Gregor Gysi, a highly influential member of the German Left Party and the party’s former leader, is facing fierce criticism from within his own party after suggesting that members with a “specific migration background” have brought problematic views on Israel into the Left Party’s ranks — with some now demanding he attend anti-racist training.
The row stems from an interview the veteran politician gave to Focus magazine’s “Machtmenschen” podcast in March. Asked how significant anti-Israel and antisemitic currents had become within the party, Gysi said: “Well, this has now become more dangerous because many more people with a migration background, even with a specific migration background, have come to our party, which I actually very much welcome. But they bring with them views of Israel that are wrong, and I will always oppose that, and a certain border must not be crossed.”
Gysi has also noted with approval that a party member who had described Hamas as a “liberation organization” had recently been expelled.
The backlash has been extremely sharp.
The Federal Working Group on the Migrant Left — officially recognized as a party body in November 2025 — is preparing a two-page letter to Gysi and the party leadership around co-chairs Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken. The letter, signed by around 180 members including district chairs, state board members and local parliamentary group leaders, was obtained by the newspaper Welt.
“Several passages in your interview are extremely problematic because they reproduce racist narratives and contradict central principles of our party,” the letter reads. “Linking members with a migration history to a supposedly growing problem of antisemitism is unacceptable.”
Gysi’s description of the situation as having become “more dangerous” due to the influx of members with migration backgrounds, the working group argues, reproduces “a racist threat scenario.”
“Such terms reinforce anti-Muslim and anti-Arab resentments and must have no place in an anti-racist party,” the letter continues.
The signatories go further, accusing Gysi of contributing “to the further political and social shift to the right” and claiming that his alleged “equation of Israel and Jews” is “essentially antisemitic.”
The charge against Gysi is already proving problematic. Gysi’s father, Klaus, a former SED politician who was active in the communist resistance against National Socialism, was Jewish.
In the same Focus interview, Gysi stated that he was “very much in favor of a sovereign, secure Israel” and “just as much in favor of a sovereign, secure Palestine.”
Gysi may also find some support from a number of studies that have been conducted over the years, which found that antisemitism is indeed tied to rising immigration.
Nevertheless, the Left Party working group also accuses Gysi of fuelling “an internal party split,” writing that “the impression is created that some well-known and long-time party officials are authoritatively defining the boundaries of what can be said here.”
The working group has a number of demands.
Gysi is asked to delete the relevant excerpt “immediately” from his Instagram account, to publicly clarify “that migrant members must not be associated with antisemitism in general,” to issue “a public apology to the migrant and young members of our party for the impact and the resulting injury caused by your statements.”
In addition, he is being asked to attend “anti-racist training” along with his team.
Gysi’s spokesperson told Welt that the letter had not yet been formally delivered and that he was therefore unable to comment.
The confrontation is part of a broader and increasingly bitter internal struggle over antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In November 2025, Gysi himself — together with former parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch, Bundestag Vice President Bodo Ramelow and 14 other Left Party MPs — wrote to party leadership warning that “apparently something has slipped in our party” following an anti-Israel resolution passed by the Left Youth. Party management bodies, the letter said, would have to “clearly draw clear boundaries.”
The conflict has already claimed casualties. In February, the Thuringian Left Party’s State Arbitration Commission stripped Left Youth federal spokesperson Martha Chiara Wüthrich of all party offices and suspended her membership rights for two years after she referred to a “fucking Holocaust” in the context of Israel’s war in Gaza. And just this past Sunday, Brandenburg’s antisemitism commissioner Andreas Büttner resigned from the party after the Lower Saxony Left passed a resolution declaring that the state association rejected “Zionism which actually exists today.”
Gysi has long been known for his strong backing of Israel. In November 2014, Gysi tried to cancel meetings with journalists Max Blumenthal and David Sheen — both sharp critics of Israel — on the grounds that they held extremist views on Israeli settlements, from which he wished to dissociate the German Left. The confrontation escalated into the now-infamous “Toiletgate” incident, in which Gysi fled down a Bundestag corridor and locked himself in a bathroom as the journalists pursued him.
Gysi has come under fire in the past for his celebration of more Germans dying than are being born, saying “because the Nazis are not very prolific.”
A German left-wing politician claimed Germany needs more migrants because the "Nazi" Germans are not very good at making babies.
"Every year, more Germans die than are born. Fortunately, this is because the Nazis are not very prolific," said MP Gregor Gysi.
Gysi is a long-time… pic.twitter.com/EDk65oxjHJ
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) January 7, 2025
