As in the cartoons of Goscinny and Uderzo, there are on German social networks a village that still resists and always?, To the invader. The village, in this case, is actually a person, who has achieved both on Instagram and Tiktok, spaces co -opted for a long time by the extreme right, generate a kind of Gallic Oasis. Heidi Reichinnek, candidate and collide of Die Linke, is since the beginning of the year the visible face of a policy in the German left that months ago was estimated unimaginable, perhaps utopian. Not anymore. Die Linke has achieved almost 9% of the vote. And it is partly thanks to social networks. With more than half a million followers on Tiktok, Reichinnek’s videos exceed one million visits. His speech in the German Parliament after the CDU candidate and surely future Foreign Minister, Friedrich Merz, was seen, only in this social network, for more than six and a half million people, some figures that fail to reach Alice Weidel or their Party, the Ultra -rightist AFD (alternative by Germany).
A few months ago, and especially after one of its leaders, Sarah Wagenknecht, left the game to set up a new game, nobody would bet in favor of Die Linke even had representation in the Bundestag after the elections that will take place in Germany this Sunday. But something has changed in recent weeks. Since the beginning of the year, more than 23,000 people have joined the party, the largest militancy of the last 15 yearsand Die Linke has exceeded in more than three points the 5% that any German formation requires to access Bundestag.
A few days ago, journalist Birgit Großekathöfer, from German magazine The mirrorhe went to an act of Die Linke in Hamburg. The attendees did not stop chanting the name of their new promise, Heidi. In a separate one, Großekathöfer asked Jan van Aken, collide and party candidate, how he explained the renewed energy in his ranks. “I would also like to know,” said Van Aken. Despite the surprise, Diene Linke’s candidate knew the answer. “Here Heidi Reichinnek is celebrated as a pop star”the journalist later told what Van Aken replied: “Heidi is the queen, the Queen of Bundestag and, of course, he reaches millions of young people with her videos of Tiktok and I think that gives them hope.”
But it is not only Die Linke exvertants who have been attracted to the party again. Heidi, as his followers call her, has become the visible face of the opposition to the democratians of CDU and, above all, to the extreme right of alternative by Germany. At 36, Reichinnek has managed to confront the ultras ideas that Alice Weidel has imposed and that are unable to counteract the rest of the formations, nor the social democrats of the current chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Also in The mirrorSabine Rennefanz describes the voter profile well that, despite having never imagined voting to the left, he feels attracted to his figure: “If one listens to Reichinnek’s famous speech again, he is not surprised by his acute rhetoric ( “To the barricades”), its controversy and its exaggeration. If you do not think that the joint vote between the CDU/CSU and the AFD is a “pact”, even if you do not think that the AFD is the resurrection of fascism, you have to say that there is someone who speaks to whom it is absolutely necessary to listen, who, who It distils authority in what it says. It seems genuinely annoying“.
The tandem formed by Van Aken and Reichinnek has managed to correct Die Linke’s agonizing course thanks to a clear speech that, in addition, turns on the spark of that part of youth, especially women, who resists adhering to the theses of the extreme right. Die Linke has been the most voted party for young people between 18 and 24 years old. During his famous speech at Bundestag, Heidi won respect with a speech that in another context could sound incendiary, despite not lacking truthfulness. “The firewall of this country is still us. And we will all go out, we will all go to the polls. To the barricades!”he pronounced from the gallery. In a time of rethinking, the German left understood that he had to leave academicism to return to recover its site among the popular classes. Hence Jan van Aken is also a defender of concise language against populism of the extreme right. As they remember in the German newspaper Daily mirrorDuring the last Die Linke Congress in Autumn, he appeared before the delegates with a statement not lack of intentions. “My name is Jan van Aken and I think there should be no billionaires”said.
Van Aken’s sentence over billionaires is not only a lapidary phrase, but the central point of Die Linke’s program. Faced with the speeches that seek to blame migrants, the party on the left wants to return to economic inequality in the center of the debate. Jan van Aken and Heidi Reichinnek They want to reduce the richness of billionaires in ten years. They would do it through a progressive tax for the richest people. The resulting income, they say, would be used to finance, for example, education and public transport.
This Monday, Jan van Aken proudly assured that the left had returned to Germany. He said it at a press conference with Reichinnek, whom one can also know looking at the tattoos that wear his left arm, or his “political arm,” she defined. There, among other things, the ink draws Nefertiti’s face with a gas mask, in memory of the Egyptian protesters suffered by tear gas during the revolts of the Arab spring in Cairo, where she was; And the portrait of Rosa Luxembourg, his “political model”, accompanied by his historic statement “Eure Ordnung Ist AUF Sand Gebaut” (“Your order is built on the sand”).
