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‘IT’S IN OUR DNA TO BE ANTI-FASCIST’: GERMANY’S LEFTWING
‘TIKTOK QUEEN’ HEIDI REICHINNEK  
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Kate Connolly
April 29, 2025
The Guardian
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_ A powerful speech in the Bundestag made her famous and has inspired
young voters to fight back against the far right. We don’t work with
or vote with the AfD. It’s rightwing extremist. We’re leftwing.
It’s part of our DNA to be anti-fascist _

Heidi Reichinnek’s party, Die Linke, has grown its vote count by
about 4% in the last four years., Photograph: Christian Jungeblodt/The
Guardian

 

The latest tattoo on Heidi Reichinnek’s lower right arm reads
“Angry Woman”. A “present to myself”, she says, after the
unexpected return to the German parliament of her party, Die Linke
(The Left), in February’s elections.

Months before the vote, it had been widely predicted the far-left
party, successor to the east German communists, would be decimated.
But the naysayers were proved wrong: Die Linke won nearly 9% of the
vote, an increase of almost 4% on the previous election, giving them a
healthy 64 seats in the new Bundestag.

 
Heidi Reichinnek’s fiery speech won a good deal of acclaim and
attention on social media   (Photograph: TikTok)
Much of the credit for their upswing has gone to Reichinnek, who in
the run-up to the vote
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a fulminating speech
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the incoming chancellor, Friedrich Merz, for having used the votes of
the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to try to push
through migration reform
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“Don’t give up, but fight back, resist fascism … We’ll all
take to the streets … To the barricades!” the 36-year-old urged
fellow MPs and those watching at home. The speech, says Reichinnek,
was spontaneous – “I quickly scribbled some things down but then
couldn’t read my scrawl” – but proved dynamite.

Shared on social media almost 30m times in just five days, it became
the most widely watched speech in the history of the Bundestag and
catapulted Reichinnek – who polls show is the country’s favourite
female politician
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to a level of political stardom, particularly among young people, that
just months previously the then beleaguered party could have only
dreamed of.

 
Heidi Reichinnek, along with co-leaders, reacts to initial results
during an election event in Berlin in February.   (Photograph: Ronald
Wittek/EPA  //  The Guardian)
“It earned us a lot of support. People said I spoke to them from the
heart, but also lots of others said things like: ‘What’s that
hysterical old bint screaming about?’ – hence the tattoo. “My
‘welcome back’ and ‘Bundestag tattoo’,” she says.

(The qualification is necessary for Reichinnek has others: one of her
Marxist idol, Rosa Luxemburg, another of Nefertiti, the ancient
Egyptian queen, donning a gas mask, and a “zoo” of animals
including an otter, raven, cat and snake. “Because being an MP –
in this prison and bureaucratic complex,” Reichinnek says, pointing
to her surroundings in a room off her Bundestag office, “I have no
time to have pets.”)

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy and stalwart if embattled
democracy, is preparing for a new era: Merz, the leader of the CDU/CSU
conservative alliance, is expected to be sworn in as chancellor in
early May. He will lead a coalition with the centre-left Social
Democrats
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the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in what is expected to be a
tempestuous parliament where the far right will be the leading
opposition force and hold an unprecedented amount of power.

Reichinnek sees the role of her smaller party as crucial, both in
keeping at bay the AfD (which now stands, for the first time ever,
neck and neck with the conservatives in the polls) and holding Merz to
account. At the same time Die Linke does not want to be portrayed as a
disruptor, but as a collaborator on important issues “with all
democratic parties, where we agree with them”, she says.

 
Heidi Reichinnek of die Linke party speaks to pro-abortion rights
demonstrators in Berlin in February.   (Photograph: Maja Hitij  //
 The Guardian)
With a combined total of 216 seats, Die Linke and the AfD have a
so-called blocking minority in the new Bundestag: the new government
will be too weak to make up the two-thirds majority needed to make any
changes to the constitution. But Reichinnek – whose trademark red
lipstick is an anti-fascist nod to the many women who “during the
Nazi era wore … because Hitler did not like makeup” – swiftly
rejects any suggestion the parties could collaborate.

“We’re very familiar with the ‘horseshoe theory’ which
attempts to equate left and right,” she says. “But we have nothing
to do with that party. We don’t work with or vote with the AfD.
It’s rightwing extremist. We’re leftwing. It’s part of our DNA
to be anti-fascist and we will fight against it at every turn, in
parliament and on the streets.”

For her, the obvious way to fight the far-right populists is to create
“good social policy”. “It’s been shown time and again in so
many studies that people whose personal and economic circumstances are
deteriorating are more likely to vote for rightwing extremists. This
means that strong social policies are needed to counter the AfD.”

“Everything”, she adds, has been run down over the past few
decades. “Public services have been continually dismantled. Wages
and pensions have increased far too little; they have actually been
devalued, while rents have risen. Hospitals are closing, schools are
decaying, bridges are collapsing. Of course, people are frustrated.
That’s no excuse for voting for a party, but it is definitely a
reason that must be addressed. That’s our first approach.”

Deeply critical of the new government’s coalition agreement, calling
it “irresponsible” and “fainthearted”, Reichinnek says
Merz’s plans for a massive rearmament through historical spending
and debt reforms, pushed through the old parliament
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the 11th hour, have “no clear concept” on how a multi-billion euro
infrastructure fund is to be spent.

A big sticking point with a fair few would-be Die Linke voters is that
the party is against the further delivery of weapons to Ukraine.
Critics say this is a disturbing remnant of the party’s pro-Russian
allegiance, a suggestion Reichinnek rejects. Die Linke is “very much
on the side of Kyiv”, she insists, but the approach to ending the
war must change and include not more weaponry but more pressure on
Vladimir Putin.

“It only works if you force Putin to the negotiating table. He
won’t come there voluntarily. We’re saying: there’s a whole lot
between supplying weapons and doing nothing,” she says.

Domestically, she fears that Merz’s promised cuts to social welfare
spending to finance rearmament will come at the expense of social
cohesion and will ultimately drive more voters to the AfD.

Born in a village in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to an
electrician father and chemical worker mother, Reichinnek was just
19-months-old when the Berlin Wall fell. Her formative political
experience took place when she was a member of the city council and a
youth worker in Osnabrück, in north-west Germany
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Heidi Reichinnek present a coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU
and SPD with a modified title in Berlin, Germany, 09 April 2025.  
(Photograph: Christoph Soeder/EPA  //  The Guardian)
Referred to as Germany’s TikTok queen
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everything from domestic violence and contraception to rent and
migration have long earned her supporters, particularly among young
female voters, she joined Die Linke in 2015 and became its
parliamentary group spokesperson last year.

Every time she approaches the podium in the Bundestag, she typically
bats off with good humour jeering cries from the CDU and AfD benches
in particular: TV cameras often show Merz and his colleagues rolling
their eyes and shaking their heads. She admits she has had to grow a
thick skin to cope with these critics, who deem her too “woke” and
too mouthy, and who say her “leftist activist look” is contrived
to appeal to a particular youth demographic.

Her response? That her politics is based on people’s real concerns,
citing her fight against rent extortion and her campaign for the
legalisation of abortion (while rarely punished, it remains illegal 
[[link removed]]in Germany
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circumstances including when a woman’s life is in danger or she is a
victim of rape). She has had the same fringe-defined hairstyle
“forever” and no one advises her on what she wears or what she
says. She counters her critics bluntly with the question: “The
bottom line is, do you act out of solidarity with others, or are you
an arsehole?”

The message is getting through – at least to a certain group of
people. Under her guidance, the party has seen an astonishing revival
among Germany’s youth: at the election, Die Linke proved the most
popular choice for voters aged between 18 and 24. Her wish to make the
rich pay their fair share has been the inspiration for a track by
rappers MC Smook and Fruity Luke
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office there is an overflowing box of friendship bracelets she has
received from fans. Among her trademark items of attire, they bear
slogans such as “Do it for us” and “Only the Young”.

Since first entering parliament in 2021, she has gained a reputation
as the fastest-talking MP, leading to the coining of the phrase “a
Reichinnek” as a benchmark of political temperament. Her way of
speaking, Die Zeit recently pointed out, “has peak speeds of
approximately 200 words a minute” – considerably faster than her
parliamentary colleagues.

“Useful for TikTok”, she admits, as well as in the debating
chamber “when we’ve only ever had two or three minutes to put our
point across, so it’s really paid off”. Younger people like it,
she says, “because they say, they don’t have to listen at double
speed. But when I’m on TV, older people often say that I talk too
fast.”

Will Merz’s Germany move at the speed Reichinnek thinks is necessary
to save it from the economic doldrums and political peril? The answer
is unclear. For now, she is focused on building on her party’s
unexpected momentum and girding herself for the fights to come.

She recently attended a Die Linke meeting in Osnabrück. “There were
lots of young people among new members there who are keen to make a
change,” she says. “That’s what matters most to me.”

_[KATE CONNOLLY is the Guardian and Observer's Berlin
correspondent. • Kate Connolly's public key
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* Germany
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* Die Linke
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* Heidi Reichinnek
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* German elections
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* German anti-fascists
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* Afd
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* German youth
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* Anti-Fascism
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* Fascism
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* German right-wing
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* German rearmament
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* abortion
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* abortion rights
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* Women
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* Friedrich Merz
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* CDU
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* CSU
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* CDU/CSU
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* Ukraine war
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* Russia
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* Immigrants
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* transgender
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* transgender equality
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