The first casualty of war is always the truth. This also applies to the proclaimers of the truth. The Federal Election Committee of the German Bundestag, which includes representatives of the right-wing “Alternative for Germany,” ruled on Thursday that the German Communist Party will not be allowed to run in the elections for the next Bundestag on September 26.

It is significant that the leadership of the DKP learned about this decision through press reports. The Federal Election Commissioner did not even consider it necessary to inform the party, which has democratically elected representatives in several cities and towns, about this. Only an inquiry of the DKP chairman Patrik Köbele brought to light that it had been criticized that accountability reports of the DKP had been delivered with delay.

This is a very serious problem. For with the refusal to participate in the election, the DKP is also threatened with the deprivation of its status as a political party, and thus, as Köbele explained in an interview with the “Zeitung,” a “cold party ban.”

One of the first decisions of Hitler’s government was to ban the KPD.

This is by no means new in German history. Since the beginning of their appearance as a political party, the German Communists have repeatedly had their existence threatened. Within days of the founding of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in January 1919, the leaders of the counterrevolution were already shouting “Strike their leaders dead!” at the top of their voices. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered by reaction that same month. This fate met many active Communists in the years that followed, until finally, in January 1933, one of the first decisions of Hitler’s government, hoisted into office by the masters of industry and the banks, was to ban the KPD. German communists were the first to be thrown into prisons and concentration camps of the fascists, tortured and murdered — among them the unforgotten KPD chairman Ernst Thälmann.

After 1945, KPD comrades were soon subjected to new persecutions. When resistance to remilitarization in the Federal Republic became too strong in the early 1950s, the Free German Youth (FDJ), in which young communists and other anti-fascists had joined forces, was initially banned. The ban of the KPD followed in 1956, and many of the communists who were then thrown into prisons faced the same judges who had already sentenced them during the Nazi era.

You can ban a communist party, but not its idea of creating a just society.

Since then, the DKP, newly founded in 1968, has had to contend with many difficulties thrown in its path by the state. After all, the communists are the only party that consistently opposes armaments and war, stands up for the real social rights of the people in the country, exposes the antisocial measures of the state, especially now in the health crisis. You don’t want to see people like that in the Bundestag.

It is the Cold War that continues unchecked against communists and real leftists. But history has shown that you can ban a communist party, but not its idea of creating a just society without exploitation of man by man.

The words of Karl Liebknecht, “Our program will continue to be alive. Despite everything!” have been confirmed a million times since January 1919.

Image:  Unsere Zeit (KDP).

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