Joel, nice article, but the Protestant theologian who told you this:
"“They were probably Ossis"
is dopy fucktard.
Wessi assholes like to convince themselves that they're so multicultural and tolerant, and that racism is a strictly Eastern phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's a classist bias inherent in the way that middle-class Wessi wankers spew about the alleged racism of the East.
As my political science teacher eloquently put it, the only difference is that in the East the Nazis are organized into street gangs or separate parties, whereas in the West the Nazis are all in the CDU and CSU.
BTW, the study alleging anti-Semitism in Die Linke is a joke, a 15-page pamphlet that doesn't even manage to prove its own thesis, namely whether Die Linke is anti-Semitic according to the EUMC guidelines on anti-Semitism.
The authors, Sebastian Vogt and Samuel Salzborn, are neo-conservative douchebags.
And I say that as somebody who's known for a rather ambiguous attitude toward the Palestinian national cause. The slander about Die Linke being anti-Semitic is just vicious anti-communism.