The left meets in Chemnitz: Hurray, we still live!

In the middle of the huge, red stage is the woman, who follows almost 650,000 people on Instagram and who already collected 17 million hearts at Tikkok. Heidi Reichinnek calls, no cries: “The left is back!” And: “It is a damn good feeling of finally winning something again!”

Even if this, in the Chemnitz trade fair, which is common propaganda at a party conference: Reichinnek does not exaggerate. The 37-year-old was a top candidate of a Bundestag election campaign, at the end of which the left was not flew out of parliament as feared, but reached astonishing 8.8 percent. The left, it is actually back.

Reichinnek is not only at the top of a clearly grown faction. It is the new star of a party that was explained to politically dead a year ago – and that is now brimming with self -confidence.

“We will change this country step by step!” Calls Reichinnek. The “Macker” and the “super rich” would now be very scared. Because: “We want to abolish an economic system in which the rich are richer and the poor are getting poorer.” Such a system “has nothing to do with democracy, but nothing.” And yes: if that should be radical – “then we are radical”!

But Reichinnek can not only attack, it also has show qualities. At the end of her speech she spreads her arms with a smile, as if she wanted to hug the whole hall. And she dances across the stage in the colorful floral dress, while the almost 450 delegates cheer her standing.

Also as the official motto of the party congress “Organize Hope” may be on the banners, it is actually: “Hurray, we still live!”. According to its near-existus, the party, which once emerged from the SED successor organization PDS and the SPD branch WAS, wants to finally establish itself in the political system.

The left is big enough for that. “We doubled our number of members this year alone,” says party leader Ines Schwerdtner proudly. 55,000 people joined this year and increased the total number to almost 113,000.

Boys, including many women, came. The average age of the new was 30 years. And: now more than 60 percent of the members come from the old Federal Republic. The party, says Schwerdtner, is now “younger, western and female”.

In fact, the left has done a lot right. It occurs more closely, and the old schism between the faction and the party also seems to have been overcome. In terms of content, it focuses on its core business, ie ideological criticism of capitalism and practically sounding demands such as the “rental cover”. Otherwise, she tries to reactivate her old PDS image as a careless party, with home visits, social consultation hours or a heating cost calculator.

In addition, there is strategic power in the Berlin parliament. Together with the 125 AfD MPs, the 64 left MPs occupy more than a third of the seats. This could block decisions that a second-third majority need-which the Union has already forced the Union for some dislocations. See billions in debt, see Chancellor’s election. After the crashed first ballot, Friedrich Merz had to approach Reichinnek and Schwerdtner: only with the help of the left did the deadline for a quick second ballot occurred without AfD votes.

In short: everything could be beautiful at the left-wing festival in Chemnitz, if it weren’t for the old dispute over the attitude towards Israel. The conflict has already broken the Berlin State Association and repeatedly ensures disputes with the Solid Youth Association.

It was only on Tuesday that the trade unionist Ulrike Eifler, who is sitting on the federal board, posted a map of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank on X, which she provided. The special thing about the graphic, however, was that the limits of Israel could not be recognized. , judged the “Jewish general”.

The federal leadership reacted on Thursday. “The party executive distances itself from every call, every statement and any visual representation that negates the existence of Israel under the guise of solidarity with the Palestinian population or propagates Israel’s wreath,” it said in the decision. All party members are asked not to “publish such representations and to withdraw already published immediately”.

But on Friday, Eifler’s post was still online – and also found supporters in Chemnitz. A young delegate from Bavaria, for example, came to the speaker with Kufiya and complained that the left could not be able to clearly condemn “a genocide”. The decision of the federal board is a declaration of solidarity for an “imperialist, genocidal apartheid state” and “a shame” at all.

The speech was only received, but showed that the conflict was in no way over. Schwerdtner’s co-boss Jan van Aken admitted that the content-related debates had just started. The new party program should have been decided in two years.

Until then, the party has to adjust how to behave in the Bundestag. The decision to enable the quick choice of Merz met with resistance, especially among young MPs and has been criticized several times in Chemnitz. So how will the left behave in the election of constitutional judges and the reform of the debt brake if the Union should approach it again?

The situation in the Federal Council is similarly drawn. The fact that the two state governments in which the left is involved in the opening of the debt brake agreed for military spending caused serious moods at the base, but also on the board. That shouldn’t happen again, said Schwerdtner in Chemnitz.

The party continues to fluctuate between pragmatism, populism and radicalism. In Chemnitz, the class struggle against imperialism, militarism and capitalism, but of course also against the “Faschos” from the AfD and the “right -wing chancellor” Merz was conjured up. In addition, the “progressive legacy of the Soviet Union” was praised.

In the end, however, at the party congress, which continued until Saturday, the intra -party harmony. The focus is already on the local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia in September and the state elections next year in Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

The Bundestag election is said to have been the beginning. “On the left is not over,” called Heidi Reichinnek. “Left is the future!”