Looks familiar? Old habits die hard it seems.
Posted on 01/26/2014 7:03:05 AM PST by cunning_fish
BERLIN—In a redrawn political landscape dominated by an alliance between Germany's two main parties, Chancellor Angela Merkel's most prominent opponent is now a 66-year-old former communist with a silver tongue and dreams of finally ending his party's fringe status.
Gregor Gysi, a Berlin lawyer, is parliamentary leader of the radical Left Party—the largest opposition party remaining in the lower house of parliament, or Bundestag. That accords him the right to respond first to Ms. Merkel after she addresses lawmakers—a
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Germany’s politics are a lot more complicated than two colors on a map, but its worth pointing out that the opposition in Germany is also opposed to the Euro and the European Union framework.
Yep, I’ve been there and they seems like missing a Soviet jackboot much. Even a soccer teams in East Germany are still featuring standardized Russian names and symbolics. All they are talking about are ‘rich capitalists’ from the west who ‘stolen a country’ from them. People in their 40s looks like a few sane persons. Old folks are all-communist and the younger, surprisingly, are pretty intensively red too.
It used to be the East German SozialEinheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) - Socialist Unity Party Of Germany - the Communist-dominated unity party created out of the merger of German Communists and Social Democrats in the Soviet Zone of Germany after World War II.
Its strongest in the former East Germany though through rebranding, its made some headway in West Germany. The reason the SPD doesn’t want it as a coalition partner is because of its Communist past. Its the one party in Germany no one wants to ally themselves with. Nowadays it called Die Linke - German for The Left.
The “Wall of the Mind” still very much exists in Germany.
They still have Karl Marx Allee in Eastern Berlin.
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