Navigating the New Era: the East, the Left, and U.S. Elections

Interview with Stefan Liebich from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (RLS) in New York City

The interview took place on July 25th, 2024.

Stefan is the Executive Director of the New York office for USA, Canada and the United Nations, of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Amanda Gläser-Bligh is the current VP of Communications for the German Fulbright Alumni Association.

Stefan Liebich - Headshot by Ben Gross
Stefan Liebich – Headshot by Ben Gross

Amanda: Welcome, Stefan! Tell us a bit about yourself.

Stefan: I am now 51 years old. I grew up in East Germany, in the GDR. I was a full time politician, a lawmaker my whole life. I was elected to the Berlin state parliament in 1995 when I was quite young. And then I was proud to win my district for the Bundestag in 2009. My district was Pankow, Prenzlauer Berg and Weissensee, like the heart of Berlin.

So yeah, I was proud to win the district three times, being a member of a left party, which is a big thing. Winning a district is different from being elected through our proportional system into a parliament because you don’t have to only convince your own people, you have to convince the majority. I did this and I’m still proud of it. I was in the Bundestag, in the Committee of Foreign Affairs for twelve years and also vice chairman of the U.S. Germany Friendship group.

And this, not only this, but this was one of the reasons I applied for the work I am doing now. So now I am the executive director of the RLS here in New York. And our office is responsible for the United States, a bit of Canada. And we are working in and with the UN. We collaborate with the other political foundations, which are all based in Washington, D.C. But we are the only foundation doing all our work from New York, which is on the one hand nice, because I love the city. My family lives here. My wife is American. She’s been living in Brooklyn since forever. But it’s also a bit challenging, because if you talk about U.S. politics, as we say in German, die Musik spielt in Washington. So I’m very often on the train, going back and forth.

“Voting, election, politics, and American politics”; photo: Jon Tyson on Unsplash
“Voting, election, politics, and American politics”; photo: Jon Tyson on Unsplash

So we opened our office here in New York City, a little bit more than ten years ago in 2012. I was actually there when the office opened. We are still in the same beautiful building at 275 Madison Avenue. It’s lovely, with a nice view over Manhattan. And we do a little bit of Canada. We are friends with Quebec Solidaire, which is a left party in Quebec.

Amanda: I’m French Canadian, not that I’m part of that party, but that’s my heritage.

Stefan: We have some connections to the left wing of the NDP, the Social Democrats there, and support some left organizations. But mostly we are translating left German politics to the U.S. And also, progressive politics from the U.S. to Germany. Because in my years in the German Bundestag, I learned that the German political mainstream was only looking at the center of U.S. politics, such as moderate Republicans, which we don’t find anymore, and centrist Democrats. And obviously, after Donald Trump was elected the first time, they realized this is not a smart way to do it because they didn’t know anyone from Trump’s people.

But I always tell them, you have to do the same on the other side. There are so many Germans, and you may know this, who still think that Bernie Sanders and AOC are just a fringe sector. I was like, no, there are influential people in U.S. politics that you have to talk to. And that’s also my mission, to tell the Germans there is a left side of U.S. politics you really should care about.

And then we are supporting some labor union work, childcare, reproductive rights, such things. But most of our work is actually in the United Nations. There is a ‘Summit of the Future’ coming. We are doing a lot of nice things here that I really like. We are a team of eight people.

Amanda: My first question about the movement in U.S. politics right now. Things are changing very rapidly in the past week and a half. The news media here (in the U.S.) is very positive towards Kamala, which surprised me. Up until last week, she was a bit of a lame duck, who suddenly had this wave of support after Biden stepped down. How would you explain this to Germans?

Stefan: From my point of view and trying to translate these developments to Germans, I say, in general, you have very fixed groups of people who are in their camps. You have people who will vote Democrat no matter what and also the same for Republicans. And when the assassination attempt against Donald Trump happened, the picture of him raising his fist and the flag was shown everywhere, and there were a lot of German headlines that said, “Now, everything is decided, and it’s over.” And I was like, why would a person, because of this picture, change their opinion? Of course, for the Democrats, it became harder to attack Donald Trump. That’s right. Of course we have a group of Independents. But I was telling the Germans, stay calm, don’t give up yet, of course this makes things harder, but of course nothing is decided by this one picture.

And I was always a person trying to defend Joe Biden, because I think politically, his agenda is quite good. I followed the whole debate about the Build Back Better and it turned into the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure plan, and there are big things that he really wanted to do, and some of them, he could push through the Congress. So that is big. And if you look at the economic data, it’s good. Unemployment is low, inflation is low. But I see that for some people that don’t have much money, the prices are too high. I see this. If inflation is not as high anymore, it only means that the prices are not rising much faster. So they still don’t have enough money.

But I really think that he did a lot. Of course, there is criticism, I would – from a left standpoint – criticize him about U.S. support for the war in Gaza, as well as for when he started to compete with Donald Trump on the right, so when it came to migration, he was not much better. So, I’m quite happy that the Republicans, for quite weird reasons, stopped the border plan, because it was a bad plan. I don’t like that he was not active enough when it came to the fight for the right of having an abortion. He did some things, but you could see that it was, as a man, as a Catholic, was not coming. But in general, I defended him. I always believed that he does not have dementia, that he’s stuttering, because he did it his whole life. But after the debate, as my wife Hilary wrote in an article, “You couldn’t unsee it”.

And at this point, it was clear that the Democratic party needed someone else. And actually, Kamala Harris wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it’s not for me to decide. I remember the whole euphoria when she was nominated as Vice President, and I got it – the first woman of South Asian descent – that was great. But she couldn’t deliver on so many things. Some people said that Biden didn’t give her enough space, and then others claimed that she wasn’t a good leader. If you look at the people who have left her office, you hear voices from the past that she wasn’t a good leader and she wasn’t a good campaigner. But then I was actually surprised, to be honest, that there is a momentum that I never would have expected.

We have a 12 year old, my wife’s daughter, living with us, and what’s happening on Tiktok, it’s crazy. The people love her, this whole Charlie XCX thing, and this coconut tree meme, that’s really crazy. I know that it’s not politics, but it’s important. We have a person who can connect to the youth. It’s important. Biden wouldn’t do it. It’s too much of a generational gap. I am hopeful. But either way, people are still in their camps, but this feeling of optimism is so important.

I don’t have to be neutral here, as I’m part of a left organization, I’m really having a lot of fun right now seeing that the media are like two-thirds talking about Kamala and the Democrats. I watched the news yesterday and there was just a 15 minute segment at the end out of one hour about the secret service director’s interrogation. For the Trump camp, it must be horrible. Their whole strategy is falling apart.

Amanda: Let’s switch gears. What kinds of scholarships do the Rosa Luxemburg groups provide for people? How do you select young people who are in pursuit of higher education, which is a noble pursuit?

Stefan: So, the system of political foundations, they all have a budget from the German government to help young people during their education. Some get a monthly stipend to go to University. Some get support for tuition, some get support when they arrive, some get funded for the time to write their thesis. This supports people doing Master’s thesis, PhDs. What we do differently than other organizations, is we try to look at those who really need it. I want to describe it like, when I’m working here in the U.S. and I meet Germans, those are mostly West Germans, and those are mostly Germans coming from a good family background.

I would say that most of these people are already convinced that we should have a good relationship with the U.S. There is a lack of people from not so rich backgrounds and especially East Germans. I think this is something that we, as the RLS, are doing and we all should do more.

As you know, there are a lot of U.S. Americans who never went abroad, or they don’t want to. If we are going in such a direction, then I’m afraid that with a second Trump administration that all these programs would be at risk. The general question of having youth and student exchange programs is: are the countries interested that young people should travel abroad and learn more about other countries? I’m not sure about this, if the Trump administration comes back.

Regarding Germany, our party still has a strong base in East Germany. Not so much in election results, unfortunately anymore, but if you look at memberships, the Left party is the second strongest party after the CDU. So, we are well connected there and if we are asking for applications on our channels, then we will get more applications from this area and from other backgrounds.

I was just at some meetings at the German consulate and I think there were three East Germans out of fifty people. This is understandable, because the U.S. was present in West Germany through the army, so there were all these contacts. But I know that they are trying. They do have a consulate in Leipzig. But still, the challenges are higher in East Germany because in our schools when I grew up, the U.S. was always the enemy. So, it’s harder to convince people. They have more negative stereotypes about Americans in East Germany. However, if you are interested in good relationships, this should be an invitation to do more where we have to do more, and not go the easy way, where it’s nice, but this doesn’t win anyone over. People are already convinced there.

Amanda: We’ve done a few events in Eastern Germany. The idea is that we do more in this region.

Stefan: Rostock could be an idea. It’s not only a beautiful city – it’s by the Baltic Sea. Their mayor, Eva Maria Kröger from the Left party was just elected last year. She was just here in New York, and the Embassy tries to establish a network of city contacts. Their strategy is to prepare for a Trump administration, they say they want to have weatherproof relations. So, we are not only dependent on a national level, we also want to establish contacts between the states and the cities. Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, was there, inviting a group of mayors from Germany, and I was so happy that Eva was among them. We have to go where it’s more complicated.

Amanda: Thank you, Stefan, for the interview!

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