Die Stasi Sind Unter Uns

Michael C. Moynihan | May 27, 2008

Risen from the ashes of the PDS (which itself rose from the ashes of the SED, the East German Communist Party), German's year-old Left Party (Die Linke), led by former Social Democrat Oskar Lafontaine, is surging according to recent polls. Despite the party's numerous ties to the Honecker dictatorship and its brutal secret police (Left Party grandee Gregor Gysi attempted, according to Deutsche Welle, to "prevent journalists getting their hands on sensitive former Stasi files" and was recently and rather predictably exposed as an informant), the party is exerting significant influence over Chancellor Merkel's "grand coalition." From Deutsche Welle:

[The Left Party] boasts an estimated 73,500 members Germany-wide and, with 10 to 14 percent of the national vote, is the country's third largest party next to the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

"We are being hailed as the most successful new party in decades and they say we are setting the political agenda in Germany," Lafontaine told some 600 supporters at the party's first national convention, over the weekend, in the eastern town of Cottbus.

And hot on the heals of controversy concerning Gysi's ties to the Stasi comes MEP and Left Party member Sahra Wagenknecht's ties to the radical group Die Kommunistische Plattform, which doesn't seem to have had any effect on the party's popularity:

Ahead of the Cottbus convention, Left member Sahra Wagenknecht was forced to drop her candidacy for deputy party leader because of her involvement in the Communist Platform, an organization that advocates the overthrow of capitalism and is monitored by Germany's intelligence apparatus.

Wagenknecht, a self-identified communist, previously made headlines when she was photographed in Strasbourg restaurant dining on a plate of bourgeois lobster. After realizing her doctrinal mistake, Wagenknecht ordered her assistant to requisition the grain, errr, camera from her Left Party colleague in order "take photographs with an acquaintance." When she returned the camera, the photos had been erased. The lobster-eating commissar had vanished.

Comments

|5.27.08 @ 1:58PM|#

http://www.linkezeitung.de/cms/images/stories/Personen/wagenknecht.jpg

She may be a communist baffoon, but damn she is really hot.

|5.27.08 @ 2:04PM|#

A bit too Natasha Fatale for my taste.

|5.27.08 @ 2:05PM|#

So she's the new Lobster Girl?

Guy Montag|5.27.08 @ 2:10PM|#

And hot on the heals of controversy . . .

Would those heals be recovering from the wounds of spike-heeled-thigh-high-booted hot Nazi Domme chicks?

|5.27.08 @ 2:10PM|#

My impression is that *everyone* in the GDR worked for Stasi. *Especially* the "dissidents"...

Episiarch|5.27.08 @ 2:10PM|#

You have strange tastes, John. Calling her "really hot" isn't just a stretch, it's wrong. Yes, yes, I know, we all have different tastes, but I am still the ultimate arbiter of women's looks.

On topic, is anyone actually surprised to see the Germans are having a resurgence in support for an authoritarian-style government?

Guy Montag|5.27.08 @ 2:12PM|#

A bit too Natasha Fatale for my taste.


Looks more like a cuter Natasha Pinski to me.

|5.27.08 @ 2:13PM|#

I'd say she's classically beautiful.

Oh, and Pre-Godwin?

Religious scholar|5.27.08 @ 2:13PM|#

Lobster isn't Kosher

AN Honest Question|5.27.08 @ 2:16PM|#

Have you ever dated a Communist before? I have dated a Muslim (I am atheist) but have never dated a communist (I am also a hardcore capitalist). Have you?

|5.27.08 @ 2:17PM|#

She was simply "giving according to her abilities and receiving according to her needs". It takes lobster to remain that hot.

|5.27.08 @ 2:19PM|#

...or "classically beautiful" if you like.

|5.27.08 @ 2:19PM|#

"A bit too Natasha Fatale for my taste."

Dahlink, if only moose and squirrel would've kept thier bourgeois mouths shut.

Abdul|5.27.08 @ 2:20PM|#

I married a socialist. She always nationalizes the blankets on cold nights. Other than that, the political differences haven't been a big deal.

Guy Montag|5.27.08 @ 2:28PM|#

Abdul,

My favorite Marx quote: One good turn gets all the covers.

Natasha, moose and squirrell were not being chased by a N. Fetale.

|5.27.08 @ 2:29PM|#

And from the auto-ads, we have edible gold leaf from Germany at great prices.

|5.27.08 @ 2:32PM|#

It should be illegal to be this cool.

|5.27.08 @ 2:40PM|#

Lest we forget:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrd7capPKaw

Austrians should stick to economics.

|5.27.08 @ 2:50PM|#

Austrians should stick to economics.

And bodybuilding.

I really dug this, though.

Bagger|5.27.08 @ 2:52PM|#

I give her a solid 6/10.

6.5 if she does anal.

|5.27.08 @ 2:52PM|#

is anyone actually surprised to see the Germans are having a resurgence in support for an authoritarian-style government?

GODWIN!

Episiarch|5.27.08 @ 2:54PM|#

Took somebody long enough.

|5.27.08 @ 2:59PM|#

"On topic, is anyone actually surprised to see the Germans are having a resurgence in support for an authoritarian-style government?"

Yeah, it certainly is out of the ordinary for them. Growing up in America where even the people who at heart hate freedom at least pay lipservice to the idea, I don't think you understand that most people in the world distrust freedom and long for stability over all else.

Naga Sadow|5.27.08 @ 3:23PM|#

Silly Germans and their crazy love of authoritarianism . . . ahhhh, memories . . .

|5.27.08 @ 4:02PM|#

I think John's got better taste than episiarch. Sahra is a little severe looking sure, her eyebrows need work but I'd say she has the facial bone structure of an 8.5 - very nice Aryan features. On the negative side her body is very hard to determine - even on her own website she seems to stay covered up, no Angela Merkel-like breast exhibitions, and, as a communist, Sahra probably loses points for a humorless personality. So let's say 7, worst case. I'll allow 7 as hot, especially for a politician. And I think if you're into bondage games she'd certainly be a 9.

|5.27.08 @ 4:14PM|#

Vanya,

I like severe looking women. Everyone has their type and that is mine.

|5.27.08 @ 4:16PM|#

I wouldn't kick her out of bed...so long as she talked in a Greta Garbo accent.

Episiarch|5.27.08 @ 4:32PM|#

You guys are crazy.

Or the real answer is you have low standards.

(ducks)

Gene Berkman|5.27.08 @ 4:39PM|#

One should not get too worried about this. When it ruled East Germany, the Socialist Unity Party had more than 1.5 million members. At the time of the first elections for unified Germany, the Party of Democratic Socialism had 150,000 members, of which only a thousand were in the west.

Recently the Left Party has received the support from some in the West who think the Social Democrats are too market oriented, but it continues to decline in the East, with many dropping out, others dying of old age. There is little danger the Left Party will become a coalition partner of any of the other parties, and no danger that it will ever become a major party in Germany wide elections.

BakedPenguin|5.27.08 @ 4:47PM|#

I'm voting hot. Eightish, ninish if she wears glasses and like being spanked for the good of the proletariat.

Since this thread has already been Godwinned, let me post (again, I know...) a hot fascist, Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra.

Joel|5.27.08 @ 4:47PM|#

is anyone actually surprised to see the Germans are having a resurgence in support for an authoritarian-style government?

As I recall somebody saying around the time the wall came down, every time east and west Germans get together they end up in Paris...

Episiarch|5.27.08 @ 4:50PM|#

I think I'm realizing that many libertarians' fantasy is a totalitarian wench. Zieg heil!

Bingo|5.27.08 @ 5:09PM|#

I like the "green anarchists" personally. Nothing like a libertinette for fun in and outside of the sack. Plus its fun to make socialists think you are crazier than they are.

|5.27.08 @ 5:50PM|#

Plus its fun to make socialists think you are crazier than they are.

Sure, its all fun and games until someone gets sentenced for having "unsocial thoughts."

|5.27.08 @ 5:53PM|#

I think I'm realizing that many libertarians' fantasy is a totalitarian wench. Zieg heil!

I just want to, err, give them a little demonstration on the virtues of liberty...

2 in the goo|5.27.08 @ 6:59PM|#

She may be a communist baffoon, but damn she is really hot.

Now there's a candidate I could get behind.

|5.27.08 @ 7:36PM|#

Episiarch-

I think I'm realizing that many libertarians' fantasy is a totalitarian wench.

If it is inevitable that I'm going to be "dominated", I really want it to be personal...