Berlin Election: Die Linke Wins, Sleek Magazine Editor Calls for Bourgeois Middle to Defend Freedom

Key facts

• Die Linke won the Berlin state election with 25.7 percent, becoming the strongest force in the Berlin House of Representatives for the first time.
• The author argues that respecting an election result does not mean endorsing the winner's program, and democracy lives on contradiction and public debate.
• The Linke won by promising answers to housing shortage, rising rents, schools, administration, and social inequality.
• The author opposes transferring existing apartments from private to public ownership, advocating instead for building and private investment.
• Antisemitism is a second major issue: Berlin, as the capital of the country that perpetrated the Shoah, must uphold especially high standards.
• Elif Eralp has positioned herself against antisemitism and affirmed Israel's right to exist, but incidents in the Berlin Linke during the campaign require serious reckoning.
• At a Neukölln Linke event, there were calls for violence against Israel and Israeli army members; a Neukölln Linke candidate shared a call for a 'Wahlintifada' from an activist in an extremist-classified environment.
• The author calls on Berlin's bourgeois middle—entrepreneurs, creatives, artists, gallerists, architects, scientists, publishers—to publicly defend freedom, property, private investment, and Jewish life, not someday but now.