Enemies to the Left

On centres holding

I started watching Babylon Berlin late last year, which takes place in the glamorous and sinister setting of Weimar Germany, filled with pimps, prostitutes, pornographers and politicians. The first series focuses on the activities of the communists in Red Berlin, responsible for hideous violence and terrorism in their attempts to undermine democracy and centre-left rule.

They’re a dangerous and frightening bunch, and while I don’t know what happens after season one, all I can say is: I really hope someone turns up to take on the communists and save Germany from Bolshevism! But please, no spoilers.

Considering that the Third Reich is our modern origin story, that many journalists have a neurotic form of political hypochondria in which fascism lurks everywhere, and that large numbers of people on the Left love to LARP the Spanish Civil War (no pasarán!) or the Battle of Cable Street, when only their street fighters stopped a party with about 0.2% of the popular vote seizing power, it’s a forgotten lesson of the 1930s that the stronger and more extreme the far Left, the more likely that in fact they will pass.