http://www.signandsight.com/intodaysfeuilletons/236.html
Die Welt, 30.06.2005
"The 'Linkspartei', the new party of the Left, is neither new nor Left". So begins a public condemnation of the new leftist alliance spearheaded by Gregor Gysi (former chairman of the PDS, the successor to the Communist Party of East Germany) and Oskar Lafontaine (former SPD finance minister and rival of Chancellor Schröder) signed by a group of writers, Hans Christoph Buch, Wolf Biermann, Klaus Harpprecht, Uwe Kolbe, Günter Kunert, Gert Loschütz, Monika Maron and Peter Schneider. The authors accuse Gysi and Lafontaine of right-wing populist sentiment, peddling in social fear and xenophobia. "It is telling that the PDS in East Germany did nothing against the rampant xenophobia, but rubbed its hands gleefully behind closed doors -side by side with the neo-Nazis of the NPD (German Nationalist Party). The convergence of Left and far Right ideology is more than just an election manoeuvre. The no of the PDS to the European constitution indicates this just as clearly as Lafontaine's objection to reunification."
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1635714,00.html
German Leftist Movement Gaining Ground
>...Seeking support from the right?
Lafontaine is, however, currently attracting criticism in the German media for making what his detractors have described as a bid for votes from the far right. In a speech warning about job losses in Germany, he used the Nazi-tainted term "Fremdarbeiter" when speaking of foreign workers.
The President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, condemned Lafontaine's use of the term. He said he could understand that parties would try to gain support from the right; the question was with what means, Spiegel told the Netzeitung.
Lafontaine's word choice further fed criticism of the leftist alliance by a coalition of German writers and intellectuals.
"The new leftist party is neither new nor leftist, just as the PDS, despite its name, does not stand for democratic socialism," a statement released by the coalition on Wednesday read.
"The new Left Party is neither new nor left, just as the PDS, for all that it calls itself so, does not stand for democratic socialism. On the contrary: the successor party of the SED has so halfheartedly distanced itself from the DDR police state, including the wall and the shooting orders, as its banner personality, Gregor Gysi from his Stasi contacts. And there is an unintentionally comic aspect to the PDS's propaganda for a return to the west German welfare state that it once so bitterly opposed. The link with Oskar Lafontaine makes this politics no more credible, since the globalized world and the European Union leave no way back to the bygone national state, which hopes to create social security through closed borders. So viewed, Oskar Lafontaine's talk of "foreign workers" who supposedly take butter from the bread of German employees was no error, but a revelation: Lafontaine is trudging along with Jürgen P. Möllemann and other populists on the social right. It is indicative that the PDS in the East of Germany has done nothing against the rising xenophobia. It just rubbed its clammy hands: side by side with the Neonazis of the NPD. The convergence of left- and rightwing extreme ideology is no longer just an electoral maneuver: the PDS's no to the European constitution is as indicative as Lafontaine's stance towards reunification. Were our citizens' insecurity to move them towards populistic demagogues and anti-Europeans like Gysi and Lafontaine, then democracy in the Federal Republic would be threatened as it was in the Weimar Republic."