Left leader Schwerdtner in Hagen: antisemitism accusation being “instrumentalized”
At the Left Party’s North Rhine-Westphalia convention, leader Schwerdtner rejected accusations against her party. After its Berlin election win, the Left hopes to return to the NRW state parliament too.
Archive image · Photo: Olaf Krostitz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Left Party national leader Ines Schwerdtner has sharply rejected accusations of antisemitism against her party. Speaking on Saturday at the state delegates’ assembly of the North Rhine-Westphalia Left Party in Hagen, she said, according to dpa: “They attack us because we stand up for international law and for the people in Palestine.” “It is disgusting that they instrumentalize antisemitism to discredit us in political business,” Schwerdtner said.
According to Schwerdtner, opponents are waging a “smear campaign” because the party takes on “the rich and powerful” and real estate companies. In Berlin, the Left became the strongest force by a clear margin in the House of Representatives election about a month ago. “What worked in Berlin is not a special case,” Schwerdtner said.
North Rhine-Westphalia will elect a new state parliament on April 25, 2027. According to polls, the Left has a good chance of returning to the state parliament for the first time in 15 years; an INSA poll published on Friday puts it at 10 percent. The accusations against the party had most recently centered on Berlin lawmaker Vanessa Emde, with whom, according to the Berlin Left leadership, there is no longer a “common basis for working together.”