Alexis Vassiley

Workers’ revolution in Portugal, 1974-5

German politics has shifted sharply to the right following the federal election in February. Former corporate lawyer and multi-millionaire Friedrich Merz will now lead a conservative coalition government after the collapse of the previous “green light” coalition of Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland achieved its best election result ever, coming second, amid mass anti-fascist demonstrations and a surge in support for the left-wing party Die Linke. 
Last month, Willi Schulz, a member of Workers’ Power based in Berlin, was in Melbourne to present a series of talks at the Marxism Conference. He sat down with Red Flag’s Robert Narai.
Could you start by outlining the main features of the crisis of European and German imperialism in which the far-right has been able to grow?
To understand the rise of the far right, we must understand the specific features of the European Union (EU) in times of intensified struggle for the reorganisation of the world. Geopolitically, the EU remains a minor power compared to the other imperialist powers, such as the US and China, which are now locked in a competition for global supremacy, and Russia, which it sees as a competitor. 
The EU is the third attempt by German imperialism to secure its place in the sun, co-led by French imperialism. However, to this day, it has failed because it is not a coherent state but an alliance of states with their own ruling capitalist factions and interests. Attempts to build ties through transnational capital, such as Airbus, have not been able to compensate for this. The EU, as an imperialist project, is the weakest link in the imperialist chain.
The neoliberal constitution of the EU, designed to get rid of the last elements of welfare state policy, has exposed the EU as undemocratic and aggressively neoliberal, which is being used by the far right to pit their nation against the EU elites.
The consequences of the 2007-08 financial crisis were imposed on the weak states through austerity policies. Large parts of southern Europe were impoverished, while in the north they were labelled lazy and unproductive. Chauvinism against the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain) was stoked. To this day, the EU has not been able to recover politically and economically. This is a strategic weakness for Germany and France.
The class struggles in Greece and the capitulation of the left-wing Syriza government were a historic defeat for the European labour movement and represent demoralisation. 
The suffocation of the Arab Spring and the so-called refugee crisis that followed have divided Europe. The EU responded with isolationism and Fortress Europe, most recently in the form of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and the EU-Turkey deal. State racism is already on the rise, justified as a way of weakening the right wing, while in reality they just intensify each other. 
As the leading nation of the EU, German imperialism is not only a military lightweight; the end of globalisation presents it with massive economic challenges. Carried by global supply chains, capital and goods exports to most of the world, and formerly heavily dependent on Russian gas, the German economy has been thrown into shock. The attack of Russian imperialism on Ukraine was a global political turning point. Immediately afterwards, then-Chancellor Olaf Scholz proclaimed a “turning point” and with it a $100 billion arms package.
The European rearmament program of Merz and von der Leyen, spurred on by Trump, represents an attempt to overcome the weaknesses of German imperialism. 
This is the terrain on which to understand the rise of the far right: a strategic crisis of the ruling class, an undemocratic EU, the rise of nationalism, scapegoating of refugees, internal chauvinism and a failure of the workers’ movement.
Who are the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)? How has this crisis helped facilitate their growth?
The AfD emerged in 2013 as a Euro-critical party that wanted a strong currency for the German market. It represented a break from the ranks of the conservative party, which historically had been a compromise between different factions of capital, a compromise that seemed to have broken down and which they wanted to break from. During the so-called refugee crisis, the right wing of the party, which has a fascist core, grew stronger and has been growing steadily ever since. It now makes up about three-fifths of the party membership and continues to grow. 
The AfD has about 53,000 members. Since its secret 2023 conference in Potsdam, it has gained at least 13,000 new members. 
The AfD first ran in the federal elections in 2017, achieving 12.6 percent, 10.4 percent in 2021, and now 20.8 percent in 2025. In the latest poll, it stands at 24.5 percent. What is particularly dramatic is that it has not only won over small business owners and some of the middle class, but has also scored well above average among people in poor economic situations (39 percent), blue-collar workers (38 percent) and the unemployed (34 percent). It also became the second strongest party among young voters (18 to 24 years old). Trade union members voted 23.2 percent for the mainstream conservatives, 21.8 percent for the AfD, and only 20.6 percent for the Social Democratic Party (SPD). 
It has been able to grow due to disillusionment with the mainstream conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the SPD. Their policies of refugee-bashing, militarised borders and law and order are increasingly adopted by the mainstream parties and help legitimise them as a false opposition to the establishment.
The strategic reorientation of the bourgeoisie and the organisation of a party in which fascist forces can grow is what characterises the AfD. With the joint anti-migration vote together with the CDU/CSU and other parties at the end of January 2025, it showed that it is prepared to stand as a kind of shadow coalition for the conservatives if the Social Democrats are not ready for their fundamental attack on the working class. The support from the US administration, whether it be Musk speaking at the party conference or J.D. Vance supporting the European right at the Munich Security Conference, shows that they are increasingly being seen as an option. However, due to its opposition to the strategy of German monopoly capital (the EU), it is still not considered a reliable partner. 
On the streets, however, the AfD is far from being a purely right-wing populist force, but rather a gathering place for reactionary and fascist currents. Since the federal elections alone, the number of open attacks on leftists and migrants has increased. There have also been armed attacks on refugee shelters. Fascists are marching openly again, something that had declined sharply since the emergence of the AfD. 
The AfD has not yet fulfilled its historical mission, but it stands ready. Its inclusion in a possible federal government would certainly mean a split in the party, but also a reorientation of German politics and, with it, of Germany's relationship to the EU. But to do so, it would have to break with its strategic orientation toward Russian imperialism. 
The new government will be another grand coalition, this time led by the ultra-conservative Friedrich Merz. What is their program?
The previous government—the “traffic light coalition” of Social Democrats, Liberals and Greens— fell apart over the question of a strategy for German imperialism in times of heightened crisis. They could not agree on the amount of debt required to remilitarise Germany. Merz has already faced opposition from within the ranks of the new coalition; for the first time in German history, the initial vote failed to inaugurate him as chancellor. It shows how weak this new coalition government is already.
Merz faces the problem of having to lead a period of open rivalry with the US. His government’s program is characterised by making Germany fit for war, strengthening its own authoritarianism in “defence” of democracy, expanding a massive racist deportation regime, and pushing ahead with historic cuts and privatisations to strengthen its own ruling class.
In terms of the question of the massive rearmament of German imperialism, they have cancelled the debt brake so that the German state is allowed to have unlimited debt to rearm itself. They want to spend 3.5 percent of GDP on the military, which is three times more than just 10 years ago. They are trying to expand the German armed forces by reintroducing a “voluntary” form of compulsory military service. They are supporting an EU nuclear rearmament program. 
They want to see if they can solve the crisis of the car industry by transforming individual Volkswagen factories into producing tanks. At the moment, the German state is already producing more artillery munition than the US. 
They want to sell off infrastructure and state property to revitalise German capital. Eight percent of public sector staff will be cut, but not in the security agencies. Then there is the so-called investment program where 500 billion will be spent over the next 12 years. This will be put into the investment of private capital to make it more competitive. Companies will be able to write off 30 percent of their investments to be refunded after their tax return. The corporate tax rate is to be reduced. Environmental standards are to be reduced. 
The new government wants to completely abolish the right to asylum. They have proposed a mass deportation campaign of refugees to Syria and Afghanistan. They want to deny the right for legal support for refugees in their trials against their deportation so they cannot defend themselves in the courts. They want to introduce a card payment system so they can financially control what refugees can and cannot do. This will be accompanied by increasing demonisation of Arabs as a source of violence through so-called “Israel-related antisemitism”.
They want to massively attack traditional working-class rights by getting rid of the eight-hour day and changing it into a 42-hour maximum work week where there is no maximum daily work amount. They want to abolish the Bürgergeld (unemployment benefit) and reintroduce a sanctions system. They also want to increase the pool of unemployed workers by giving retirees the option to work longer for lesser taxation. 
The incoming attacks on the labour movement are linked to restrictions on democratic rights. For example, massive criminalisation of the environmental movement and solidarity with Palestine. These attacks are defended as necessary to protect democracy from external enemies such as China and Russia. 
The trade unions have welcomed aspects of the government’s statements (investment program), are demanding co-management of certain areas (AI in the workplace) and remain silent on other issues (militarisation, deportation). Their connection to the SPD makes them guarantees of social peace and demobilisation for the ruling class. 
The AfD will benefit most from this state of affairs. We can already see that in the Bundestagswahl (federal election) results for 2025. The AfD have already increased their popularity relative to the conservative party in the latest poll. This is before the new government had even formed.
Polarisation to the right is not the only dynamic at play in Germany. What does the polarisation to the left look like?
Since 2023, millions of people have taken to the streets against the AfD. 
The initial protests were in response to the 2023 Potsdam conference of fascists, members of the AfD (some of them also fascists) and also members of the conservative party who were revealed to have been discussing a program of “re-immigration” (deportation) of German migrant citizens. These were the strongest anti-racist and anti-fascist mobilisations in over a decade. Millions of people were in the streets, not just in the urban centres but in rural areas as well. 
Earlier this year, there were demonstrations of millions against the breaking of the “fire wall” around the fascists: the conservative party tried using the votes of the AfD to pass an immigration bill.
There have also been mass blockades of AfD party meetings. Last June, 70,000 people participated in a huge demonstration against the AfD party meeting in Essen. The movement has also made its way onto university campuses and is very active. 
But the movement is making a moral argument that “you shall not be racist; you shall not be fascist.” It is not challenging the overall program. It is not challenging anti-migration policy, and on the question of Palestine, it’s weak.
This polarisation has also expressed itself in the Bundestag [German parliament]. Die Linke, a reformist party which, until recently, was in crisis, has been the only party that has stood in opposition to the politics of the far right. 
It has attracted 60,000 new members who see the party as the focal point for opposition to the incoming attacks of the coalition government and against the rise of the AfD. It has been students and mainly young women who have joined and massively changed the character of the party. Its vote doubled in the last election and won 8.7 percent. Now, tens of thousands are getting active and want to fight. They challenge the rise of the far-right on campuses. They mobilise against meetings of the AfD. One of their members in the Bundestag called on demonstrators to “join the barricades” during the recent mass demonstrations. They are a factor on the streets. 
At the same time, it fights for the expansion of the welfare state, redistribution, disarmament and pacifism (instead of revolutionary anti-militarism). This corresponds to the prevailing consciousness. It is a reformist force and ultimately a bourgeois program within the labour movement. It focuses on social issues rents, and the rising cost of living. 
It is passive on other issues. It does not see anti-racism and anti-fascism as part of the class struggle. It rejects the idea of open borders. It remains silent on the reactionary deal on Ukraine and is divided and paralysed on the issue of Palestine. It expelled the anti-Zionist Ramsis Kiliani from its ranks. In the second chamber (Bundesrat), it voted for rearmament and the investment program, thereby giving the incoming government a free pass. It supported a second vote to inaugurate Merz as chancellor.
The 60,000 new members mentioned above have also shifted the balance between the party's wings. There is a right wing that fights for stability and hopes to form government with the Social Democrats. Then there is a left-wing that is connected to the new, activist base. The leadership believes it can take hold of the state machinery and wield it for socialist purposes. But as we know from history, this program is doomed to fail.
This is the core problem, because the politics of Die Linke are no less wrong than when it was founded. As a party, it does not want to smash capitalism, but to soften its excesses. The question arises, for example, whether it wants to govern or organise resistance. At the same time, its members expect opposition to the government and the AfD. This is where the real value of the party lies.
What are the tasks for revolutionaries in Germany today?
The main task of revolutionaries is the struggle for revolutionary class consciousness. This means helping organise resistance against the new grand coalition led by Merz. It is the Merz government and its attacks on working class and oppressed people that will help fuel the growth of the far right. At the same time, we have to relate to the people who have been radicalised by the struggle against the far right and convince them of revolutionary politics. 
All these struggles are in resistance to the attacks of the ruling class and its murderous gangs on the streets, but as revolutionaries we cannot just fight the excesses of capitalist oppression. We must link these struggles in the building of a revolutionary party. The development of a program that starts from the central struggles and dominant consciousness of the fighting sections of the working class and shows the necessity of smashing the capitalist order, which is irreconcilable with it. 
We must be the dagger in the back of our ruling class.

Robert Narai

Why is the far right on the rise in Germany?

US President Donald Trump has reduced the Western establishment’s liberal imperialist wing to a blubbering heap. 
Even before the White House humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski, the Atlantic magazine was warning about “The End of the Postwar World” and the crumbling of the system of alliances “allowing democratic societies ... to prosper”. A teary-eyed Christoph Heusgen, long-time German diplomat and chair of the annual Munich Security Conference, bewailed Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech to the event last month as a “European nightmare” in the context of Trump’s proposals to end the war in Ukraine. 
The administration’s plan for Russian annexations and American plunder of mineral resources is undoubtedly abhorrent. <a href="https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/02/21/poll-%E2%85%94-of-ukrainians-back-zelenskyy-majority-rejects-us-russia-talks-and-no-guarantees-ceasefire/">According to Rating Group</a>, a Ukrainian pollster, only 1 percent of Ukrainians support accepting Russian conditions to end the war. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to carve up Ukraine against the will of its population, normalise expansionist imperialism and trample the right to national self-determination.
But the waterworks from Europe’s ruling classes have nothing to do with genuine concern for human rights. The first rumblings of official unease with Trump did not come in response to his mass expulsion idea for Gaza, his plans for mass deportations of migrants in the US or his collaboration with the Hitler-saluting Elon Musk. 
Moreover, British and American leaders happily supported Russian barbarism in the contested region of Chechnya when that suited their interests. Western backing for Ukraine against Russia was always about strengthening ties between US and European imperialism—but now, Europe’s leaders are increasingly anxious about their own position within the existing imperialist hierarchy. 
The Munich Security Conference exemplifies the favoured branding of post-war capitalism known as the “liberal rules-based order”. We should shed no tears for an order that brought us the invasion of Iraq and the genocide in Gaza. The West’s professed love for democracy hasn’t stopped its flirtations with dictators from Pinochet to bin Salman. And despite all that they preached about the Second World War being fought against Hitler and fascism, the Allies stood aside as General Franco imposed a military junta on Spain, and they assisted Nazi collaborators in Greece. 
Assembled at Munich were the remaining dregs of the European political establishment not already overrun by a new, 21st-century wave of far-right forces. They covet American military protection from their aggressive Russian neighbour. Since 1945, their alliance has functioned under the guise of “shared democratic values”. But all that waffle was underpinned by the “percentages agreement” between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, dividing Europe into spheres of influence without the slightest regard for the opinions of the people to be ruled by one or the other of the imperialist blocs.
Vance’s speech made it clear that Washington will no longer operate within the post-WWII ideological framework. The second Trump administration intends to bolster illiberal far-right parties and authoritarian regimes across the Atlantic. “[What] I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia”, Vance teased. “What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its ... values shared with the United States of America.”
Vance charged that “across Europe, free speech ... is in retreat”, citing a few examples when police have prosecuted “anti-feminist” and Islamophobic activists. The reality, of course, is that far-right provocateurs and activists are ascendant, catapulted forward by the ever-deepening chauvinism of establishment capitalist politics. What upset the audience at Munich was that Vance turned capitalist sanctimony about “freedom” and “democracy” on its head.
Vance’s message was that more governments should follow Trump’s lead and discard the liberal rhetoric they regularly use to legitimise their rule. Vance quipped that “there’s a new sheriff in town”, and he wants to bring the system’s most brutish dynamics out into the open. He hailed a recent move by German conservatives to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on border controls. “There is no room for firewalls”, Vance insisted, referring to entrenched German parliamentary taboos against collaborating with fascists.
The new administration in Washington wants fewer restrictions on fascist organising and more alliances between traditional conservatives and the electoral far right. After all, Make America Great Again began as a project inside one of the main parties of US capitalism and now counts Hitler-saluting adherents among its key personnel. 
The pro-Russia sentiment in Vance’s polemic poured salt on the wounds, and not just because Putin is a traditional enemy of European states. The war in Ukraine has become a rallying point for the far right over the past three years precisely because of the ideological narratives constructed around it by the liberal establishment. 
Biden and NATO cynically presented the conflict as a war between the “democratic” West and authoritarian Russia. In this clash of civilisations, the far right unsurprisingly chose to side with Moscow’s openly authoritarian regime. For many European far-right parties, as well as for many US Republicans, Putin’s ultraconservative strongman style is a model for pushing back liberal social attitudes.
Trump’s punitive approach to Ukraine and his warmth towards Putin reflect political sympathies for the Russian despot. And Vance’s references to Russia made clear that America is on the side of the European far right, not the European establishment. As the vice president departed to meet AfD leader Alice Weidel, he left the assemblage of ruling class representatives in Munich grieving. “We have to fear,” said Heusgen, “that our common value base is not that common anymore”. 
The values of status quo capitalism deserve no lamentation. But Trump and his supporters are determined to usher in a new order of fascistic brutality and open imperialist aggression. In foreign policy and when it comes to civil liberties in the West, Trump’s administration wants a world in which might makes right. 
Faced with a new far-right onslaught, we cannot rely on the snivelling hypocrites currently grumbling about Ukraine. They created the order out of which fascism and authoritarianism have again reared their monstrous heads.

Ruby Healer

Crocodile tears for Ukraine won’t stop the far right

Greek workers, students and professionals joined the biggest general strike in the country’s history on 28 February. More than 380 demonstrations were held across Greece and internationally, with sizable protests happening in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
The mass outpouring was in solidarity with the victims of a 2023 accident on the Thessaloniki-Athens rail, in which a collision between a passenger train and a freight train claimed the lives of 57 people in the Tempe Valley.
In the two years since, the fallout from the crash has shaped Greek politics. The conservative government has tried to silence the uproar. From tampering with evidence to smearing the movement for justice as a ploy by opposition parties, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of the New Democracy party, never took any responsibility or took any action to bring to justice those responsible for the crash. Instead, the whole case has been blamed on a single station operator in Larissa.
Yet an increasing amount of evidence revealing government interference, negligence and corruption has been brought to light. This reached a boiling point on 18 January, when Kontra News released voice messages containing the harrowing last words of passengers calling the European emergency line. Massive protests followed this development, providing a glimpse of the scale of the demonstrations that engulfed Greece a month later.
The recorded words of a young woman have become a slogan of the movement: “I have no oxygen”. This proved that many of the victims did not die in the initial collision but were engulfed in a massive fireball caused by dangerously flammable fuel being transported without the proper safety precautions, which the Greek state should have had full knowledge of.
Indeed, the National Organisation for the Study of Aviation and Rail Accidents and Transport Safety found that the fireball was “the result of flammable material on the freight train, and not of the collision of the trains”. It also found that poor and antiquated safety nets were caused by “poorly maintained and increasingly degrading infrastructure and a structural shortage of staff to continue to provide the usual service”, which in turn was caused by government funding cuts.
Furthermore, the Syriza government privatised the rail company TrainOSE and sold it to Italy’s national railway holding company for 45 million euros in 2016. This led to further cost-cutting, as the company was now run for profit and not for public use. The Greek working class understands that this crime results from the austerity measures imposed on workers, the slashing of public spending, and the privatisation of public goods. 
The 28 February general strike was the third in the past twelve months. It was distinctively political, and brought airports, docks, train lines, universities, hospitality and retail to a standstill. The protests were huge, the most significant being in Athens and Thessaloniki. Photographs from drones could not capture all of the crowds. While the scale is hard to measure, local journalist Nikos Evagelatos put it simply: “It was everyone”.
Greek workers have a long history of resistance and recent memories of the massive movement that fought against the austerity memorandums brought by consecutive governments after the global financial crisis. While that movement was defeated when the Syriza government capitulated to the demands of the European ruling class, this movement shows us that struggle can be reinvigorated. 
The message was clear on the placards and banners, and in the chants: it is their profits, over our lives. Similar conditions exist here in Australia. NSW railway workers have been in a long dispute with the state government over pay, conditions and safety. As consecutive ALP and Liberal governments slash public spending, criminalise unions and privatise public goods, a small clique benefits while the rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.
The mass mobilisations of Greek workers and students remind us of the recent anti-austerity movement and show us that something new can come of this situation: a movement of even greater proportions that can not only bring justice to the 57 people who lost their lives in that terrible night two years ago, but bring a new world free from the bloodthirst of capitalism.

Dimitrios Tafidis

Mass resistance breaks out in Greece

German politics has shifted strongly to the right following the federal election on 23 February. The conservative Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union alliance will now lead a coalition government, after support plummeted for the parties that formed the previous coalition government. They have vowed to introduce hardline anti-migrant policies, attacks on workers and a massive expansion of the military. Even more menacingly, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) achieved its best result ever, coming in second place with 20.8 percent of the vote.
Since the AfD formed a decade ago, parties from across the political spectrum have insisted they will never work with the far right. The conservatives recently softened this “firewall” by working with the AfD to pass an anti-immigrant bill at the end of January. For years, sections of the conservatives, particularly those in the Christian Social Union in Bavaria, have flirted with the far right, but this was a significant step in normalising the AfD in mainstream politics. The Social Democrats, along with most other political parties, have contributed to this normalisation by drawing on the same anti-migrant rhetoric espoused by the far right. 
The election results reinforce this shift. The conservatives and the AfD hold a clear parliamentary majority. The AfD is campaigning hard for the conservatives to break with the firewall and form a coalition government. The conservatives have ruled this out for now, but there is a very real possibility that it could happen in the years ahead. 
The AfD’s rise is not, however, going unchallenged. Over the last fourteen months, a movement has emerged to resist the far right. Widespread protests broke out in early 2024 after it was revealed that a secret meeting in Potsdam discussed plans for the “remigration”—deportation—of large numbers of migrants and German-born citizens from migrant backgrounds. Alongside the AfD were members of the ultra-right-wing faction of the conservatives.
Protests outside AfD offices grew from the thousands to hundreds of thousands. On 3 February, an estimated 300,000 marched in Berlin alone. By April, the German daily newspaper taz reported that more than 1,800 protests involving around 4 million people had taken place across the country. These protests were the biggest since those opposing the Iraq war in 2003, and among the largest in postwar German history. 
Once the initial wave of protests subsided, left-wing activists continued to organise and mobilise. New organisations emerged, including the Studis gegen Rechts (Students against the Right), and older anti-fascist organisations found new life as thousands of young people got involved. 
Last June, tens of thousands descended on the city of Essen to protest the AfD’s annual conference. Police were drafted from around the country to try to stop the 70,000 protesters from disrupting the event. This year, the conference was moved to the regional town of Riesa, Saxony, to try to avoid demonstrations. Nevertheless, 15,000 protesters travelled there to take a stand against the far right. 
A new wave of protests erupted after the conservatives and the far right teamed up on the anti-migrant bill. Thousands blockaded the offices of the Christian Democratic Union in Berlin. At an AfD event in Freiburg, 25,000 out of a population of 230,000 came out to protest. 
A significant section of people taking part in these protests have gravitated towards the left-wing Die Linke party. In the federal election Die Linke, which had suffered a crisis for several years, revived and won 8.7 percent of the vote. Around 30,000 new members joined the party over the last year, numbers accelerating following the conservative-far right collaboration.
Heidi Reichinnek, one of Die Linke’s parliamentary leaders, stridently attacked the Christian Democrats for “paving the way for the resurgence of fascism” in a video that was viewed more than 30 million times on TikTok. Thousands of new activists joined Die Linke’s campaign in the West Berlin district of Neukölln. They won a landslide victory for Ferat Koçak, a pro-Palestine activist with a Kurdish background. 
Die Linke did particularly well amongst young people, becoming the most popular party for those aged 18 to 24, and securing the votes of more than a third of young women. The party also came first in Berlin. 
It’s positive that the AfD’s high vote isn’t the only story coming out of the election. However, there are significant problems with Die Linke. This is not a new radical party: it has existed since 2007 and is led by veteran moderate reformist politicians. It has participated in coalition state governments in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and it led the government in Thuringia for a decade. In these states, it oversaw neoliberal budgets and allowed refugees to be deported. 
While Die Linke positions itself as an activist opposition party, it is also open to forming a future coalition government. There has long been a Zionist wing of Die Linke. and moderate leftists like Reichinnek emphasise that they support Israel’s so-called “right to defend itself”. Last December, Die Linke expelled the pro-Palestine activist Ramsis Kilani for “bringing the party into disrepute”.
This is not a radical anti-capitalist party by any stretch of the imagination. However, despite these serious problems, the electoral support for the left, as well as the activism against the far right, reveals that there is a polarisation to the left in Germany, centred on young people, that cuts against the grain of the overall conservative shift. 
This is vital. The far right is winning ground in country after country. It can be easy to despair in the face of this, particularly when there doesn’t appear to be a spontaneous revolt against Trump and his ilk. As in the past, though, it is the actions of a radical minority that can begin the process of creating the larger left-wing opposition we need. Hopefully, that is what we are seeing amongst young people in Germany.

Jordan Humphreys

The right gains ground in Germany, but not without challenge

The next chancellor of Germany will be the former Blackrock consultant Friedrich Merz. His election comes alongside a surge in votes for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and 93 years after a similar figure, Franz von Papen, ascended to the German chancellorship. Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU), <a href="https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2025-02/bundestagswahl-2025-wahlergebnisse-wahlkreise-live">picked up 28.5 percent</a> of the vote, more than any other party but still one of its worst results in the history of the German Federal Republic.
Germany’s former ruling “traffic light” coalition—consisting of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Greens and the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP)—collapsed in November 2024, prompting this month’s elections. The former ruling parties all suffered heavy losses. The SPD received just 16.4 percent of the vote, its worst result in more than 60 years, while the FDP lost all 91 of its Bundestag seats and the Greens lost more than one-quarter of their representatives.
The biggest gains were made by the AfD, a far-right ethnonationalist party that has been <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/49924">radicalising</a> and gaining ground in regional parliaments for more than ten years. The party dominated the eastern states of the former German Democratic Republic, earning one out of every three votes there and more than 20 percent of votes nationally. The AfD is the spearhead of fascisation in Germany, pulling almost all other parties toward the right, especially on migrant and refugee politics.
In a surprise turnaround, Germany’s far-left party Die Linke soared past expectations to win 8.8 percent of the vote, buoyed by an influx of 30,000 new party members this year. It is now the strongest party in Berlin, the capital, and won its first-ever district west of the old Berlin Wall: Neukölln, the heart of the Palestine solidarity protests. 
Political polarisation
With the exception of Die Linke, the election campaign was dominated by a full-spectrum lurch to the right as parties tried to keep up with the AfD’s racism and anti-migrant politics. Underneath the official party positions, though, political polarisation has continued in German society.
A pivotal moment came at the end of January when the CDU introduced a harsh anti-migrant bill, knowing it would require AfD votes to become law. Although the bill failed to pass, the attempt broke a consensus among parties never to cooperate with the far-right party. Despite an outcry in the media, Merz subsequently <a href="https://x.com/AnAudretsch/status/1886053338052956376">made it clear</a>
that the CDU would continue to operate with the tacit support of the AfD, signalling the end of the “firewall” against fascism and, thereby, also the end of a basic binding consensus in German politics since the founding of the federal republic after the defeat of the Nazis in World War Two.
While all other parties were complicit, either by directly voting for the bill (FDP, BSW) or by implementing almost identical policies while in office (SPD, Greens), only Die Linke put forward an alternative. <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@dielinkebt/video/7465417523383799063">Footage of Linke chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek</a> excoriating Friedrich Merz on the floor of the Bundestag went viral, tapping into a deep wellspring of disgust with fascism and with the other parties for failing to do anything about its rise. “The firewall in this country remains us, and all of us will go to the streets”, Reichinnek declared, “to the barricades!”
Tens of thousands of young people joined Die Linke in the aftermath, forming a veritable electoral army of doorknocking activists. Despite its stunning results, Die Linke’s prior record of helping to administer austerity in regional governments, its contradictory approach to foreign policy, and the many failures of its leaders to stand with the Palestine solidarity mobilisation leave questions for the future of the party.
Germany’s polarisation proceeds according to the same dynamics as in the United States, Brazil, France, or any number of other countries today: the dynamics of class conflict.
How we got here
Germany has an <a href="https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-254-crazy-rich-germans">extremely wealthy elite</a> and high levels of inequality—the two richest German families own more wealth than the bottom half of the population. As the economy slows, the ruling class increasingly sees the path back to profitability running to the right.
The old “export model” of German international competitiveness has <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/51534/the-german-economy-is-at-a-crossroads">faced roadblocks</a> for some time, but it entered a crisis under SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s watch. The German economic model was upended by the combined effects of the Covid crisis, China’s mass exports of electric cars, and the energy price shock caused by the loss of cheap Russian gas. (Russia invaded Ukraine just two months after the traffic light coalition took office.) The country entered a recession that led to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/be1460c6-7d10-4518-8cc3-82bda78ab179">rapidly falling industrial output</a>, layoffs in auto, chemicals and other industries, and skyrocketing energy and housing costs for residents.
Employers called for scrapping green energy transition plans and adopting traditional means of reviving the economy. Despite some <a href="https://zeitschrift-luxemburg.de/artikel/halt-auf-halber-strecke/">inconsistent social reforms</a> instituted during his administration, Scholz’s government responded to employers primarily by slashing social services and the climate fund. 
Further, despite rhetorical denunciations of Merz’s dalliance with the AfD, Scholz’s coalition was central to implementing extremely harsh European-wide anti-migrant and anti-refugee laws in the last five years through the Common European Asylum System. As the Green Foreign Minister Baerbock put it bluntly to Merz on the floor of the Bundestag: “What can you get with the AfD that we didn’t already do through the CEAS?”
The CDU and AfD are both fiercely committed to serving the wealthy. Their common program <a href="https://www.surplusmagazin.de/merz-weidel-koalition-wirtschaftspolitik/">includes</a>
lowering taxes on the rich, strictly adhering to the “debt brake” (which limits government borrowing and therefore leads to covering costs with cuts to social welfare), slashing wages and basic income protections and reasserting heteronormative nuclear families by cutting parental support subsidies and parental leave and further dismantling childcare infrastructure.
Within the CDU, Merz has been central to a shift away from former leader Angela Merkel’s “soft conservatism” towards a more far-right platform. The refashioned Christian party <a href="https://www.marx21.de/ampel-regierungskrise-rechtsruck-und-die-notwendigen-konsequenzen/">seeks</a>
to re-cement a German cultural identity centred on belonging to the homeland. It aims to get rid of asylum rights, raise the retirement age and re-equip the German military. In all of this, it follows the AfD, the ethnonationalism of which has masked its leaders’ willingness to meet <a href="https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/494120.wirtschaft-und-wahlversprechen-die-wirtschaft-w%C3%BCnscht.html">the demands of German capitalists</a> for a new employers’ offensive to restore German global competitiveness.
Although the AfD has reduced its internal disputes significantly, competing wings remain within the party. The neo-Nazi wing around Björn Höcke and Maximilian Krah is aiming to destroy the CDU and inherit its role as the largest party on the right. The market-radical wing around Alice Weidel (the AfD candidate for chancellor in this election) quickly shed its US scepticism after Donald Trump came to office and is committed to dramatically increasing military spending. As Elon Musk’s appearance at the AfD convention and US Vice President JD Vance’s outright campaign for the AfD at the Munich security conference indicate, the AfD is aligning more and more with Trump’s push to split Europe and make deals with individual countries while shifting some of the military burden.
The next government
Merz’s party has a few options to cobble together a ruling coalition, which he has promised to do by Easter, but the negotiating process will be messy. Merz has invited the SPD to talks, and a “Grand Coalition” of the two parties could technically manage a majority in the Bundestag. But as Ingar Solty has <a href="https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/gruene-und-afd-sind-einander-sehr-aehnlich-auch-wenn-sie-das-nicht-hoeren-wollen-li.2293416">pointed out</a>, a CDU coalition with the SPD and/or the Greens will be effectively instrumentalised by the AfD in opposition, feeding its narrative of the interchangeability of all establishment parties.
A CDU/AfD coalition could command a majority and a largely shared program. But it is highly unlikely as it would cause massive outcry and position the CDU against the cross-party political consensus, risking defections from the more liberal upper classes. Then there is the (also unlikely) option that Merz forms a minority government supported by the votes of the AfD, which is nevertheless not formally part of a governing coalition.
Merz does not have a long-term vision. His project is to assert the short-term needs of capitalists against social majorities and the long-term sustainability of the country (and the planet). As Adam Tooze has <a href="https://www.surplusmagazin.de/tooze-globalisierung-trump-musk-merz/">pointed out</a>, Merz has no real plan for Europe when confronted with Trump’s dramatic new challenges. The CDU leader’s unswerving commitment to “balanced budgets” means any investments in infrastructure, research or other means of capitalist growth will have to be paid for by cutting spending in other areas.
As such, the CDU election platform envisioned incentives for capitalists at the cost of the environment and social welfare. A CDU-SPD-Green government may face difficulties implementing such a program, given that these were precisely the lines on which the former coalition government split. In a<a href="https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article255475792/Bundestagswahl-Merz-nennt-Koalitionsbedingungen-Scholz-will-CDU-Chef-mit-AfD-Frage-in-Bedraengnis-bringen-TV-Duell-zum-Nachlesen.html">
televised debate</a>, Merz also made agreement on attacking migrant rights a condition of entering a coalition.
Regardless of its composition, the new government will be anti-worker and anti-migrant. Any opposition to this course will come not from the other parties of a coalition government, but from the left.
Prospects for the left
Despite the bleak years to come under a conservative government, the revitalisation of Die Linke as a social force in Germany has led to at least some celebrations before the true work restarts. 
After Sahra Wagenknecht split from the party to form the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), Die Linke achieved a meagre 2.7 percent in the 2024 European elections. The BSW, by contrast, won 6.2 percent of the vote. In the intervening period, however, the BSW joined state governments in Thuringia and Brandenburg, and took on increasingly anti-migrant positions in a <a href="https://jacobin.com/2017/03/die-linke-germany-immigration-sahra-wagenknecht-oscar-lafontaine-afd-merkel">failed attempt</a> to appeal to AfD voters. In these new elections, Wagenknecht’s party fell just short of the required votes to enter the Bundestag, a result that is likely to be contested.
Die Linke’s principled stand on migration and its socialist platform allowed it to speak confidently to hundreds of thousands of Germans and become the <a href="https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/umfrage-werwas.shtml">strongest party</a> among young and first-time voters.
However, many challenges remain. Until now, Die Linke has operated as a left-reformist organisation with small groups of revolutionaries fighting for a movement- and worker-oriented party from within. But the parliamentary fraction and the party apparatus are dominated by careerist reformists <a href="https://www.counterfire.org/article/where-is-germany-s-die-linke-heading/">more interested</a> in participating in coalition governments with the SPD and Greens than in building mass movements to change German society. Participation in various state governments led Die Linke to implement austerity, carry out deportations, attack workers and compromise on a range of issues.
While the Die Linke stronghold in Neukölln, Berlin, has been a militant pro-Palestine presence, other parts of the party have sided with apartheid Israel; Die Linke’s parliamentary fraction voted in 2023 to stand unswervingly with Israel as well. Just like in the US, Germany’s unconditional support for Israel has created a <a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-boomerang-comes-back/">boomerang</a>
of colonial violence that is coming back to the metropole in various forms. Insofar as Die Linke <a href="https://www.sozialismus-von-unten.org/ramsis-kilani-ausgeschlossen-die-linke-gegen-aktive-solidaritaet-mit-palaestina/">actively participated</a> in Germany’s severe culture of repression against Palestine solidarity movements, it <a href="https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/germany-election-afd-israel-palestine-free-speech?utm_source=post-email-title&amp;publication_id=2510348&amp;post_id=157681412&amp;utm_campaign=email-post-title&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=79ysj&amp;triedRedirect=true&amp;utm_medium=email">helped pave the way</a> for some of the success of the AfD.
But Die Linke shows signs of potential change. Its base is expanding from the old strongholds of the east toward the entire country. Emerging figures show that Die Linke performed well not only in large cities, but also in many smaller towns, laying the basis for party organisations to potentially re-form there. Neukölln was won by Palestine solidarity organiser Ferat Kocak, who the German press <a href="https://archive.ph/x8kq1">denounces</a> as an anti-police activist with ties to the Trotskyists. The slogan under which Die Linke campaigned during this election was “everyone wants to govern, we want to change things”, a nod towards the importance of building an opposition outside of government power.
Most importantly, the 30,000 new party members could substantially overhaul the previously stagnating inner-party life. Incorporating these mostly young members into party and movement structures is by no means an automatic process and will take a conscious effort and some time, during which a process of mutual political education can be expected. 
One thing is certain: if Die Linke has any hope of avoiding slipping back into the social democratic swamp, it will have to forthrightly articulate a mass socialist alternative to the rightward drift in Germany, including on questions of imperialism and Palestine. As many party organisers know well, it will also have to develop stronger ties to Germany’s working class and supplant the “brown neoliberalism” of the AfD with a vision and a plan for socialist internationalism and workers’ power. 
Pressured by both geopolitical shifts and the profit-making priorities of its own ruling class, the conservative politicians at the helm of the German state have limited options within their self-defined capitalist paradigm: either eliminate the restrictions on issuing new debt (which is the position of Die Linke) or succumb to the capitalists’ demands to redistribute tax revenue away from social programs towards capital subsidies and an increased military. 
If it’s the latter, the social balance that has teetered since 2022 will no longer hold. Social upheaval is coming to Germany. Whether it is organised and rooted in the working class will determine the outcome: socialism or barbarism.
Sean Larson is a member of the Tempest Collective in the US and a founding editor of Rampant Magazine.

Sean Larson

Far-right surges, but left surprises, in German elections

“The great majority of you are fed up to the back teeth with them. The election gives you the chance to make it clear to these people how you feel.” 
Conservative British Prime Minister Edward Heath was muttering, weeks before the 1974 general election. “These people” were striking coal miners—the advance guard of the British working class in those days.
The last few years had shaken capitalism to its core. Massive strikes and unofficial actions were the norm. Conservative attempts to break the unions with new industrial laws and wage-freeze policies had only let loose a torrent of resistance.
In July 1972, the government imprisoned five docker shop stewards for defying a legal injunction. Forty-four thousand dock workers struck to demand their comrades’ release—all this without hesitation or recourse to “official” union authorisation. The call from the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to stop work didn’t come until ten days into the national strike.
As rank-and-file stoppages landed blows against Heath’s industrial laws, solidarity action was breaking his policies on wages. Heath insisted that no worker should receive a wage increase above 7 percent. In January 1972, more than 25,000 coalminers struck for a 35 percent rise.
The government tried circumventing the action by hoarding coal at power stations and transport hubs. It wanted to prove to the miners that it could keep fuelling the industry even if every pit stopped digging.
A class-wide battle ensued, as the National Union of Miners (NUM) won solidarity to stop the movement of coal. Wherever the government had stockpiles, miners travelled to convince workers not to burn, refine or transport the material. Broad layers of unionists, students and other sympathisers were drawn into the fight against Heath.
“I was away from home, at college in Enfield”, Jean Spence told Tribune magazine 50 years later. “My dad was a striking miner at Dawdon pit. We hosted striking miners—flying pickets—from Kent in our student flat, and I had my first experience of picketing at Picketts Lock Power Station. An old trade unionist taught us how to deal respectfully with lorry drivers we were trying to turn away.” 
The best-remembered battleground of the 1972 strike was the Saltley fuel plant in Birmingham, where the Conservatives claimed to have 100,000 tonnes of processed coal ready to burn. There, 20,000 engineers struck to support thousands of miners who picketed the gates, pushing back police. This crucible of solidarity forced the government into submission—days later, the miners won their wage increase.
The following year, a global recession emerged. Once again, the NUM led the way by imposing an overtime ban to win higher wages. With energy and steel production impacted, Heath saw a political opportunity. He was determined to push back the militant edge of the labour movement, turn popular opinion against the miners and bury them under a landslide election victory for the Conservatives.
On 13 December 1973, Heath announced nationwide power rationing in response to the miners’ bans. Under a State of Emergency, households were subjected to a rotating schedule of energy stoppages. Electricity would be limited to three days per week for industry—workplaces were directed to shut down operations for the remaining four days. Heath maintained this “three-day week” for the whole northern winter. The government was in effect imposing a lockout against the entire British working class in punishment for the NUM’s action.
Back then, coal accounted for three-quarters of the UK energy supply, and steel remained a core part of Britain’s dwindling manufacturing base. By February 1974, miners had moved from overtime bans to all-out action, and the strikes had reduced steel production to 60 percent of its usual capacity. The miners held immense industrial power—and they were fighting on behalf of all workers facing real wage cuts. 
Barclay’s Bank profits had risen by 75 per cent since 1970, while food prices had increased by one-half. Much like our own “cost-of-living crisis”, the “recession” of the early 1970s was a recession for workers, while bosses prospered. If the miners could break through Heath’s wage policies, they could set a new standard for what other workers could win. 
For my parents and their siblings, images of 1974 still glimmer through murky childhood memories. Before I even knew what a strike was, I learned about the power cuts under Heath and those orangey, incandescent evenings in my Gran’s living room.
Winters in Glasgow are cold and dark. So during the three-day week, it was flickering candles and the buzz of a repurposed camping stove. John Peel’s prog-rock sessions had adolescents transfixed by the radio—television channels went dead by 10pm. My dad watched his older brother pore over Tolkien by candlelight, night after night. I can still find those volumes on my Uncle Jim’s shelf, lovingly dog-eared and worn. 
In the mornings, even by 9 o’clock, daylight would be hours away. The street lamps were knocked out by the power cuts. “We had to wear luminous vests going to school in the pitch black”, my Aunty Jackie explained. These were formative weeks, when the children of the British working class undertook with pride the task of outlasting Heath in his stand-off against the miners. 
The older kids at university found their own creative ways to support the NUM. Student unions were barred from sending direct financial donations. So, instead, striking miners were invited to mass meetings at Norwich, Warwick and Essex universities. Socialist student societies fundraised towards a £250 “speaker’s fee” for each miner—a cunning scheme to deliver solidarity funds to the pit communities.
The Tories employed dirty tactics to try to break the workers’ resolve. As a new ballot on industrial action approached, one Conservative MP growled, “Social security should not be made available to wives and children [of NUM members], because it allowed the enemies of the state to go on strike”.
The Thatcher administration would make good on this threat during the great battles of 1984-5. But for the time being, the Tories were driven back by the very union movement they’d hoped to extinguish.
Heath ran the 1974 election on the now infamous slogan, “Who governs?” Would voters prefer questions of economic policy to be decided by responsible Conservative ministers, or by the trade unions? The British working class at that time answered unswervingly: “Who governs? Not you!” 
Heath lost the election in a hammering defeat. Over the next decade, the Tories geared up for another showdown. These years of humiliation at the hands of the labour movement would not go unavenged. 
As early as 1977, with the party still in opposition, Conservative MP Nicholas Ridley outlined a program for hoarding coal, slashing strikers’ entitlements and training a new army of riot police to attack picketers. The “Ridley Plan” would become widely recognised as the Tories’ blueprint for defeating the NUM.
Four years of Labour rule had curbed the tide of workers’ struggle. With Heath gone, union leaders accepted a shameful compromise—they would forgo wage rises and refuse to authorise strikes in exchange for more government welfare spending. In the winter of 1978-79, a heroic bout of wildcat actions arose over the heads of the officials. But Labour had successfully dulled strike rates and cohered union leaders around a new industrial peace. 
When Margaret Thatcher won the prime ministership in 1979, she tried to enforce this “peace” through open class warfare. Ruling classes around the world were looking to slash social welfare and privatise public services to stabilise profit rates after the recession. The Conservatives wanted to win a final, set-piece confrontation to force unions into total submission and ensure minimum resistance. Thatcher announced the appointment of her new energy minister in 1983 with the menacing words: “We’re going to have a coal strike”. 
The Tories were so determined to break the miners that they were prepared to reorganise totally Britain’s energy infrastructure. A massive expansion of nuclear power and North Sea oil was to displace coal—the mines would be closed down to drive out the country’s most powerful union.
Don Keating, a South Yorkshire miner, remembers the night he learned his pit would close. “I was doing a 6 o’clock evening shift with a mate”, he told the BBC. “I’m walking down Pit Lane and a couple of lads who were coming up off shift said, ‘Don, do you know pit’s shutting?’ A bit of a joke, we thought—more rumours. We got down there and ... they were saying, ‘Yeah, it’s been announced that Cortonwood will be shutting’.”
On 5 March 1984, the government’s National Coal Board declared a wave of closures across England, Scotland and Wales—twenty mines were to be shut and 20,000 miners sacked. Cortonwood miners had recently been assured their jobs were safe for another five years; now, the pit was to close within five weeks. 
South Yorkshire had always been a militant area. They’d been among the first to blockade Saltley Gate in 1972. The Cortonwood NUM sent mobile pickets across the Yorkshire coalfields. Kent, Durham, South Wales and Scotland followed. Pit by pit, day by day, the immense network of mines across Britain was being pulled out on strike.
It was the confrontation Thatcher had been waiting for. Faithful to the Ridley Plan, the government had stockpiled 9 million tonnes of coal over the preceding three years. They now unleashed the hell hounds of the state against picketers. Thousands of police from different branches were drafted to patrol roads and pit villages for the duration of the strike. Mike McKay, a BBC journalist at the time, recalled:
“I remember particularly one very early morning, I was driving up the A1, and on the other side of the road was this endless convoy of police riot vans. It just went on and on ... It was like you were watching an occupying army travelling to the front.”
Many who remember 1984 speak of “civil war”. Dave Creamer from the Yorkshire Silverwood colliery described the atmosphere as flying pickets worked to spread the strike in spite of police: 
 “We were setting off at four o’clock picketing, trying to get through roadblocks ... We went through every back alley you could think of, up farmers’ fields, down through woods—everything—just to get to that picket line.”
“It was quite an adventure at first”, Creamer recalled in a BBC interview. “I was 20-odd-year-old, it was exciting. The adventure became a bit of a nightmare later on.”
The miners fought with everything they had, but the mood darkened towards the middle of the year. On 18 June, a mass picket assembled at Orgreave, where fuel was being supplied to a major steelworks. Miners hoped to recreate the victory of 1972 by hitting industries beyond coal. Despite some hesitation from union leaders, thousands of NUM members were ready to confront the police. 
But nothing could have prepared them for the 6,000 officers, dressed in riot gear, who thrashed, clubbed and beat their way through the picketers on that day. Watching footage of the bloodbath will still turn your stomach, even 40 years later. Yet the British media cruelly doctored the scenes, framing strikers as the instigators of violence. 
From that moment on, the civil war against miners was played out on ideological terrain. Thatcher arraigned them as “the enemy within”—with the full backing of the mainstream press. Miners and union leaders were increasingly described as “thugs” and even likened to fascists. Print workers at the Sun newspaper refused to publish the vicious anti-NUM headlines prepared by their bosses.
Pockets of secondary action opened across the union movement. Dock workers struck for three weeks in August 1984 to stop employers transporting coal to the steelworks in Scunthorpe. In Leicestershire, unionised rail workers did not handle coal for 35 consecutive weeks. 
These exceptional cases needed to be turned into a tide of solidarity to face down Thatcher, the police and the media’s combined forces. After all, the Tories wouldn’t stop at smashing the NUM. Every worker had a stake in this fight.
Mainstream accounts of the 1984-85 miners’ strike describe a tragic arc; a losing battle against Thatcher’s inevitable victory. It’s true that the NUM couldn’t have won the dispute alone. A class-wide mobilisation against Thatcher was necessary—and possible. But it never materialised. 
After Orgreave, Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock encouraged comparisons between the so-called violence of picketers and the tyranny of the state. Some union officials even helped employers circumvent the strike’s impact, hoping they’d be rewarded with better sectional agreements. The TUC itself dealt the death blow, announcing in December 1984 that it would not endorse promised solidarity action after the High Court ruled the NUM’s strike illegal.
It’s difficult to communicate the gravity of this betrayal and the consequences that the British workers’ movement faced for decades afterwards. Unions have only recently begun to recover strike rates and membership numbers after the devastation of the Thatcher years.
Strikers themselves resisted the trajectory—they maintained their action through the Christmas and winter of 1984. In March 1985, miners reluctantly accepted a recommendation from NUM leaders to end the longest mass strike in British history. Dave Creamer recalls: 
“The night they held that branch meeting, when the orders came through from national level to go back to work ... There was almost fighting inside the club with people that wanted to stay out, people who wanted to go back ... It was one of the angriest meetings I’ve ever seen in my life.”
At the beginning of 1984, 170,000 miners worked across 170 collieries in Britain. Twenty years later, those numbers had dwindled to 4,000 workers in only eight pits. Unemployment destroyed whole communities. The economic power of the NUM—a power that had once disrupted heavy industry and toppled a government—was broken. 
Miners alone couldn’t defeat the arrayed powers of the ruling class. But they’d given Thatcher a serious fight. Because of them, the 1970s and 1980s in Britain are remembered not only as decades when the capitalist state attacked trade unions and working-class people. They are also memorialised as an era of defiant, tenacious and bitter class struggle, full of lessons. 
This history is the miners’ gift to every new generation of working-class resistance. For that, we owe them our gratitude.
Let them exhale
in unity
in hope
in disgust
and let them
remember
that shimmering sad yesterday 
when
people screamed no
—Extract from the poem “The unification” by Patrick Jones.

Remembering the British miners’ strikes

Serbia’s students have brought to life a mass movement and grassroots democracy rarely seen in the country. In the morning, they block roads; throughout the day, they occupy their faculties, march across the city and the country and shut down highways and ministry buildings. 
The movement aims to win justice for fifteen people killed in a train station collapse in Novi Sad on 1 November, and hundreds of thousands identify that goal with the daily mass protests of the students. Pushed into action by the tragedy, the students have questioned Serbia’s whole system of greed and autocratic governance.
The current president, Aleksandar Vučić, has spent years curbing democracy and allegedly lining his and his colleagues’ pockets at the expense of the mass of the Serbian people.
Vučić, who has held positions of power since the Milošević era, has usually seen off opposition protests. But this student movement has been different. Prime Minister Miloš Vučević resigned in disgrace after a mass 24-hour highway blockade, and several ministers have faced the chopping block. Unable to convince the population that the students are foreign agents, Ustaše fascists or separatists, the Serbian government has never appeared as powerless as it is at this moment.
The student movement is a dazzling display of the power of activism and democracy rooted in the people. While change is usually said to come from the best ideas and the ballot box, the masses in Serbia are showing that real change, change that can undermine an entire system of authoritarianism, comes from mass struggle.
What started as daily vigils was transformed by right-wing violence into a militant challenge to the entire system. Defending themselves against a physical attack, students in the Dramatic Arts Faculty of Belgrade took over their campus building and declared it under their control.
Soon, nearly all of the 80 major faculties in Serbia were taken over by students demanding the publication of documents regarding the station collapse, the release of their arrested comrades, justice for the attacks on students and a 20 percent funding increase for education.
The blockades are places in which a form of radical democracy has begun to grow. As described in a letter addressed to students of the world, the dramatic arts student group Svi U Blokade (SUB) describe:
“We have suspended classes, dissolved all student representative groups, self-organised plenums ... and begun to apply pressure ... We have begun to set up kitchens, dormitories, pharmacies, workshops, cinemas and classrooms for self-education ... We organise blockades through work groups ... open to everyone who wants to participate ... [They] present their ideas to the plenum ... an open forum for all students of the faculty ... [and] direct democracy is put in practice.”
The blockades have shifted power away from the government, but also from the more moderate opposition forces that have led many of the recent protest movements in Serbia. Centring resistance on the active participants of the struggle in the blockades makes those who refuse to take part have no influence, like the student union president who, on television station TV PINK, called the protests “the greatest destruction of higher education”.
The blockades have also used pressure from below and grassroots democracy in the plenums to keep leadership away from opposition politicians and in the hands of the masses themselves. After calling only a couple of symbolic demonstrations and a fist fight in parliament, those politicians have gained no leadership as the mass of students have voted for militant actions and systemic change, not just the election of the other political team.
Rather than scaring people off, the student occupations have drawn wide layers of the population into street politics. Students called one of the largest protests in Serbian history, have inspired teachers and workers into strikes and protest action, have led hundreds in days-long marches from city to city. Three months later, they continue to hold the vast majority of university faculties under student control.
With the occupations as focal points for organisation and protest, workers, unionists, parents and pensioners have all made their way into the blockades. Students have keenly adopted the concerns of various groups, supporting farmer and media protests, and travelling to the energy ministry to join rallying power plant workers. As one postal worker said in an article in the socialist newspaper Kontranapad, “If the students could respond and come to our protest, let’s stop our work too!”
Farmers have played a key role in maintaining the blockades and protests, providing tractors for barricades, soup kitchens and spit roasts, and food for weary marchers halfway between Belgrade and Novi Sad. Teachers have also shown solidarity and drawn in workers across Serbia, first in the universities as faculty members rushed to the blockades to support their students, conduct classes on the streets and participate in plenums.
The teachers have been an icebreaker for workers in Serbia. Every time they have joined a blockade, defied government threats, gone on strike or rallied in the city, they have inspired other workers to join them. 
Lawyers and actors joined the teachers on strike, while bus drivers refused to run services transporting strikebreakers. In the main news stations of RTS, workers demanded that the chief editor allow students to join their program or resign. Power plant workers, who had promised to strike further after a one-day suspension of work, overcame an order not to protest and began hour-long stoppages.
This was not guaranteed. “One part of the trade union is in connection with the regime and participates in the local government”, according to a coal miner in Kolubara speaking to N1 News. Across the country, various repressive and demobilising tactics have been attempted, workers being threatened with the sack or hauled into ministry and management buildings for lengthy interviews about their political support for the students. 
Trade union leaders have played no better a role than student union leaders. They have signed wage rise deals in exchange for calling off strikes and have taken to the media and to parliament to denounce the idea that they might strike against the government. However, they have also been dismissed in individual workplaces—one union meeting of electricity distribution workers ended with the union officials being booed out of the room by their own members.
By reaching out to workers on strike, pensioners, lawyers, high schoolers and more, the students have given ordinary people a chance to feel their own power. By creating opportunities for mass struggle, students have accomplished what a thousand speeches and essays couldn’t: they have convinced hundreds of thousands of people they have the power to change society.
Whether or not their movement wins, the students have started a radical process in Serbia. Instead of elections and bills, politics is now plenum democracies and protests. The idea that university faculties could be run by mass meetings rather than board meetings has gripped Serbia. 
During the 20 January teachers’ strike, Dušan Kokot—a leader of the Nezavisnost (Independence) trade union faction, a more militant faction of the unions—declared the strike gathering a plenum and turned to the crowd for a decision on, “Who is in favour of a general strike?” 
Of course, this is not the same as a student plenum, which Kokot noted in an interview with Vreme, but it gives workers a taste of their power. If this level of democracy were exercised not just in a protest or on a campus, but in every workplace, town and city, Vučić’s corruption and greed wouldn’t stand a chance. This could also be pushed by organising all sympathetic workers into a network of activists who could transform Serbia from the ground up.
Regardless of what building is occupied next, who protests next, who resigns next, the university students at the centre of the movement aren’t letting up. On 15 February, tens of thousands from across the country converged on the city of Kragujevac to protest together, following other inter-city marches to try to join the various city-based protests into one. 
While the government insists it is meeting the protesters’ demands, one student who had marched from Belgrade to Novi Sad explained to Radio Free Europe, “The system needs to change; if the system hasn’t changed, our demands have not been met”.

Johnny Gerdes

Serbian students lead mass movement against autocracy

On 11 January, 15,000 people travelled from across Germany in at least 200 buses and more sold-out trains to protest the conference of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is polling second in the run-up to national elections next month. 
After its conference in Essen last year was met with 70,000 anti-fascist demonstrators, the AfD this year moved its meeting to the regional town of Riesa, in Saxony, where the party received 38 percent of the vote in the 2024 state elections.
Fascists lead the AfD. Its unofficial “führer”, Björn Höcke, who has been convicted for using Nazi slogans at rallies, has long won the fight for control over the party. Research last year by Bavarian Broadcasting, a media company, <a href="https://www.br.de/presse/inhalt/pressemitteilungen/afd-recherche-bundestag-mitarbeitende-rechtsextrem-100.html">found</a>
that the AfD employs more than 100 hardcore Nazis in the German parliament, including activists and organisers of street fighting groups.
The AfD dreams of a German ethnostate, to be realised through mass deportations of non-ethnic Germans. This plan to “return millions of foreigners to their homeland is no secret”, admitted AfD Brandenburg chair René Springer last year. “It is a promise.” 
Indeed, Höcke boasts of projecting a “politics of well-tempered cruelty”.
Two anti-fascist campaigns organised the blockades in Riesa under the slogan “Prevent the AfD conference!” Stand Up to Racism is a historic campaign formally supported by the Social Democrats, Greens and trade unions; Resist was formed last year to organise the blockades of the AfD conference in Essen.
An important development this year was the formation of Students Against the Right, which recently called mass student general meetings to oppose the AfD and mobilise for Riesa. Waiting for one of the dozens of buses from Berlin organised by the students, Phil Butland, a member of Socialism from Below and a contributor to the Left Berlin, told Red Flag:
“There were meetings at three Berlin universities where there were 4,000 at them [in total]. They were just student union meetings, but they were the biggest student union meetings in years.” 
Similar meetings across the country attracted thousands more.
“Most, if not all, also passed a motion on Palestine at the same meeting”, Butland said. “I think people were mainly there for the AfD thing, but it shows how much things have shifted at German universities that people who weren’t there for Palestine voted for a pro-Palestine motion.”
Once its fleet of buses arrived, the Berlin “finger” was stopped by the police for over an hour. As dawn broke, it finally began its march toward Riesa. A young, first-time protester told Red Flag that he knew he had to go when he saw the blockades advertised: “[The AfD] stand against everything that I stand for ... I’m scared of fascists, and even more scared of fascists that are successful with what they do”.
Amid economic stagnation, politics in Germany—and across Europe—has shifted sharply to the right. Racism has been used to paint refugees and immigrants, rather than bosses and landlords, as responsible for rising unemployment and rents.
It is not just the far right that is fuelling this shift. In 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz argued for Germany to “finally deport on a mass scale”, and since his ruling coalition collapsed, all major parties apart from the crisis-ridden left-wing Die Linke (The Left) have begun a racist election campaign of which the AfD could be the primary beneficiaries. Prioritising campaigning for February’s snap election, however, Die Linke had a notably small presence in Riesa.
On the other hand, the trade unions were very visible. Germany’s second-largest union, ver.di, refunded half the cost of its members’ bus tickets and publicly promoted the blockades. There was even a small group called Tesla Auto Workers Against Fascism. 
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promoting the AfD, but while he shared a livestream from inside the conference hall to his X account, outside, the Tesla workers who generate his wealth staffed the barricades.
After a couple of hours, sub-zero temperatures began to wear down the blockaders, but photos of a near-completely empty conference hall generated a triumphant mood. Unfortunately, this did not last long. Blockaders were cleared by police, who attacked with truncheons, pepper spray and dogs, Berlin’s Daily Newspaper <a href="https://taz.de/Protest-gegen-AfD-Parteitag/!6058447/">reported</a>. Nam Duy Nguyen, a Die Linke parliamentary observer, was beaten unconscious.
Protesters then marched through the town, carrying signs that read, “Björn Höcke is a Nazi” and “Stop the AfD-Nazis!” Red Flag spoke to Ahmed Shah, a member of Socialism from Below and a longstanding anti-fascist campaigner. “If Nazis march, and you don’t do anything, they grow”, he said. “So you have to act.”
With the fascist Freedom Party forming a government in neighbouring Austria and Donald Trump stepping into the White House, the far right is on the march. Days after its conference, the emboldened AfD distributed election flyers in the form of deportation tickets. 
The blockades in Riesa were important, but more actions will be needed.

Leon Whitehead

Inside an anti-fascist blockade in Germany

These French governments just fly past, don’t they? Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, the expected lifespan of a prime minister has gone from three years to three months. Michel Barnier, the latest PM to fall victim to the rolling political, social and constitutional crisis that is the Macron presidency, was appointed in September and kicked out in time to spend Christmas with his family. His predecessor, Gabriel Attal, lasted a comparatively Methuselean six months. Projecting this rate of decline forward, some online statisticians estimate that the duration of the next French government will be somewhere below zero weeks, potentially triggering a crisis in the space-time continuum on top of the political disorder.
Macron called a midyear snap election to disorganise the left-wing opposition. The move backfired. Support for Macron’s coalition collapsed. An increase in support for the far-right National Rally was outpaced by anti-fascist and anti-neoliberal sentiment, the election bringing a surprise victory for the left-wing Popular Front coalition.
In response, Macron carried out a typically high-handed anti-democratic stunt. Claiming that “nobody had won” the election, he spent weeks locking the various parties into “consultations”. Finally, he appointed as his new prime minister an aged operative of the right-wing Republican Party—a party that had just won 3.8 percent of the vote.
Michel Barnier’s new government was completely dependent on far-right support. He had previously distinguished himself in politics by endorsing some of the most extreme and unconstitutional anti-migrant politics of the far right, including a five-year moratorium on immigration. Marine Le Pen, leader of the quasi-fascist National Rally party, noted approvingly that the new PM was “respectful” of National Rally and its supporters. Her offsider, Jordan Bardella, noted with pleasure that the Barnier government would operate “under surveillance” from the far right, who could bring it down at any moment.
For the fascists, the Barnier government provided a means to implement aspects of their anti-immigrant, pro-cop agenda while remaining unsullied by formal collaboration with Macron. For Macron, Barnier’s main qualification seemed to be that, unlike most other candidates for the prime ministerial post, he would retain Macron’s hated neoliberal pension reforms. Barnier embodied the symbiotic relationship between Macron’s neoliberal authoritarians and the French far right, for all that those forces denounce each other demagogically.
France’s broad reformist left is unusual: its most influential and biggest part is also the most left wing. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s pugnacious electoral outfit, France Unbowed, is the main force on the French left. It drags behind it the Greens and France’s ancient, decrepit Socialist Party, whose leaders are constantly tormented by the desire to break with the coalition and return to “respectable” centre politics. When Barnier’s appointment proved Macron’s desire to completely ignore popular concerns, protests broke out throughout France. The left spoke in strong terms: France Unbowed, and others around its region of the left, called the move a “coup against democracy”.
But the reformist left did not rise to the level of its own rhetoric. The midyear elections proved there is strong social support, especially in the big cities, for a left-wing, anti-racist political program. The entire Macron presidency has proven the willingness of workers, students and the oppressed to mobilise in protests, occupations and serious, prolonged strike movements. France faces the real prospect of fascist governments and presidencies. The left-reformist coalition, and particularly France Unbowed, have articulated a pretty coherent anti-racist, left-reformist program, and backed it up with impressive speech making and disruptive parliamentary operations. They have helped cohere and shape a left-wing current in French society that is in better health than what is found in many other imperialist countries. They have scored important victories—including the electoral defeat of the far right this year. But speech making and parliamentary interventions are not sufficient to confront a growing fascist menace in a country experiencing what is effectively a permanent political crisis.
France Unbowed’s main response to the Barnier government was to move repeated no-confidence motions, exposing his dependence on the far right each time the National Rally voted to keep him in power. Now, after Barnier proposed an austerity budget, the far right have decided to bring him down. 
Time after time in France, as social struggles are converted into parliamentary crises, the initiative has passed to the far right. This was true even of the electoral mobilisations, where mass support for a left-wing government was in part defused by Macron’s long procrastination in nominating a new government. It is even more true of the strikes and protests that have been a recurring feature of Macron’s presidency. Both Macron and Le Pen tend to passively wait out the big eruptions of social struggle. It is much easier for right-wing forces—both of the neoliberal and far-right variety—to get away with their political tricks when the streets are empty of protesters, strikers have gone back to work, and the only path to resolve social problems seems to be the state.
The causes of the crisis are not hard to understand. Macron’s commitment to neoliberal austerity politics is confronting a population that consistently rejects his program. Macron’s refusal to back down requires him to engage in more daring experiments with the anti-democratic provisions of the French constitution, and with racist scapegoating. This has fuelled the rise of the far right along with the revival of a social-democratic left. None of these currents can claim a complete social majority. The best weapon of the left is its capacity to mobilise workers and the oppressed in joint struggle, regardless of the rhythm and schedule of elections, and in defiance of the law and constitution if necessary. A significant national strike against Barnier’s austerity budget—a strike that continued even after Barnier had resigned—shows the capacity for resistance to develop and grow remains.
The crisis is likely to deepen. France’s economy is under serious pressure, and not only from the familiar effects of neoliberalism. Last year, the fascist Eric Zemmour, interviewed on Le Grand Jury, analysed the French economy from a different perspective: “France has managed to bring its artillery production from 1,000 to 3,000 shells per month”, he explained. “You must know that Ukraine consumes 5,000 shells a day, and that the Russians produce a million shells a year. Voilà: the balance of forces.” 
Macron, the military-industrial hawk of Europe, sees things in similar terms. Late last year, he spoke of the need for a “long-term war economy” in France. France aims to triple its annual manufacturing of 155mm shells; Russia produces more of its equivalent than all the EU combined. Macron’s project of bringing down the debt and deficit while ramping up military production will require economic sacrifices.
“We have rediscovered what great nations can do: realise the impossible”, Macron said at the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral. The ceremony did not necessarily provide the symbolic moment of optimism and hopefulness that was intended. Barnier’s government had fallen, and no replacement had been appointed. Macron’s audience included firefighters and priests. It also included President-elect Donald Trump, whose concept of a “great nation” is largely shared by France’s far right and may define future French governments. With him was Volodymyr Zelenskyy; his besieged nation’s need for artillery shells and air defence systems foreshadows how imperialist war is likely to reshape world politics in the coming years.

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