The Dystopia Has Many Fathers

I. A Warning

On 20 September 2026 the Left Party became the strongest force in Berlin with 25.7 per cent, ahead of the CDU, AfD, Greens and SPD. Talks are now under way about an alliance of the Left, Greens and SPD. The Left has effectively made the socialisation of around 220,000 flats owned by large corporations a condition.

The journalist Constantin Schreiber calls this, in a video commentary on his YouTube channel, “The Berlin Dystopia”. The danger, he says, is not only the Left but that the SPD and Greens stand ready to pave its way. A city that once stood for freedom is democratically choosing to destroy its own foundations, “not by a coup, but by an election”. The text is calm, cleverly built and fair over long stretches. That is exactly why it is worth taking seriously and measuring by its own standard.

II. Where the Warning Hits

The strongest sentence is: “A flat is not built by having a different owner in the land register.” That is true, and Berlin has experienced it. The rent cap applied from February 2020; in April 2021 the Federal Constitutional Court declared it void. According to an ifo Institute study, the supply of rental flats fell by up to 60 per cent during that time, and rents in the uncapped flats rose faster than elsewhere. Whoever had a flat paid less. Whoever was looking found none.

It is also right that in the end the bill is paid by those who cannot move away. Capital relocates; the single mother in Neukölln does not. And the sentence about antisemitism is right: “Whoever fights it only against political opponents is not fighting antisemitism, he is using it.” Finally a rare thought: the willingness to renounce power is one of the most underrated democratic virtues. That is the opposite of the politician we described in “Heart Disease. And Nobody Operates.”, who above all wants to stay in office.

III. The Dystopia Is Already Here

But the warning has a blind spot. It describes a Berlin in which administration, schools, infrastructure and housing construction fail, and presents this as the threatened consequence of a left-wing government. Yet this failure is the past, and it has many fathers.

Berlin has been co-governed by the SPD without interruption since 2001. The PDS and later the Left sat in the Senate from 2002 to 2011 and from 2016 to 2023, the CDU from 2011 to 2016 and again since 2023, the Greens from 2016 to 2023. In 2021 the city organised an election so badly that the state constitutional court declared it invalid because of serious systemic defects. In half the polling stations people were still voting after 6 p.m.

Last year 11,027 flats were completed in Berlin, the fewest in ten years, against a Senate target of 20,000. In 2016 more than 21,000 flats were still being approved; in 2024 only 8,558. This happened under governments of every colour, most recently under a CDU mayor. In January 2026, in parts of the city, not even electricity came out of the socket any more. The crisis management of the power cut was so contested that the governing mayor gave up running again as lead candidate in July.

Fairness also requires this: the citizens’ offices, in the video a symbol of failure, now give all appointments within fourteen days; in 2023 it was only half. So some things are getting better. But that cannot be credited to one party, any more than the failure can be blamed on another.

IV. Sold Cheap, Bought Back Dear

The biggest intervention in Berlin’s housing ownership was not proposed by the Left. It happened long ago, in the other direction. In 1990 the state owned around 482,000 flats; in 2005 about 270,000 remained. In May 2004 the Senate of SPD and PDS sold the state-owned GSW with 65,700 flats to financial investors from Goldman Sachs and Cerberus, for 405 million euros and the assumption of 1.56 billion euros of debt. The SPD parliamentary leader of the day called it a “political project”.

Fifteen years later the state began to buy back: in 2019 around 5,600 flats for 920 million euros, in 2021 another 14,750 flats from Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen for around 2.46 billion euros. Today the state-owned companies again own over 370,000 flats.

Sell cheap, buy back dear: that is the real Berlin story. And it shows what the video misses. Privatisation and socialisation have one thing in common: both shift existing flats from one hand to another. Not a single one is built. Our essay “Der Strom kommt aus der Steckdose” (Electricity Comes from the Socket, German) has the image for it: the cook who cares only about how the cake is cut, never about how it is baked.

V. Ownership Is Not Irrelevant

It does not follow, however, that the owner is irrelevant. Vienna owns around 220,000 municipal flats, plus about 200,000 subsidised rental and cooperative flats. A large share of Viennese live this way, and for decades the city has been regarded as a model of affordable housing.

The difference from Berlin lies not in the state owning in Vienna, but in the state building, for a hundred years, without interruption and without a sell-off. The decisive question is therefore not who owns the flats. It is: who builds new ones? A socialisation that builds no house solves the housing shortage as little as a sale that builds none. The Basque cooperative group Mondragón shows the same for companies: other forms of ownership work as long as they do not suspend value creation.

VI. Voters Do Not Build Either

The video asks why voters believe promises that ignore economic realities. The question is justified, but it reaches further than the speaker thinks. In 2014, 64 per cent of Berliners voted in a referendum to keep Tempelhof Field entirely free of building. In 2021, 59 per cent voted for socialising large housing corporations. The same urban society thereby prevented new construction and demanded redistribution, both democratically.

And the centre is not as central as it seems. In March 2026 the CDU and SPD passed the socialisation framework law. It expropriates nothing but creates the framework for it. An expert commission had found in 2023 that socialisation is constitutionally possible. The “Berlin dystopia” is therefore not the project of a single party. It is a mood that runs right across the city.

VII. The Standard Applies to All

On antisemitism the video’s concern is serious and justified. On election night clan boss Issa Remmo appeared at the Left’s election party in Neukölln; the party says he was not invited and was sent away immediately. Also present was an activist attributed to the milieu of a Palestinian terrorist organisation. A Left member of the Bundestag had sent the clan “greetings with respect”. Before the exploratory talks, the SPD and Greens demanded a paper in which Israel’s right to exist is called “non-negotiable”. The Central Council of Jews and more than 200 Jewish Berliners consider it insufficient.

Here the video’s warning is right, and its standard is the right one: it does not matter which camp something comes from. We applied the same standard in “Nathan, Turned Upside Down” to a publicist who sees antisemitism mainly among Muslims. It applies in both directions. But it also applies to the text itself. Whoever blames a city’s failure on a single party follows the camp thinking he condemns in others.

VIII. Why a Quarter Vote Left

The more honest question is not why people trust a party with questionable recipes. It is why a quarter of Berliners trust such a party with the solution after the reasonable parties have governed for twenty years. Whoever cannot find a flat for years will at some point vote for someone who promises to take the flats, because nobody promises any more to build them.

This is the same logic we observed in the Presseclub and in Saxony-Anhalt, there to the benefit of the AfD. When the centre does not deliver, voters migrate to the edges. That is no excuse for bad recipes. But it is the explanation without which every warning becomes an apportioning of blame.

IX. Touchstones for All

At the end the video formulates touchstones one should hang on every wall of the Red Town Hall. Whoever promises affordable flats must explain how they come about. Whoever wants to redistribute must explain how new prosperity is created. Whoever wants to drive away investors must explain who invests afterwards. In the end results count, not slogans.

These questions go to the Left: 220,000 socialised flats are not a single new one. They go to the SPD, which sold in 2004 and has been buying back ever since. They go to the CDU, under whose mayor completions fell to their lowest level in ten years. And they go to the voters who wanted to keep Tempelhof Field free and demand cheap flats.

A simple measure would suffice: the number of completed flats, every year, publicly, measured against the government’s own target. Whoever governs must be measured by it, whatever colour he wears.

The dystopia does not begin with a cross on the ballot paper. It begins when every party blames the housing shortage on another and none builds.