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The bourgeois' bogeyman is currently Red-Red-Green (RRG). The exploratory flirtation between the SPD, the Greens and the Left in Berlin and the red-red-green coalition plans in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have made many people's blood run cold. But the fear may be unfounded. Because where these three parties want to work together, internal conflicts, weaknesses and breaking points quickly arise.
Subtle companionship with the AfD?
The city of Dortmund is currently demonstrating this. There, RRG achieved a majority in the city council in the local elections a year ago. With this power, it was quickly agreed that the newly elected CDU mayor Alexander Kalouti should be sidelined and reduced to an episode without consequences. However, the left front began to crack as soon as it began to exert its power. The Left Party and the Greens in particular chose a course of ostentatious ostracism towards the Christian Democrat Kalouti. In a kind of subtle cronyism, he trivializes the AfD and would like to tear down the firewall. In doing so, he is damaging democracy, which is morally difficult to tolerate. But as we all know, moral self-assurance comes before a fall. And so it was not Kalouti's Christian Democrats who first attacked the firewall in Dortmund, but the Left and the Greens.
These two, of all people, voted together with the AfD in the finance committee against a proposal from the administration - and brought it down. Without the AfD, the Left and the Greens would not have achieved a majority. Up until now, the larger parties in the city council had agreed that no majority would be accepted that only came about with the help of the AfD. The CDU is sticking to this agreement. She has even taken her own proposals off the agenda if she could only have implemented them with the AfD - unlike the Greens and Dark Reds.
Red-red-green outrage is losing credibility
From now on, the CDU will of course rub this double standard under their noses. There are individuals in the CDU parliamentary group who ask in a low voice why they should continue to pay so much attention to the AfD's voting behavior. In Cologne, the Christian Democrats there also indicated this week that they no longer wanted to look quite so closely at the AfD city councilors in future votes.
In any case, RRG's outrageous rhetoric in Dortmund is hardly credible anymore. But that was foreseeable. The Greens and the Left often despise the AfD so unthinkingly that they (unlike the CDU) no longer even pay attention to it. And so they failed to notice in the Finance Committee that the AfD wanted to vote with them. The dark red-green indignation may have noble motivations. But in the Dortmund Left Front he lacked the critical corrective so much that he clouded perception. Not an isolated case. The Greens in the European Parliament also voted together with AfD members this year and, in the federal government, with the AfD, among others, forced the Mercosur free trade agreement to be submitted to the ECJ. And as luck would have it: Among the Greens parliamentarians in the European Parliament in question was Terry Reintke - for whom the Dortmund Greens parliamentary group leader Katrin Lögering worked as regional office manager for several years.
SPD must break out of the Left Front
Last week in Dortmund provided further evidence of RRG's internal weaknesses. The council implemented a project by mayor Kalouti that received nationwide attention: Dortmund was the first city to ban all begging around restaurants. The SPD helped this plan gain a majority. Just as she cautiously supports Kalouti's massive upgrade project for the city's public order service and his fight against abuse of social benefits, or recently at least signaled a willingness to cooperate in individual economic policy projects. The SPD had also adopted the “RRG against Kalouti” pose for a long time.
But there is a crack in the SPD. Not everyone in the party sees themselves as part of an ideologically connected left-wing front. The closer the comrades are to their base, the more they develop a sense of pragmatic problem solving and a sense of the concerns of the entire urban society. When the city's restaurateurs almost without exception complain that begging is ruining their business, when broad majorities clearly want more order and cleanliness, then these Social Democrats do not want to and cannot close their ears (which is what the CDU is counting on). And so they sometimes enable the CDU man in the town hall to gain majorities in the city council. Because the old People's Party gene is still at work in the SPD (despite all the election results), it cannot fit into the Left Front as seamlessly as the left wing of the party would like.
Attractive alternative to the Left Front?
Also with a view to its potential voters, it must open itself up to a certain extent to the concerns of the majority. Inevitably, it helps the CDU competition to achieve success in Dortmund. And the Christian Democrats are using this to present themselves as an attractive alternative to the Left Front. RRG can serve as an excellent opportunity for citizens to raise their profile.
Of course, RRG is different in a big city than in the state or federal government. But one conclusion should apply beyond Dortmund: it is far from certain that left-wing fronts work.
