Will democracy still prevail in the west in a decade? It was certainly a question weighing on the minds of the hundreds of Die Linke supporters crammed into a former film studio overlooking Berlin’s Tempelhof airport last weekend. They were gathered to listen to the results of Germany’s election – and their reactions were mixed. The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) had just doubled its support in federal elections, securing a fifth of the vote, yet Die Linke came top in the capital, albeit with 21% of the vote. They cheered, hugged, kissed and cried.
We were in Neukölln, a diverse neighbourhood of south-eastern Berlin, and the triumphant candidate was Ferat Koçak, a charismatic Kurdish-German leftist. His grassroots campaign knocked on every door in the district – not unusual in the UK and US, but a novelty in Germany. “For several years, the left has been in a kind of shocked paralysis about what to do with the rising right,” explained 30-year-old activist Isabelle: grassroots campaigning, she believes, brought the left out of its bubble.
