In September, the Left Party took part in the largest demonstration so far against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Berlin. This was a deliberate deception. Beneath a few cynical phrases about “peace” and “human rights,” the Left Party supports Israel’s war of extermination against the Palestinians and the imperialist redivision of the Middle East.
This is made brutally clear by its jubilation over the “peace plan” for Gaza drawn up by US President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu—a colonial diktat that entrenches the occupation, suppresses Palestinian self-determination and turns Gaza into a protectorate supervised by Washington.
“It is good news,” declared Left Party leader Jan van Aken, calling on the German government to “put its full political weight behind” the implementation of all phases of the plan. His co-chair, Ines Schwerdtner, added that Germany and the EU should “take part in rebuilding Gaza” and that “war crimes and crimes against humanity by both Hamas and Israel” must be prosecuted and punished.
These statements alone speak volumes about the pro-imperialist character of the Left Party: not a word about the genocidal nature of Israel’s campaign of annihilation, no demand for the withdrawal of occupation forces, no mention of the wider war aims of the imperialist powers. Instead, there is the usual conflation of oppressor and oppressed, the tired mantra of the “international community” as an allegedly neutral arbiter, and the empty talk of “reconstruction”—which in reality means the recolonisation of the Middle East.
The Left Youth (Linksjugend) is even clearer. In a lengthy post, it hails Trump’s 20-point plan as a “chance for peace,” paraphrases its main points—the disarmament of Hamas, destruction of its infrastructure, deployment of international security forces, Israeli buffer zones, transitional administration by an “international peace council” and a Palestinian commission detached from Hamas—and declares openly: “Hamas must now agree and lay down its arms!”
In doing so, it sells as “stability” the military crushing and political disempowerment of the Palestinian resistance, the permanent presence of foreign troops, and the control of Gaza by a body directed from Washington. Even the acceptance of Israeli buffer zones is justified, while the supposed “neutrality” of the imperialist powers is lauded. A token qualification at the end (“no permanent international administration”) serves only as a fig leaf after the youth organisation has already endorsed not only the genocide but the entire colonial plan accompanying it.
“Any agreement that ends the dying in Gaza as quickly as possible is to be welcomed in principle!” writes the Left Youth. And further: “We expressly welcome the fact that the 20-point plan provides important steps towards de-escalation and humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip.”
The first hours after the signing of the plan in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh have already shown how criminal this statement is.
On Monday and Tuesday, Israeli forces killed at least seven Palestinians in Gaza despite the “ceasefire.” Medical sources confirmed to Al Jazeera that Israeli snipers shot dead five people in the Shejaiya district of Gaza City on Tuesday, claiming they had “neutralised a threat.” Israel has also again restricted food supplies to the starving Palestinian population because Hamas has so far been unable to locate amid Gaza’s ruins and hand over the remains of all hostages killed.
The “peace plan” is the next stage of the Israeli-imperialist project to dominate Gaza and violently suppress the national rights of the Palestinian people. It transforms the enclave into a colonial protectorate under US supervision, legalises the destruction of Palestinian resistance, and explicitly reserves the right to continued Israeli occupation measures. To call this “peace” is to take part politically in the continuation of genocide.
That the Left Party and its youth organisation embrace this plan is not a political aberration but the logical outcome of their entire orientation. The same party that today celebrates Trump’s colonial diktats as “good news” has itself been a key driver of German militarism at home and abroad.
In March, the Left Party voted in parliament for the largest rearmament package since Hitler—even though its votes were not needed. The constitutional amendment effectively removed the debt brake on military spending, diverting hundreds of billions into war and armaments.
At the time, the Left Party’s lead candidate and current parliamentary chair, Heidi Reichinnek, made it unmistakably clear: “The Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] must be properly equipped as a defence army”; the party was ready “to discuss calmly what the Bundeswehr needs” in order to “meet requirements.” Anyone who speaks and acts like this differs in no essential way from the governing parties, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD); they are, in effect, part of the government.
In May, the Left Party cleared the way for the most right-wing German government since the fall of the Nazi regime. After Friedrich Merz failed to win in the first parliamentary ballot, the Left Party ensured that a second round could proceed immediately.
“We enabled the vote to protect democracy,” boasted Bodo Ramelow, former Thuringia minister-president and leading member of the Left Party. The party’s former parliamentary chair Dietmar Bartsch exulted, “Today chaos was prevented!” In reality, the Left Party thereby installed and stabilised a government that is making Germany “fit for war” once again, expanding the police state, and carrying out an historic assault on social conditions—while working ever more openly with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
This trajectory has a long history. The Left Party is not a left-wing, let alone a socialist party. As the World Socialist Web Site has long explained, it is a bourgeois organisation representing the interests of the state apparatus and privileged upper-middle-class layers, supporting German capitalism and imperialism, and rewarded for this with ministerial posts and state funding. Its roots lie in the SED, the Stalinist party of state in the former East Germany, which in 1990 organised capitalist restoration in East Germany and thereby laid the basis for the return of German militarism. Wherever it has governed—Berlin, Bremen, Thuringia—it has implemented social cuts, deportations and stepped up the repressive powers of the state.
In foreign policy, the Left Party has sided with Germany’s great-power interests on every decisive issue. With the German Institute for International and Security Affairs paper “New Power–New Responsibility,” drawn up with its participation, Germany’s aggressive global strategy was formulated; leading Left Party figures subsequently endorsed regime-change wars, arms deliveries and military deployments.
On Palestine, its Bundestag group unanimously backed the pro-Israel parliamentary resolution of October 12, 2023, declaring Israel’s “security” to be a “state affair” for Germany, just like the government itself, and demanding repression of pro-Palestinian activists. In March 2024, Reichinnek invoked Israel’s “right to self-defence” in the Bundestag and called for Hamas’ disarmament. Today, she celebrates the implementation of that same goal as a “peace plan.”
For the ruling class, the Left Party serves another central function in enforcing its war policy. It acts as a buffer and an instrument of suppression against any independent mobilisation of the working class. It channels opposition to fascism, war and social devastation into the safe confines of parliamentary manoeuvres and legitimises militarism and rearmament with rhetoric about “peace” and “democracy.”
Precisely because hundreds of thousands, especially young people, are taking to the streets against the AfD, genocide and war, the Left Party is being courted by sections of the ruling elite and the media to subordinate this resistance to the capitalist state and Germany’s imperialist foreign policy.
The so-called “reconstruction” of Gaza is code for recolonisation—granting concessions, creating security zones, imposing imperial administration, excluding the Palestinian masses from any genuine self-determination, and generating profits for German corporations. When German officials praise Trump’s plan and speak of a “reconstruction conference” under German leadership, they are talking about dividing up the spoils. That is precisely why the Left Party demands that the government “exert pressure,” calls for “international security forces” and German “responsibility.” Its role is to accompany and disguise Germany’s aggressive great-power policies with a veneer of moral concern.
This fraud must be exposed—especially to young people who joined or voted for the Left Party at the time of the last federal election because they genuinely wanted to fight against war, genocide and fascism. They must understand that the Left Party’s pro-imperialist stance is not an accident or the fault of a few right-wing leaders who can be replaced. It flows from its history and class character—from its anchoring in the state apparatus and trade-union bureaucracy and in affluent middle-class layers that defend the capitalist order against the socialist aspirations of workers and youth.
There is therefore no way to “push this party to the left” or “change it from within.” Every pseudo-left group that fosters such illusions bears political responsibility for war, rearmament and repression.
There is only one conclusion: workers and youth must break politically with the Left Party and its milieu and build a genuinely socialist movement. This means organising the struggle against genocide, war and fascism independently of all bourgeois parties—against Trump, German imperialism and its EU allies—and consciously linking this to the fight against the capitalist profit system itself.
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) fight for this perspective: for the international unification of the working class, for the expropriation of the banks and major corporations, for the withdrawal of all occupation forces, for an end to the siege and collective punishment of the Palestinians, for the defence of democratic and social rights, and for the establishment of workers’ governments in Europe, the Middle East and worldwide that organise production and society according to the needs of the majority, not the profit interests of a parasitic oligarchy.