Christine Buchholz
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Christine Ann Buchholz (born 2 April 1971 in Hamburg) is a German politician and a member of the Bundestag, elected in 2009 as a member of Die Linke.[1][2] A progressive activist, Bucholz is a member of Marx21, a network of revolutionary socialists within the Die Linke broadly aligned with the International Socialist Tendency.
Education and early career[]
From 1991 to 1998, Buchholz studied education and social sciences with a focus on politics and religion at the University of Hamburg. After the state examination she took up a supplementary study of science history. Since 1995 she has also worked in Hamburg and Berlin as an assistant for people with disabilities. From 1997 to 2001 she was a member of the works council in a Hamburg nursing company. She was certified as ötv - Vertrauensfrau (trusted woman) and is a member of the union ver.di. From 2002 she worked as a freelance editor and from 2005 to 2009 as a research assistant to a member of the left parliamentary group Linksfraktion.
Political career[]
![Buchholz in the Plenarsaal](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b2/Christine_Buchholz_im_Plenarsaal.jpg/220px-Christine_Buchholz_im_Plenarsaal.jpg)
Since the early 1990s she has been active in the antifascist scene. In 1994 she became a member of the Trotskyist organization Linksruck. From 1994 to 1999 she was a member of the SPD. She was active early in the anti-globalization movement and became a member of Attac. She was one of the organizers of the European Social Forum, the Social Forum in Germany and the protests against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm (2007). She participated in the organization and implementation of the Blockupy protests against "banking power and the austerity of the EU troika". In the Bundestag she spoke against austerity, the European Stability Mechanism and the European Fiscal Compact.
Buchholz proposed in early 2013 that politicians of the other two (former) opposition parties SPD and Greens should seek political compromises. With a view to the federal election in 2013 (and apparently on the subject of a red-red-green coalition), she said that there is no substantive basis for a government participation because of the support of foreign operations of the Bundeswehr and the approval of Angela Merkel's EU austerity.
Through her membership in Linksruck (dissolved in 2007) she joined the WASG, whose extended federal board she belonged from spring 2005. In March 2007, she was elected to the executive WASG board. Since the Unification Party Convention on 16 June 2007 she is a member of the executive party executive committee of the left, where she is responsible for peace and disarmament.
Buchholz is (as of 2008) a supporter of the Trotskyist organization Marx21 within Die Linke and was the author of the magazine of the same name.
Buchholz is considered a protagonist of the left party wing within the party Die Linke. In 2011, she criticized the attempt by reformers such as Stefan Liebich to change the foreign policy foundations of the party.
Positions and Criticism[]
Military operations[]
Buchholz rejects all foreign assignments. In 2011, she criticised the attempt by reformers like Stefan Liebich to change the party’s foreign policy foundations.
With a view to the 2013 federal election (and apparently on a red-red-green coalition), she said that there was no substantive basis for participation in government because of the support for foreign missions by the Bundeswehr and the approval of Angela Merkel’s EU austerity policy.
Arab Spring / Syria[]
Buchholz welcomed the democracy movements of the Arab Spring. It positions itself against the Assad regime and its allies, the security cooperation between the German government and the Turkish government, and arms exports to the Near and Middle East.
During the fight for Kobanê, in which the United States supported the Kurdish resistance fighters with airstrikes against the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS), Buchholz published a picture of herself with a poster on which she demanded: "Solidarity with the resistance in Kobane! Stop the US bombing!"
Middle East conflict[]
Buchholz advocates a human rights-based policy in the Middle East conflict. She criticizes the German government's arms and military cooperation with Israel and promotes a comprehensive ban on arms exports to the Near and Middle East.
Buchholz speaks out against the defamation of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions campaign as anti-Semitic. At a meeting of the Evangelical Academy in Bad Boll, she said that equating legitimate criticism of Israeli government policy with anti-Semitism would lead to "shrinking spaces". This prevents an open human rights discourse on the situation in Israel and Palestine.
Disagreement with the parliamentary group's resolution against anti-Semitism[]
After the Bremen State Association of the Left had supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign in 2011 and numerous party members nationwide, including a Katja Kipping and Bodo Ramelow, who had signed a statement against it, in which the campaign was explicitly described as "anti-Semitism", "which reminds of the Nazi slogan 'Do not buy from the Jews'", came a unanimous decision of the left-wing faction in which the Support for calls for boycotts, a one-state solution or another Gaza flotilla was given a clear rejection, only because Buchholz and 14 other parliamentary group members stayed away from the vote or left the meeting room beforehand.
References[]
- ^ "Christine Buchholz, Linke". Deutscher Bundestag. Archived from the original on 15 April 2010. Retrieved 29 April 2010.
- ^ "Christine Buchholz – DIE LINKE" (in German). Retrieved 2021-02-14.
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- 1971 births
- Living people
- Politicians from Hamburg
- Social Democratic Party of Germany politicians
- Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative politicians
- The Left (Germany) politicians
- Members of the Bundestag for Hesse
- German Trotskyists
- Female members of the Bundestag
- Linksruck
- 21st-century German women politicians
- Members of the Bundestag 2017–2021
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- Members of the Bundestag 2009–2013
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