German Left Party leaders launch right-wing #Standup initiative
By
Christoph Vandreier
20 August 2018
Left Party politicians Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine have thus far avoided publishing an official statement setting forth the policies of their new initiative bearing the name #Standup (#Aufstehen). But the closer they come to the September 4 launch of their movement, the clearer its aims become. They are promoting far-right politics.
Earlier this month, the conservative newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt published interviews with Wagenknecht and Lafontaine in which the Left Party leaders announced their xenophobic and nationalist initiative.
The goal of #Standup, declared Lafontaine in his interview with Die Welt, is to secure “a different majority in the Bundestag [parliament].” The platform will be aimed at members of the Left Party, the Greens and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), but it will not exclude the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) or the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Lafontaine added that one possible result of his initiative could be the “reunification of the SPD and Left Party” and the establishment of a “large left-wing people’s party.”
This is an effort to contain and manipulate growing opposition to the right-wing policies of the grand coalition government, which consists of the Christian Democrats (the CDU and Christian Social Union [CSU]) and the SPD. But workers well remember that it was the SPD and Greens who pushed through unprecedented social cuts and initiated the revival of German militarism when they were the ruling coalition between 1998 and 2005. They also know that in the states where they hold power, the Left Party and Greens are implementing the grand coalition’s…