Right-wing extremist electoral successes and left-wing victory in Berlin: Housing shortage, Pope's visit and Stolperstein dispute in Saxony

When right-wing extremists win elections, as was the case recently in Saxony-Anhalt, large parts of the so-called middle class like to say that we now have to listen, take the concerns of citizens seriously and, if in doubt, tighten asylum policy. This is how Robert Pausch summed it up in “Zeit”. When the Left wins, as it did in Berlin last Sunday, this is what happens: The managing director of the New Social Market Economy Initiative writes that Berliners have "chosen the caliphate." The "Bild" comments on a video by the left's top candidate Elif Eralp with: "Evil, how it dances and laughs."

It is true that prominent members of the Left Party have relativized anti-Semitism. Ferat Koçak, a member of the Bundestag from Neukölln, has not yet been able to conclusively explain his connections to the extremist “United Palestinian National Committee” (more on this here). The severity of the attacks, however, suggests that some people are less concerned about Jewish life in the German capital than about discrediting a political opponent.

On Friday evening, at a special party conference, the Berlin Left voted with a large majority to hold exploratory talks with the SPD and the Greens about forming a government. The Greens have already shown themselves to be open to negotiations. “Berlin is waiting for a stable government,” said the state executive. If the SPD also agrees to talks, they could begin next week.

For seven decades, María del Carmen Abascal lived in her apartment at 46 Calle Alcalde Sainz de Baranda in Madrid's Retiro district. Her parents rented the apartment in 1956; del Carmen Abascal was 17 years old at the time. Franco still ruled Spain. A real estate company bought the building in 2018. Del Carmen Abascal suddenly could no longer afford the rent. The new owners tried several times to evict them from the apartment. Although even the UN stood up for the pensioner, her apartment was actually evicted this week.

Del Carmen Abascal, known in Spain as Maricarmen, has now become a symbol of a crisis that extends far beyond the country's borders: the housing shortage. Not only in Spain's capital Madrid, but in many major European cities, rents have risen dramatically in recent years (more on this here). Politicians can hardly find an answer to this anywhere. In Madrid, the police used pepper spray against activists who were campaigning for Maricarmen.

In Berlin, the Left probably won the election because it promised to combat the housing crisis - for example, by implementing a referendum on the expropriation of real estate companies (more on that here). The other parties are now working primarily on the left. What is missing are concepts on how to answer the big social question of our time.

Pope Leo XIV has been in France since yesterday and will stay until Monday (more on that here). The highlight of his trip, however, is likely to come today: in the early afternoon he will hold a mass on the Place de la Concorde, in the heart of Paris, where more than half a million people are expected.

The separation of church and state is sacred to the French. Secularism has been enshrined in law since 1905. But a papal visit is apparently an event that even many casual Christians don't want to miss. At the same time, a development is taking place in France that my colleague Nadia Pantel has just described in a report: right-wing politicians such as Eric Zemmour and Nicolas Sarkozy are discovering faith for themselves (more on this here).

It is a Catholicism that has little in common with Leo's preaching of mercy and charity. Rather, as Nadia summarizes, it's about giving your own claim to power a religious veneer. “The noise about Catholicism is less about wooing a Catholic electorate,” she writes. "Rather, the invocation of Christian France serves the right as a strategy to embed 'foreigners out' in a narrative of its own cultural superiority."

The whole story here: Mary and the strong men

...are the CDU city councilors in Heidenau, Saxony, who, together with the AfD, probably prevented new stumbling blocks from being laid in the city in memory of the Nazi victims. The cross-party motion stated that many citizens, relatives and initiatives would find stumbling blocks to be “not appropriate”. Instead, commemorations should preferably take place in the city's northern cemetery. Christoph Heubner, the executive vice president of the International Auschwitz Committee, described the decision as a "shabby attempt to once again throw Heidenau victims of the Nazis out of the city and to dispose of them where, in the opinion of the AfD, remembrance has long belonged: in the cemetery." Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer, however, avoided any criticism of his CDU party friends. "If a municipality decides on a different form of commemoration, that is their right and free right," he said through a spokesman. What was it like again with the CDU's fight against anti-Semitism and for remembering?

City council bans new stumbling blocks in Heidenau, Saxony - CDU and AfD probably voted together