaction against a West that had not dealt with its Nazi past, or a result of the way the allies divided up Germany after the second world war.
Even the then US president, John F Kennedy, believed a wall was better than another war, she is alleged to have added.
Linke's comments were sharply criticised by Steffen Bockhahn, head of Die Linke in Mecklenburg Pomerania, where Rostock is located. "I am furious. It's disrespectful to the victims to stay seated. The building of the wall is nothing to be justified."
Die Linke have repeatedly caused controversy since forming in 2007. Gesine Lötzsch, national chair of Die Linke, caused a storm on Friday by describing the construction of the wall as a logical consequence of the war.
On Saturday the far-left weekly newspaper Junge Welt (Young World) marked the wall's anniversary with a front cover featuring a picture of armed East Berlin soldiers defending the German-German border at the Brandenburg Gate.
"Thank you" ran the headline, and underneath were 13 reasons to be grateful for the wall: "For 28 years without sending German soldiers to war … for 28 years without unemployment and unemployment benefit … for 28 years of no doctors' fees and no two-tier health system … for 28 years of education for all."
The story even paid tribute to 28 years of Club Cola, East Germany's answer to the Coca-Cola of the imperialist west, and of FKK, a nudist movement popular in East Germany.
Meanwhile, secret files obtained by Der Spiegel magazine apparently show that West Germany's post-war chancellor Konrad Adenauer wanted to "swap" West Berlin for a more convenient and fruitful bit of East Germany.
The western part of the divided capital was difficult to defend as it was an island in the middle of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Adenauer is believed to have proposed a secret deal with the Soviet Union to the US foreign minister Dean Rusk just a few days before construction of the wall began on 13 August 1961.
According to Der Spiegel, the chancellor described the proposed deal as an "advantageous exchange" for West Germany. In exchange for relinquishing West Berlin Adenauer wanted the state of Thuringia, as well as parts of Saxony and the northern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
These were areas that had been occupied by British and US soldiers at the end of the war and then handed over to the Soviet Union in order to gain control of part of the capital. Adenauer apparently planned to reverse this deal.
The chancellor, who governed from 1949 to 1963, believed West Germany would gain prosperous new industrial areas in the deal. After initially taking Adenauer's idea seriously, Kennedy eventually "recoiled" from the proposal, Der Spiegel reported, and West Berlin remained marooned in the GDR until reunification on 3 October 1990.



It seems like there's some division within Die Linke about how to deal with this historical question.

[Per Levy]

http://www.jungewelt.de/2011/08-13/069.php

the original post of the "far left" newspaper.

[Desperado]

I loudly fart through silence of those who would damn walls of the past which kept people in but now make walls today which keep people out. As for nostalgic "leftists" who fetish over any so called socialist state's tools of oppression...

[North Star]

A really stupid mistake by the unreconstructed Stalinists in Die Linke. I'm supportive of what Die Linke is trying to do and think it is a place where Marxist ideas can win support in Germany, but this is a bad move. Instead of treating the wall as this great moment they should be drawing attention to Adenauer's plans, how the FRG really didn't care about the GDR and how the Wall was a result of Germany being caught between to imperial powers.

[KurtFF8]

^aka they should change their entire view of history to be more consistent with yours?

[The Intransigent Faction]

^aka they should change their entire view of history to be more consistent with yours?

I don't think so. The West didn't build the wall, but it had it's role in the division of Germany.

Anyway, while I admit to getting a little ticked off whenever I hear people talk about the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall as the "collapse of communism" or some sort of nonsense about "freedom" in Germany with the fall of the wall and reunification of a capitalist Germany (don't we all?), nobody should condone or refuse to acknowledge the brutality of what happened to these people trying to get past the Berlin wall---and no they were not all fascists or bourgeois-sympathizers. That and building a border wall and shooting those who try to pass it to leave East Germany made a mockery of any Soviet rhetoric about internationalism.

Tear down all border walls, whether a Berlin wall, an Israeli border wall, a wall between Mexico and the U.S., or any other!

[North Star]

^aka they should change their entire view of history to be more consistent with yours?

So how is idealizing the building of the Berlin Wall by a failed system going to attract people to Left-Wing politics? The party might be even better off by ignoring the anniversary or arguing that this spectacle is distracting from the realities being faced by German workers today. How would you deal with it? Apart from the ex-SED members in Die Linke there are many youthful members more interested in building a new socialist movement than fighting over the past.

[KurtFF8]

So how is idealizing the building of the Berlin Wall by a failed system going to attract people to Left-Wing politics? The party might be even better off by ignoring the anniversary or arguing that this spectacle is distracting from the realities being faced by German workers today. How would you deal with it? Apart from the ex-SED members in Die Linke there are many youthful members more interested in building a new socialist movement than fighting over the past.

Easy there, strawman. The issue here is whether to commemorate the fall and celebrate the victory of the West over the East. Something that Die Linke doesn't want to do, and I think they're totally correct to refrain from such a celebration.

I do think that ignoring it would have been better perhaps. But you can't ignore the past.

[North Star]

No you can't ignore the past but Die Linke is going to have to jettison some of its Stalinist baggage or it's not going to be able to grow. I somehow feel the current generation of leadership won't do this, perhaps it will have to be a generational thing.

[Susurrus]

Defending the GDR and spitting in the face of 136 people who died trying to escape from an authoritarian regime are two different things, and those three should have realized that.

[Rafiq]

It's not that I am spitting on the people who died, but the fuck if I'm going to take a minute of silence for them when no one does shit when 5 Million innocent Vietnamese civilians are six feet under.

[Philosopher Jay]

It took great courage to stand up to the capitalists and their propaganda machine. The absurd and false tears for "the victims" should be exposed. Capitalism kills tens of thousands of victims every single day. That is the important thing to remember and we should have a minute of silence for that every day.

Incidentally, the best movie about the Berlin Wall is "The Spy who Came in From the Cold." It is perhaps the best spy movie ever made.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Seems like the likes of Linke and Lotzch are trying to use the wall as a plank to defend the wider GDR. Probably a mistake because, IMO, the wall was the worst part of the GDR and I can't think that it had much popular support, even if a lot that the GDR did was good in terms of re-construction after the war.

[Delenda Carthago]

A really stupid mistake by the unreconstructed Stalinists in Die Linke. I'm supportive of what Die Linke is trying to do and think it is a place where Marxist ideas can win support in Germany, but this is a bad move. Instead of treating the wall as this great moment they should be drawing attention to Adenauer's plans, how the FRG really didn't care about the GDR and how the Wall was a result of Germany being caught between to imperial powers.
Berlin Wall was builted in 1961. Stalinists dont accept that in 61 the Eastern Block was socialist anymore, so they are opposing Berlin Wall too as a mechanism of the social fascists that took over USSR and East Germany.

By the way, I think its pathetic how DieLinke goes between reformism and revizionism.

[KurtFF8]

Berlin Wall was builted in 1961. Stalinists dont accept that in 61 the Eastern Block was socialist anymore, so they are opposing Berlin Wall too as a mechanism of the social fascists that took over USSR and East Germany.

By the way, I think its pathetic how DieLinke goes between reformism and revizionism.

Posts like this and some others in this thread are just using rhetoric that is only accepted by folks of your own particular tendency. Folks (like myself at least) from other tendencies will just see terms like "social fascists" or talk of a certain groups revisionism, and even talk of "Stalinists" as an end argument phrase as non-productive and not contributing to the discussion or helping understand the situation any better.

[RED DAVE]

It's not that I am spitting on the people who died, but the fuck if I'm going to take a minute of silence for them when no one does shit when 5 Million innocent Vietnamese civilians are six feet under.That is left wing oneupmanship: a form of political clowning.

RED DAVE

[North Star]

Posts like this and some others in this thread are just using rhetoric that is only accepted by folks of your own particular tendency. Folks (like myself at least) from other tendencies will just see terms like "social fascists" or talk of a certain groups revisionism, and even talk of "Stalinists" as an end argument phrase as non-productive and not contributing to the discussion or helping understand the situation any better.

There is more than just one tendency that isn't going to celebrate the Berlin Wall. In fact I think its safe to say that this discussion has brought agreement among many different tendencies. You are right that accusations of social fascism, revisionism isn't helping anyone to accomplish anything, but I think in the case promoting Die Linke's response to the Wall commemorations as a brave move is revealing of a rather problematic politics.

[A Marxist Historian]

So how is idealizing the building of the Berlin Wall by a failed system going to attract people to Left-Wing politics? The party might be even better off by ignoring the anniversary or arguing that this spectacle is distracting from the realities being faced by German workers today. How would you deal with it? Apart from the ex-SED members in Die Linke there are many youthful members more interested in building a new socialist movement than fighting over the past.

The main base of Die Linke is in East Germany, where most people don't see the DDR as a failed system, but something much better than what you have now, whatever problems it may have had. East Germans are pretty much an oppressed population in Germany. Thus you had that very popular T-Shirt of the '90s, "I want my wall back."

Be it noted that it's the Die Linke youth group who were most to the fore on this, not the old fogies gone soft and wanting to be respectable.

-M.H.-

[North Star]

The main base of Die Linke is in East Germany, where most people don't see the DDR as a failed system, but something much better than what you have now, whatever problems it may have had. East Germans are pretty much an oppressed population in Germany. Thus you had that very popular T-Shirt of the '90s, "I want my wall back."

Be it noted that it's the Die Linke youth group who were most to the fore on this, not the old fogies gone soft and wanting to be respectable.

-M.H.-

I wasn't aware that Die Linke's youth were on the forefront of this. Thanks for the info. I know that Die Linke's main base of support is in the East, but instead of celebrating the wall they could be talking about the lack of child care and loss of other benefits and economic deprivation of the east. That's what those in the former GDR really miss, not the Berlin Wall. There was sincere euphoria in the East for the collapse of the wall, but they didn't sign on to predatory capitalism, simply to be reunited with their German brothers and sisters and for an end to authoritarianism. I understand the problems the East faces, but it needs to be articulated in a different way than making a huff and puff over the Berlin Wall. This is not how the chasm of East and West will be bridged.

[Wanted Man]

So how is idealizing the building of the Berlin Wall by a failed system going to attract people to Left-Wing politics? The party might be even better off by ignoring the anniversary or arguing that this spectacle is distracting from the realities being faced by German workers today. How would you deal with it? Apart from the ex-SED members in Die Linke there are many youthful members more interested in building a new socialist movement than fighting over the past.

I think what's basically the "problem" is exactly the fact that these politicians tried to ignore it. The quotes from them in the article seem to be justifications afterwards. The fact that they didn't want to participate in the sham that is the official "remembrance" of the wall is what seems to be held against them.

[A Marxist Historian]

I wasn't aware that Die Linke's youth were on the forefront of this. Thanks for the info. I know that Die Linke's main base of support is in the East, but instead of celebrating the wall they could be talking about the lack of child care and loss of other benefits and economic deprivation of the east. That's what those in the former GDR really miss, not the Berlin Wall. There was sincere euphoria in the East for the collapse of the wall, but they didn't sign on to predatory capitalism, simply to be reunited with their German brothers and sisters and for an end to authoritarianism. I understand the problems the East faces, but it needs to be articulated in a different way than making a huff and puff over the Berlin Wall. This is not how the chasm of East and West will be bridged.

Well, I wanna be careful here. I was just noting that the most militant statement on this wasn't from the leaders, but from Junge Welt, as mentioned in the original posting. That's the Linke youth paper, isn't it?

If not, don't draw too much out of my comment.

It's absolutely true that there was euphoria for knocking down the wall, but that was in the first few months of the 1989 explosion in East Germany, when the idea was reforming East Germany, not reuniting with West Germany. Socialism not capitalism. When the notion was one of a workers revolution against bureaucracy that maybe the West Germans could join too.

Then Gorbachev came out for turning East Germany over to the Fourth Reich, and everything changed.

-M.H.-

[L.J.Solidarity]

Junge Welt used to be owned by FDJ, the SED's youth organisation, until 1989/90. Since then it actually is an independent paper and the only German daily that can be described as "far-left". Die Linke has a semi-official party daily, "Neues Deutschland" which mostly goes along with the social democratic line of the eastern state organisations.
Die Linke's youth organisation is thoroughly anti-stalinist and thus anti-GDR except for some scattered individuals. What the various informal factions/groups within Linksjugend mean by "anti-stalinism" varies widely and ranges from forms of social democracy and rather libertarian "post-modern" stuff to trotskyism (not that you would recognize it as such :cool:).
The debate within Die Linke is going on nearly exclusively in the eastern states, where the most right-wing party faction, fds (forum democratic socialism) has huge majorities. fds consists of older opportunists who often played small political roles in the GDR and younger careerists who are slowly taking over from them. Those are most keen on distancing themselves from the GDR, mainly to ensure the SPD will let them into coalition governments.
The people defending the wall are from the KPF (Communist Platform, defending every aspect of the GDR all the time is most of what they do) and, more surprisingly, from the AKL (Anti-Capitalist Left), particularly in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. IMHO the position of the latter is extremely unfortunate since it discredits them in the working class and general public - even among more GDR-nostalgic layers of the population, the wall probably isn't that popular - while their position within the party is already very marginalized (15% of the vote at the last state party congress as opposed to 85% for the fds and its friends), they'll now be perceived as old-school Stalinists and nothing else in the wider public.

[North Star]

Well, I wanna be careful here. I was just noting that the most militant statement on this wasn't from the leaders, but from Junge Welt, as mentioned in the original posting. That's the Linke youth paper, isn't it?

If not, don't draw too much out of my comment.

It's absolutely true that there was euphoria for knocking down the wall, but that was in the first few months of the 1989 explosion in East Germany, when the idea was reforming East Germany, not reuniting with West Germany. Socialism not capitalism. When the notion was one of a workers revolution against bureaucracy that maybe the West Germans could join too.

Then Gorbachev came out for turning East Germany over to the Fourth Reich, and everything changed.

-M.H.-

Ah I didn't realize that it was Junge Welt that said this. Junge Welt is not technically connected to Die Linke or its youth group. It seems to be staffed by many former Stasi agents (apparently) but it's well known that the editor was most certainly a Stasi agent. Their comments aren't very surprising. I'd be interested to see what the actual youth groups close to Die Linke like 'solid have had to say about the Berlin Wall anniversary.

[A Marxist Historian]

I call bullshit on that unless you can provide a source stating that any branch or state organisation of Linksjugend ['solid] ever did anything to publicly defend the Berlin wall. Die Linke's youth organisation is thoroughly anti-stalinist and thus anti-GDR except for some scattered individuals. What the various informal factions/groups within Linksjugend mean by "anti-stalinism" varies widely and ranges from forms of social democracy and rather libertarian "post-modern" stuff to trotskyism (not that you would recognize it as such :cool:).
The debate within Die Linke is going on nearly exclusively in the eastern states, where the most right-wing party faction, fds (forum democratic socialism) has huge majorities. fds consists of older opportunists who often played small political roles in the GDR and younger careerists who are slowly taking over from them. Those are most keen on distancing themselves from the GDR, mainly to ensure the SPD will let them into coalition governments.
The people defending the wall are from the KPF (Communist Platform, defending every aspect of the GDR all the time is most of what they do) and, more surprisingly, from the AKL (Anti-Capitalist Left), particularly in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. IMHO the position of the latter is extremely unfortunate since it discredits them in the working class and general public - even among more GDR-nostalgic layers of the population, the wall probably isn't that popular - while their position within the party is already very marginalized (15% of the vote at the last state party congress as opposed to 85% for the fds and its friends), they'll now be perceived as old-school Stalinists and nothing else in the wider public.

So I take it then that Junge Welt isn't the Linke youth paper. It being called "far left" should have been a tipoff for me, since the Linke is a moderate left organization, not far left at all. In a coalition government in Berlin after all, stomping on the working class hand in hand with the Social Dems and Greens. Glad I posted my own correction before you beat me to it.

But according to what you are saying, in the East it's the right wing old and young farts who want to do moments of silences for Wall shootings, and the left wing, who you say are isolated, who say screw you.

Proves my point really.

For a West German Die Linke supporter to say that the wall in East Germany "probably" isn't that popular is the ultimate proof of how little West Germans understand East Germany. Hey, I'm an American, I'm not even supposed to know anything about East Germany. It's your own country, you ought to have some notion of how people feel in it better than "probably."

-M.H.-

[L.J.Solidarity]

For a West German Die Linke supporter to say that the wall in East Germany "probably" isn't that popular is the ultimate proof of how little West Germans understand East Germany. Hey, I'm an American, I'm not even supposed to know anything about East Germany. It's your own country, you ought to have some notion of how people feel in it better than "probably."

-M.H.-
Oh come on, I don't live in the East (will change in 2 weeks, then I'll probably find out what people in rural Mecklenburg-Vorpommern think about the wall today) and the number of people who "want the wall back" in Germany-wide surveys varies between 13 and 23% within a single year (2009 to 2010), so I guess they aren't terribly accurate. Also those surveys are generally designed to indicate that "people are against democracy, OMG!" to show the need for more "education" about the evils of "communism" - the 2010 poll was apparently paid for by BILD, a right-wing tabloid. Even if you take the 23% figure for granted, according to a 2009 poll nearly 49% of East Germans say the GDR had "more good than bad aspects" - so the wall definitely is less popular then e.g. the healthcare or kindergarten system.

[KurtFF8]

There is more than just one tendency that isn't going to celebrate the Berlin Wall. In fact I think its safe to say that this discussion has brought agreement among many different tendencies. You are right that accusations of social fascism, revisionism isn't helping anyone to accomplish anything, but I think in the case promoting Die Linke's response to the Wall commemorations as a brave move is revealing of a rather problematic politics.

And more straw man arguments.

I don't see anyone "celebrating" the wall, just folks who are declining to commemorate the fall of it. Those are two very different things.

Your painting it as a "celebration" is just a cheap attempt to attack other tendencies that are opposed to yours.

[CynicalIdealist]

Mourning the deaths of those who tried to climb the wall isn't by itself bad, but it seems that Merkel and co. are trying to exploit their suffering in a way that makes East Germany look favorable now vis-a-vis the former GDR. From that angle, Die Linke's decision makes a little more sense, but I still disagree with it.

I think they should "take the bait" here as much as they might hate to, out of a sense of ideological purity or whatever else.

[North Star]

And more straw man arguments.

I don't see anyone "celebrating" the wall, just folks who are declining to commemorate the fall of it. Those are two very different things.

Your painting it as a "celebration" is just a cheap attempt to attack other tendencies that are opposed to yours.

Well if it's just a refusal to commemorate, they've done a poor job of it and allowed the bourgeois media in Germany to spin it against them. These things have to be taken into consideration. It may not be fair that the media in Germany are painting them as apologists for the Berlin Wall, but they should be smart enough to know that such a thing would happen. As for my "cheap attempt", don't try to pigeon hole my politics. I'm a huge supporter of Die Linke and presents a place where Marxists can struggle to get their voices heard within the broader working class movement. I've worked alongside Trotskyists and Maoists, have had some friendly debates with them and agreed to disagree, so I'm not interested in making cheap attacks on people I disagree with. Die Linke have had members that have instead of lamenting the fact that the generous social services of the GDR have been dismantled have rather obsessed over the Berlin Wall. The party as a whole has tried to distance itself from this but of course the media always like to highlight these members' comments. The Berlin Wall was a failure of really existing socialism. As a movement we've got to acknowledge this and move forward. There aren't really that many tendencies that upheld the Eastern Bloc as socialist especially by the early 1960's so I'm certainly not picking on everyone that I disagree with. In fact, there are a lot of people that I disagree on many things with that would agree with me on this situation. The USSR has collapsed, China is capitalist, it's time to move on, and this isn't helping.

[A Marxist Historian]

Oh come on, I don't live in the East (will change in 2 weeks, then I'll probably find out what people in rural Mecklenburg-Vorpommern think about the wall today) and the number of people who "want the wall back" in Germany-wide surveys varies between 13 and 23% within a single year (2009 to 2010), so I guess they aren't terribly accurate. Also those surveys are generally designed to indicate that "people are against democracy, OMG!" to show the need for more "education" about the evils of "communism" - the 2010 poll was apparently paid for by BILD, a right-wing tabloid. Even if you take the 23% figure for granted, according to a 2009 poll nearly 49% of East Germans say the GDR had "more good than bad aspects" - so the wall definitely is less popular then e.g. the healthcare or kindergarten system.

And you're in a party more than half of whose members are East Germans, and this kind of speculation and numbers games is the best you can do?

At this point the importance of the wall is symbolic, being as it has been down for longer than a lot of people have been alive. So you will probably find that your new neighbors give very little thought to that wall that used to exist.

I suspect that for your average East German, when they're thinking about bad aspects of East Germany they are more likely to be thinking about all that Stasi snooping into everybody's lives, or the economic failures of socialism in half a country, and so forth. I hear there are some people actually nostalgic for Trabis, but surely that's a minority feeling.

The Wall? Relatives and friends of the piddlin' 123 East Germans who got shot crossing the wall are presumably extremely down on it. And anybody who thought capitalism was great and socialism bad, or who thinks Hitler was right, or anything like that, is presumably extremely down on it.

As East Germany couldn't really have existed without the Wall, I think attitudes of the average East German worker to the wall are, at this point at any rate, pretty much the same as his or her attitude to the DDR in general. Which is what the point of all this really is.

-M.H.-

[Delenda Carthago]

Posts like this and some others in this thread are just using rhetoric that is only accepted by folks of your own particular tendency. Folks (like myself at least) from other tendencies will just see terms like "social fascists" or talk of a certain groups revisionism, and even talk of "Stalinists" as an end argument phrase as non-productive and not contributing to the discussion or helping understand the situation any better.

The discussion is about the Berlin Wall. Someone accused stalinism for it. I described in very few words that you should not accuse Stalin(who didnt made decisions like that) for it and its the revisionists fault. Is this OK?