Heidi Reichinnek manages to do what others fail: stand up to the AfD on TikTok. The young MP could still become important for the shrunken left in the Bundestag.
When people look for reasons for the AfD’s high poll numbers these days, the name TikTok often comes up. According to TikTok, it has over 20 million users in Germany. According to the current report, two out of five young people are ARD/ZDF online study registered on the platform for short videos. So far, only one party has had widespread success there: the AfD.
“Don’t leave TikTok to the AfD”
The partly right-wing extremist party and its parliamentary group were the first to use TikTok nationwide. Others hesitantly followed suit. “We have to be present there, otherwise we won’t reach an important group of voters,” said Thorsten Frei, Parliamentary Managing Director of the Union faction, to the Editorial Network Germany (RND).
So far, the numbers of other factions have lagged behind those of the AfD. Things look even worse for politicians’ accounts: CDU leader Friedrich Merz, for example, does not have 20,000 followers on TikTok.
Instead, one of the few who can oppose this is a member of the Left Party’s second row: Heidi Reichinnek. The 35-year-old child and youth politician has been sitting in the Bundestag since 2021. On TikTok she has almost eight times as many followers as Merz and more likes than Alice Weidel and Sahra Wagenknecht.
Reichinnek’s most successful video shows excerpts from a debate on gender in the Bundestag. The request came from the AfD. Reichinnek welcomes the plenum as a “self-help group ‘Having to talk about gender because of the AfD'” and accuses the AfD itself of “gender madness”. Short memes, well-known video clips from the Internet, are interspersed between the speech. Everything seems frivolous if Reichinnek didn’t end up listing what the AfD didn’t have any applications for: women’s shelters, for example, or a higher minimum wage. So far the video has been viewed almost four million times.
Reichinnek, who worked in youth welfare before the Bundestag, says: “Children and young people live on their cell phones.” She saw what that means during the corona pandemic. “I didn’t want to leave TikTok to the AfD.”
Reach young people
The videos are designed and edited by her employee Felix Schulz. Both of them did an image analysis of Reichinnek at the beginning of the legislative period, says Schulz. The politician has a clear connection to children and young people through youth welfare, and she is also the youngest member of the parliamentary group. That’s why we focused on TikTok.
“The experiences there cannot be compared to those on other platforms,” says Schulz now. Short video content is the future of communication.
Reichinnek sees herself as an explainer of politics. She has videos about Bundestag speeches and committee work alongside videos about her numerous tattoos and the question of how to apply for child allowance. She wants “13-year-olds to have political content that is based on the reality of their lives.”
Young people should develop their own perspectives early on, even if they cannot yet vote. On TikTok she fights for her party, “but also for more interest and trust in the democratic system in general,” says Reichinnek. For this reason, she avoids dance videos.
If you believe the comments under the videos, it definitely works. But a top comment also reads: “Sometimes I have the feeling that the Bundestag is more like a diss battle or a comedy show.” 18,600 people liked this.
Emotional confrontation
Platforms like YouTube and TikTok have already changed politics. One accusation against the AfD, which has been so successful there, is that its MPs no longer write their speeches for parliamentary debates, but rather for video compilations.
Obviously, the primary target group for AfD speeches is “not in parliament, but in the party’s digital anger chambers,” writes communications consultant and former Green Party campaign manager Johannes Hillje in the magazine “Bläter”. He calls the AfD a “digital propaganda party.”
Doesn’t that also apply to Heidi Reichinnek? Will she ultimately benefit above all from the success of the AfD on TikTok? Her most viewed videos often have an AfD reference – for example to Beatrix von Storch. She called out “child murderers” when Reichinnek spoke in the Bundestag about the right to abortion.
Reichinnek believes that von Storch has unmasked the AfD’s image of women itself. Saying clearly that something like this has no place in a parliament is “exactly the point that will help us move forward”. You show what is going wrong with the AfD – and connect it with what the Left itself has to offer in social and family policy.
If Reichinnek had reacted like this in the Bundestag, it would have been a scandal. But on TikTok there are 280,000 hearts for this alone. Reichinnek emphasizes the difference to the AfD from her point of view: In the end, she provokes “to get my messages across, not to make people aggressive.” It shows what is going wrong with the AfD – and connects it with what the left itself has to offer.
Left should improve communication
Reichinnek strives to put his own content and his own party in the foreground. After Sahra Wagenknecht’s departure from the Left Party, she has the left-wing account with the highest reach. She wanted to use that. “I want to specifically involve others from the party about their issues.”
A European candidate and the parliamentary group leader in Brandenburg could be seen in her TikToks, a left-wing student who campaigns against the AfD in schools in another. The subtle message: The Left is no longer a divided party.
After work and on days off, employee Schulz tours the party to pass on his experiences. The duo sees itself in a pioneering role and confidently formulates demands: “Both in the Bundestag and the party itself there is a lack of consistent public relations work,” says Reichinnek. The left must now concentrate on central issues and create a mix between content and provocation.
Group is looking for a new leader
Because of her position at TikTok, some Left MPs are now in favor of Reichinnek as chairwoman of the new group. The group wants to choose its leader at a meeting at the beginning of next week.
Former parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch has withdrawn. Several names are circulating, including those of co-party leader Janine Wissler and migration politician Clara Bünger, or the idea of dual leadership. Reichinnek himself says: “I’ll have this personnel discussion in the party for now.” We’ll see what the group decides on their exam.
Today Reichinnek presented the group with a joint candidacy with Leipzig MP Sören Pellmann.