WATCH: German Far-Left Chant Antifa Slogans as They Enter Parliament

Riding high off a surprisingly strong result in Germany’s federal elections on Sunday, members of the far-left Die Linke party chanted Antifa slogans as they entered the Bundestag parliament in Berlin on Tuesday.

After facing the prospect of near-complete political irrelevance just several weeks ago, Die Linke (The Left) saw a late surge in the federal election campaign that netted the party around 8.8 per cent of the vote, over double where the radical party was polling just a couple months ago.

Apparently emboldened by their strong showing, MPs gathered with Left leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner and former chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek for a group Bundestag photo in which they chanted the Antifa slogan “alerta, alerta, antifascista!”

The phrase — “attention, attention, anti-fascists” — originated in 1920s Italy among leftist opponents of the Mussolini regime before being picked up in the Weimar Republic by the German leftist-extremist Antifascist Action group, the predecessor of the modern Antifa movement. The phrase is often heard at Antifa rallies worldwide to this day.

The Left’s relatively successful election campaign was driven in large part by young voters flocking to the radical party, a direct descendent of the Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the former Communist East Germany. Die Linke was the most popular party among voters between the ages of 18 and 24 at 25 per cent, beating out the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany at 21 per cent.

The late surge for the far-left party came amid widespread fear mongering from establishment politicians and the legacy media about the rise of the so-called “far-right” AfD.

Following the move by centrist Christian Democrat leader and likely next chancellor Friedrich Merz to join forces with the AfD for a non-binding vote to step up border controls in the wake of a spate of migrant terror attacks, large-scale protests were organised across the country over the breach of the so-called “firewall” prohibiting establishment parties from working with the AfD.

However, despite being painted as an utterly organic representation of opposition to the AfD, it was later reported that many of the protests were organised by groups funded at least in part by the government in Berlin. Die Linke’s main political foundation, the Rosa-Luxembourg Foundation NGO is also reportedly financed by the state to the tune of tens of millions of euros.

Nevertheless, the spectre of the “far-right” was apparently a useful tool for The Left in coaxing young voters to their side, with chancellor candidate Heidi Reichinnek going viral on TikTok for a speech she gave in January criticising Merz for breaking the “firewall” against the AfD.

The resurgence of The Left appears to have come at the cost of former leader Sahra Wagenknecht, who broke away from Die Linke to form her own party last year over disagreements on issues such as mass migration and the war in Ukraine. Despite previous success at the EU elections last year, Wagenknecht’s left-wing anti-mass migration party failed by less than a half per cent to reach the five per cent threshold needed to be awarded seats in the parliament. Wagenknecht has alleged voter irregularities and unfair treatment by the German media and has vowed to continue her party.

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