The Communist Party of Canada expresses its full solidarity with the German Communist Party (DKP) and unreservedly condemns the decision of the Federal Chief Electoral Officer (Bundeswahlleiter) to prevent German Communists from standing in the federal election of September 26 and the possible revoking of political party status of the DKP.
Supposedly motivated by a bureaucratic decision that the DKP was unable to file its financial statements on time, in fact this decision is purely political. The DKP had, as early as May 2020, received an official letter from the authorities according to which the necessary conditions were met for their participation. Receiving a letter asserting the contrary and threatening the withdrawal of political party status at the 11th hour can only be seen as a political provocation.
This attempt cannot be extracted from the global context marked by a deepening of the capitalist crisis, the headlong rush of imperialism towards war and the rise of the extreme right. Nor can it be extracted from the context of anti-communism becoming the dogma of the European Union of capital as evidenced by the September 2019 motion to rewrite history by equating fascism and communism. In a very real sense, the attempt to ban the DKP, like the ban on the KSM (Communist youth) in the Czech Republic a few years ago, followed by that of the Communist Parties in the Baltic countries, in Poland and Ukraine, have all helped pave the way for far-right parties like the AfD (which currently has 89 members in the Bundestag, making it the first neo-Nazi party represented since 1945). This is a serious danger for all those who fight for democracy and social progress.
The Communist Party of Canada understands these pernicious attempts to censor Communists all too well. After our own victory in 2003 of an important legal and popular battle to retain our status as a legal party, we are confident that the DKP will also emerge victorious and strengthened against this attempt to censor ideas of progress and social transformation.
We pledge, to the best of our ability, to mobilize in solidarity with our German comrades and to engage anyone who cares about democracy in this struggle, since in the face of such an attack, sectarianism has no place.