Comment by Labour Affairs: The BSW is the only genuine left party in Germany. It advocates peace and anti-imperialism, freedom of expression and distances itself from fashionable identity politics. As such it is far more of a threat to the German political class than other so-called left parties and unlike the AfD it advocates socialist policies for Germany. Below is a selection from recent bulletins.

The BSW stands for freedom of expression.

Freedom of expression in Germany is coming under increasing attack. The latest case involves a search of the home of conservative media scientist and columnist Norbert Bolz. In an obviously ironic post on X, Bolz responded to an article in the ‘taz’ newspaper about the AfD with the headline ‘Germany awakens’ with the sentence ‘Good translation of “woke”: Germany awaken!’. Although this was clearly a recognisable quote, the Berlin public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into the possible use of the Nazi slogan ‘Germany awaken’. Almost two years after this post, the Berlin police suddenly turned up at Bolz’s door in the morning and searched his flat. How crazy is that?!

This incident, which was triggered by a report to the state platform ‘Hessen gegen Hetze’ (Hesse against hate speech), shows once again that the toxic mix of state-imposed measures to combat ‘hate and hate speech’, media-fuelled denunciation of unpopular opinions and judicial arbitrariness is a threat to freedom of expression in our country.  Organised denunciation is a tool of dictatorships, not democracies. We must not allow the corridor of opinion to become ever narrower and freedom of expression to fall victim to the instrumental use of vague terms such as ‘hate and incitement’. We need to restore a social climate in which every citizen can express their opinion freely without fear of exclusion or repression. As the BSW, we demand the abolition of reporting centres and their funding with taxpayers’ money!

The federal government is committing economic suicide

With its sanctions against Russia, the federal government is committing economic suicide. Since 2022, production in energy-intensive sectors such as the chemical industry in Germany has slumped by almost 20 per cent. The trend is downward. But instead of sourcing inexpensive Russian pipeline gas again, the CDU/SPD coalition is plunging us deeper and deeper into dependence on expensive US fracking gas, putting hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk. In the podcast with Salim Samatou, I talk about the madness and hypocrisy of German politics and the need for a recount, which would most likely result in the BSW entering the Bundestag and thus cost Chancellor Merz his majority in parliament. (Labour Affairs note: the BSW failed to reach the threshold for Bundestag representation by around 9,000 votes nationwide at the last general election and there are suspicions of sharp practice at the polling booths. BSW is calling for a recount.

The Chancellor and drone disinformation. Merz is lying!

Drones over the airports in Frankfurt and Munich, over military sites in northern Germany and Denmark – for weeks, reports of unidentified flying objects in German and European airspace piled up. During his appearance on the TV show Miosga, Chancellor Merz stated: ‘Our assumption is that Russia is behind most of these drone flights.’ But is that really true? 

A closer look at the incidents reveals that almost everywhere, reports of alleged ‘Russian drones’ turned out to be unfounded in retrospect. Nevertheless, for weeks they have been cited by politicians and the mainstream media as ultimate proof that Putin wants to invade NATO and that we urgently need to continue arming ourselves. The fact that at the time of the Miosga broadcast it was already clear that a hobby pilot was behind the incidents in Frankfurt and that the authorities in Denmark doubted whether the ‘flying objects’ were drones at all did not change the fact that Merz highlighted these two cases in particular to warn of a supposed threat from Russia.

In other words, the Chancellor lied. And he did so in front of an audience of millions. But how does this fit in with the German government’s commitment in its coalition agreement to combat the ‘deliberate dissemination of false factual claims’? And where are the ‘fact checkers’ who are usually at the ready to combat ‘disinformation’? The lesson to be learned from this story: let’s not allow ourselves to be taken for fools, and certainly not be talked into a war!

Privileged people lecturing those affected? The debate about life in our cities is absurd

How hypocritical is it when privileged people from affluent neighbourhoods try to convince those who, unlike them, are confronted with the consequences of failed integration on a daily basis that there are no problems in our cities? And how contradictory is it that those who see themselves as champions of women’s emancipation are the ones who downplay the danger of radical Islamism for women? In an interview with WELT TV, I talk about the urban landscape debate, measures to limit migration, and Friedrich Merz’s citizen’s income reforms, which primarily affect those who are currently losing their jobs due to the federal government’s miserable economic policy.