Heidi Reichinnek: the young, tattooed hard-Left German leader seeing a late election surge

Yahoo

19-02-2025

Heidi Reichinnek is causing a stir in German politics. The 36-year-old tattoo-sleeved 'Queen of TikTok' is the leader of the country's hard-Left Die Linke – which is experiencing a polling surge ahead of Sunday's election.
Down and out on 3 per cent at the end of January – below the threshold of 5 per cent needed to gain entry to the parliament – the party's obituaries had already been written.
However, a tumultuous three weeks in German politics has catapulted Die Linke up to 9 per cent in a recent poll, meaning that it is breathing down the necks of the Greens and Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.
The Left-wing party, successors to East Germany's communist SED, has found a niche by talking about the cost of living crisis while other parties compete over who has the best plan to revive Germany's flailing economy.
More significantly though, it has been able to mobilise young voters in a polarising debate over whether it is correct to 'normalise' the AfD, a hard-Right party that some believe is seeking a return to the darkest chapter in German history.
The figurehead of this movement is Ms Reichinnek, a no-nonsense newcomer with a reputation for fiery speeches and catchy social media content.
When the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) passed a resolution against illegal migration in late January by relying on votes from the AfD – a watershed moment in a country where the populist Right has previously been completely ostracised – Ms Reichinnek gave a thundering speech accusing the conservatives opening the door to a return to fascism.
The CDU was giving a 'leg up' to a party who 'carry forth the ideology of Auschwitz', she said during a debate that took place two days after the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp.
'I can only tell the people out there, don't give up, resist the rise of fascism, man the barricades,' she said.
The two-minute speech immediately went viral, launching the previously unknown Ms Reichinnek to nationwide fame. Her social media accounts have since gathered a million followers, leading party colleagues to label her 'the Queen of TikTok'.
The tattoos that decorate her left arm, still something of a rarity in Germany's straight-laced debating chamber, soon became the talk of the Bundestag – and of the wider electorate.
One piece of ink work depicts Rosa Luxemburg, the socialist leader who was murdered shortly after the First World War.
Another is an image of Egyptian queen Nefertiti wearing a gas mask, a nod to Ms Reichinnek's time spent as a student in Egypt during the Arab Spring.
Since her Bundestag speech in late January, Die Linke says that it has been inundated with membership applications, while young voters have turned out in droves to watch her stump speeches.
In a country in which the rise of Right-wing populism has a unique ability to get pulses racing, the CDU's decision to pass a bill with AfD votes has turned this into the most heated election in living memory.
Thousands of people have taken to the streets to reject the AfD, while CDU offices have been vandalised, while one Right-wing politician narrowly avoided injury after someone loosened the nuts on a wheel of his campaign bus.
However, Die Linke has also been able to position itself as the only party talking about the impact high that inflation has had on poorer households
While the larger Left-wing parties, the Greens and the Social Democrats, are seeking to burnishing their economic credentials during a historic lull in Germany's industrial output, Die Linke has campaigned on lowering rents and cutting food prices.
The party could also be profiting from factional infighting that initially threatened its existence.
Die Linke's manifesto is full of hard-line demands including the expropriation of housing stock from private investors without offering financial compensation, the legalisation of all drugs, the doubling of dole payments, and a ban on all weapons exports.
It also advocates access to artificial insemination for everyone 'regardless of gender' and the establishment of 'queer trade unions'.
Last year, party grandee Sahra Wagenknecht left Die Linke to form a new 'anti-woke' Left-wing faction.
Staunchly anti-American, Ms Wagenknecht blamed Nato for the war in Ukraine and made it her mission to stop weapons supplies to Kyiv.
She also railed against 'gender sensitive language' and adopted migration policies similar to those of the AfD.
But, after surging in polling last summer, Ms Wagenknecht's star has waned and her party now looks set to fall short of the bar for entry into the next parliament.
In her absence, Die Linke has been able to focus more on young voters.
Ms Reichinnek meticulously 'genders' her language – a linguistic novelty popular in university towns – and unabashedly stands for the open-border migration policies that many blame for a spate of terror attacks that Germany has suffered in recent months.
This week, the former leader of the Green party's youth movement came out in support of Die Linke, lamenting a 'slide to the Right' in her former party.
Meanwhile, a study of 150,000 under 18s put Die Linke top among those still too young to vote.
The party's surge in polling has led to speculation about the possibility of a 'Left-wing front' akin to the coalition formed in France last year to keep out the hard-Right there.
However, with the Greens on about 13 per cent and Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats struggling to make it above 16 per cent, the Left-wing parties are still well below the level needed to build a stable majority.
Instead, the rise of Die Linke makes it more likely that the CDU will need to forge a coalition with two Left-wing parties, a scenario that the campaign team in the CDU headquarters desperately wanted to avoid.
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